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Peter Ford, Public Sector Industry Principal for EMEA at Pegasystems showcases examples of revolutionary IA adoption as part of techUK's Intelligent Automation Week #AutomationUK.

Since entering the IT industry in the early 1980s, I have witnessed the gradual acceleration of digital transformation. The maturity and scope of solutions available are now sufficient to meet the ambitions and needs of customers.

For those that don’t know (and to save you googling!), Pega is the organization that provides solutions to crush business complexity and help engage and serve customers better. This is achieved through industry leading IA and customer relationship management (CRM) solutions.

IA covers the end to end process of getting work done. It is not limited to Robotic Desktop and / or Process (RDA / RPA) solutions alone. IA is an umbrella term used to describe the emerging technologies that businesses rely on to automate work, including Artificial Intelligence (AI), RDA/RPA, chat bots and natural language processing (NLP), as well as the business process management (BPM), case management, and process intelligence that orchestrates the work from end to end.

AI and IA – is it a Typo?

Integration of AI into IA really takes solutions to another level. Agencies can deploy AI-powered applications, which combine event processing, real-time decisioning, business rules, natural language processing, and predictive analytics with a low-code configuration approach. Enabling them to increase efficiency and optimize outcomes.

Fundamental to successful IA transformation includes the need to bring the right people, processes, and technology together. It is also important to adopt an outcome-focused business/IT collaboration approach with governance and reuse embedded. Pega’s research study: Don’t get left behind: an enterprise view of the low-code automation landscape expands on this.

Some Interesting IA Examples

An extensive list IA driven transformations can be found at: https://www.pega.com/insights/resources/governments-building-change.

Three specific examples can be seen online at this years’ PegaWorld event taking place on 4 May.

StepChange – This UK based charity helps citizens with problem debt. The charity already used the Pega Customer Service application as the backbone of their Pulse customer support system. Through this, they help customers with free debt advice via online and telephone inquiries.

Some two million people in the UK will be adversely affected by major debt due to income reduction, job losses, and the end of the government furlough initiative following the COVID-19 outbreak. To assist the organisation launched its Covid Payment Plan(CVPP), a new online service providing short-term assistance for those who qualify for up to a year. As well as Pega intelligent automation, CVPP leverages Pega Chat to support online conversations between applicant and StepChange experts. With demand expected to be high, the service can scale up to 10,000 concurrent users per hour. The new CVPP product is able to leverage components from the existing Pulse solution to help with the rapid creation of this new product.

HMRC – Pega IA and Robotics solutions supported the Chancellor’s measures designed to help UK businesses and individuals during the pandemic. We mitigated against fraud and risk, with businesses and individuals applying for support.

The government programs aimed at job retention, supporting income for the self-employed, support for the hospitality industry, and providing rebates for statutory sick pay, were all introduced early in 2020. The department was already using Pega IA case management solutions for 18 years to assist with customer service, fraud investigation, customs, and legal.

Pega extended the department’s existing IA based compliance and enforcement application to mitigate against potential risk around each of the four COVID-19 plans. The new capabilities were configured, tested and deployed in just eight days. Pega Attended RPA™ was implemented as part of its IA strategy to automate the process of stopping payments where risk was identified – a project implemented inside two weeks.

Shared Services Company Limited – SSCL is a joint venture between the UK Government Cabinet Office and Sopra Steria. SSCL provides an extensive range of shared services for over 20 government departments in a constantly evolving environment. Services include payroll for 540,000 employees and finance administration for £378 billion payments per year. SSCL has implemented SSCL Service+ based on Pega IA  and Customer Service™ – providing end-to-end visibility of work across channels to improve customer experience, employee experience, and internal efficiency.

All of the above use cases will be presented at PegaWorld, so please do reach out for more information.

You can read all insights from techUK's Intelligent Automation Week here