The New Digital Worker

We’ve been hearing about the potential of AI and automation in particular for ages now. In fact, most of us have experienced it first hand in both our personal and professional lives, especially over the last decade.

From ATM machines and ticket dispensers to the inventory monitoring robots at Walmart, automation has made life easier for both businesses and consumers alike. For the most part, however, automation seems to have been limited to physical processes handled by robots.

Businesses have managed to incorporate full automation in many physical aspects of their operations, such as production and packaging. Yet when it comes to the digital realm, you’ll find employees manually entering data among other repetitive tasks. Fortunately, that’s changing fast now with the emergence of digital workers.

Understanding Digital Workers

In the simplest terms, a digital worker is an automated team member that can comprehend and process data to perform day to day business tasks like any employee — only faster and more accurately.

Unlike traditional bots that can only automate a specific task under specific conditions, a digital worker uses a set of skills to tackle the same responsibilities as a human worker would.

So instead of just knowing how to copy data from one file to another like a traditional bot, the digital worker masters the recipes for numerous routine tasks, and then uses cognitive functions and analytical abilities to use the right recipe for the right situation.

But that’s not all. The true potential of a digital worker lies in its ability to learn and evolve.

By combining Robotic Process Automation (RPA) with other emerging technologies like Natural Language Processing, OCR, Chatbots, Computer Vision, Machine Learning, and other artificial intelligence technologies — digital workers can not only automate complex tasks, but they also learn and improve by doing so over time.

The Future of Work As We Know It

According to a recent whitepaper published by the research company IDC, the role of digital workers in the global workforce is expected to increase by over 50% in the next two years.

That’s just one of the many reports pointing to future where digital workers will take over the day to day responsibilities of employees.

When you think about it, automation is inevitable. It’s not a matter of if, but when. That’s because by automating the mundane and repetitive business tasks, which are the easiest targets for a digital worker, businesses can free up their employees to focus on higher-level and high-value roles instead.

Furthermore, not only are digital workers extremely cost-effective in the long run, but they are also a lot more efficient as they can work 24/7 without the human margin of error.

The end result is a significant uplift in both workplace productivity and customer satisfaction.

In fact, in a survey of 500 senior decision-makers in large enterprises, over 40% of the respondents reported a notable increase in customer satisfaction and employee productivity by deploying intelligence-based automation solutions.

Conclusion

Technological advancements are enabling computers to see, hear, and understand the world like any human. As a result, digital workers are now capable of performing from the simplest to the most sophisticated tasks in the shortest time imaginable.

As time goes on, we’re going to see more and more businesses using digital workers to boost their output while satisfying more customers in the process.

If you want to embrace digital transformation in your business, the best way is to start by automating the mundane and repetitive tasks first. These are the low hanging fruits with a healthy return on investment. By starting with the easier targets, you’ll gain the experience and confidence to invest into more sophisticated automations later.

To sum it up, digital transformation is the future of work and digital workers are at the very core of it.

Author
Sree Ganesh