Headcount reduction to plagiarism detection: IT leaders’ automation priorities

UK IT leaders describe the focus of their automation efforts.

Lest we forget, there’s much more to automation than GenAI. Organisations of all types are mostly busy using more traditional types of technology to streamline operations – although GenAI is starting to augment these efforts in certain areas.

A recent survey of 135 senior UK IT leaders asked about the focus of their automation programmes. Business process automation, workflow automation and RPA were high on the agenda, in many cases as elements of ongoing digital transformation programmes. Uppermost among the KPIs were increasing efficiency, lowering costs, reducing drudgery, increasing standardisation and improving employee and customer experience.

AI functionality, mostly but not exclusively of the non-gen kind, is being added to all sorts of tools, particularly in cybersecurity, which was the main focus of automation efforts by some margin.

Cybersecurity

In many ways cybersecurity is the perfect use case for AI given the massive amounts of data to be analysed and the need for fast, probability-based decision making. It enables data analysis in near-real time, finding patterns and anomalies that indicate a threat, and instigating defensive actions.

In defence it is used for predictive analytics, threat detection, access control, zero trust networks, analysing user behaviour, prioritising interventions and automated response; and importantly algorithms are able to learn over time from what they’ve seen. GenAI can add capabilities in pattern recognition and natural language processing, drawing on extensive data and offering multimodal capabilities.

While there is much fear of bad actors using GenAI to create better malware or more targeted attacks, there is little evidence of that yet, although it is likely to become more of a problem in the future. For this reason, and because GenAI can open up security holes of its own, the Alan Turing Organisation says “GenAI systems must be applied astutely.”

“Our current focus of automation is on cybersecurity and incident management, to enhance threat detection, streamline response times, and proactively secure sensitive data,” explained an IT manager at a technology firm.

A service availability manager at a large retailer said, “We’re using AI to reduce amount of manpower required to investigate security concerns.”

Back office and customer support

Customer support is one of the most visible applications of automation, with intelligent chatbots able to guide customers through common pathways now a familiar part of everyday life. Robotic process automation (RPA) is used to handle repetitive tasks, while GenAI is able to add to the experience by creating original content. A symbiotic relationship exists between the two. For example, in finance RPA cans be used to automate scheduling and data entry tasks, with customer-facing GenAI offering potential financial scenarios and personal advice, as well as being used to improve fraud detection.

“We use AI-enhanced chat bots for both colleague and customer support reducing overhead on support desk staff,” said the head of DevOps at a membership organisation. “Plus AI-driven publishing production processes for the ingestion, formatting, editing and typesetting of scientific research articles. Also AI and automation for staff processes to improve efficiency and productivity and ultimately reduce FTE headcount.”

A strategist in government added, “We use some automation of business processes, e.g. actioning routine change requests, some for security monitoring and response, and some for operational tasks.”

HR, including recruitment and onboarding, is another administrative area that is seeing a lot of automation (not always without criticism).

“We’re onboarding new hires using AI to create a better employee experience,” said the CIO of a distribution company.

Twenty-six percent of respondents said business process automation is a focus. “We are piloting RPA/BPA in several areas of the business to automate routine tasks,” said a CIO at a university, while an IT director at a manufacturing firm was prioritising the processing of invoices and related workflows.

“We are using AI to improve internal processes removing mundane activities, specifically in redacting documents, redirecting mail and allowing customers contacts to better navigate our services,” said the CIO of a building society.

Software development and deployment

From IDEs to Kubernetes, automation has always been part and parcel of software development and deployment, and GenAI is now making its presence felt in the shape of copilots and coding assistants. Several respondents were further automating their CI/CD pipelines as well as introducing automatic vulnerability scanning and deployment capabilities. Updates, cloud migrations and management, backups and event monitoring were other areas of focus for many in IT.

A number of IT leaders pointed to the benefit of self-service systems for employees and customers in promoting standardisation and reducing the number of ad hoc queries field by support teams.

“We’re making use of internal knowledgebases to automate self-service support and increase productivity,” said the CIO of a business services company.

Sales and marketing

Marketing is another area where GenAI is seeing a healthy take-up, helping to draft releases, suggest designs, post to social media and write emails.

As well as handling routine tasks, campaigns can be hyper-personalised and driven by real-time interactions, with sales automation tools integrated with CRMs and other data sources can help identify new prospects and markets, as well as producing reports and analyses on demand.

“We are focusing on automating sales processes to streamline lead generation, optimise customer relationship management (CRM), and enhance sales forecasting,” said an IT manager at a technology company.

“Additionally, we are leveraging automation in sales to optimise lead generation, personalise customer engagement, and improve the overall sales pipeline efficiency.”

Education

Every domain has its own automation priorities, including education, where AI-assisted plagiarism and cheating is reaching troubling proportions. That the same tools may be part of the solution is the hope of a CIO in higher education.

“We are trialling AI to detect plagiarism among student submissions - but most of the emphasis is upon offline checks and balances rather than AI per se.”

Production

Production of products, physical and virtual, is another place where automation is an ongoing necessity to remain competitive.

“We’re automating manufacturing and operational processes, with an ERP rollout across back office serving both automation of processes and analytics,” said CIO at a consultancy.

Meanwhile, products themselves increasingly require automated features if they are to compete.

“We’re adding AI capability to products for resale - including re-branding some existing functionality as 'AI' to align with client expectations,” said a CTO at a technology business, presumably with tongue planted firmly in cheek.