Realizing the Benefits of Intelligent Process Automation

The benefits of intelligent process automation are apparent to just about every organization. And most are in hot pursuit.

According to McKinsey, approximately 70 percent of companies across the business spectrum, ranging in industry and company size, said that they were at least piloting automation projects in 2022 — up from 57 percent in 2018. In an earlier survey, McKinsey found that more than 80 percent of IT decision-makers believe that process automation is a necessity for digital transformation.

Just as we have learned from preceding technology waves, however, popularity does not guarantee success. There are plenty of business processes to automate—but companies aren’t always sure where or how to begin. Will it require a big, hairy consulting project? How long will it take to implement? And then there’s the question of user acceptance. Based on our experience, process automation tools aren’t always the most user-friendly or accessible.

This is why we’re thrilled to deliver our KnowledgeLake Ontario Update.

Ontario is the most powerful expansion of our process automation capabilities yet. These new enhancements allow organizations to automate even their most complex processes in a single platform and empower their business for maximum productivity. 

The McKinsey study cited above examined what sets the successful adopters apart from everyone else. They found that automation leaders were twice as likely to pair cloud migration with automation efforts and three times as likely to adopt a “citizen developer” model that puts automation tools in the hands of business users and not just IT.

A cloud-first, citizen developer approach are core attributes of KnowledgeLake’s offering. Ontario is all about making the benefits of intelligent process automation attainable and sustainable.

Solving Your Most Complex Workflow Challenges

The KnowledgeLake Ontario update brings an expanded process automation engine and new digital customer experience portal to the company’s Intelligent Document Processing platform.

With the Ontario update, we've expanded the capabilities of our process automation engine to accommodate even the most sophisticated workflows with conditional routing, looping, error handling, granular permissions and other enhancements. 

We’ve also made two brand-new enhancements that support a better overall digital customer experience:

Digital Experience Portal

The standard process of collecting documents and data from customers is a major drag on operations. In fact, collecting documents is CENTRAL to many business processes, but the actual exchange can be clunky, disorganized and time-consuming. It typically involves a lot of manual back-and-forth between your employees and customers (or contractors and vendors), creating a disjointed, friction-filled experience that’s frustrating for everyone involved.

Our new Digital Experience Portal bridges the gap between you and people outside of your organization who need to participate in the workflow. The portal allows you to loop external users directly into workflows through an interactive gateway that provides them with real-time insight into their status in the process. Easy-to-follow steps guide external users through assigned workflow tasks, such as uploading documents or answering questions.

A view of the user experience when 
uploading documents through the 
Portal.

Secure Electronic Forms

KnowledgeLake Forms offer a new way to collect internal and external user data to launch workflows. Anyone in your organization can create professional-looking forms based on your branding or website look and feel with the intuitive drag-and-drop builder. Built-in validation features ensure that all submitted information is accurate and complete, eliminating the need for manual checking before a workflow can be kicked off.

Users can easily 
configure forms 
with the drag-and-drop builder.

Gaining Immediate Impact from Process Automation

We’re excited to see what our customers will do with the new DX Portal and Forms tools. It’s also worth emphasizing that the process automation capabilities of the KnowledgeLake Ontario update address two critical flaws of existing workflow engines.

One is connectivity and extensibility. Workflow engines are only as good as their API. KnowledgeLake’s cloud-first architecture makes integration simple. It lets you avoid burning up IT resources by getting automations up and running quickly across applications and systems, without waiting on development time. In other words, KnowledgeLake supports one cohesive automation pathway, no matter your stack.

Another important facet is making human-in-the-loop automations easier to handle. So many workflow engines fall down when it comes to the necessity of including humans. Because at some point, human interaction, validation or exception handling is required in even the most complex automated workflows. KnowledgeLake’s product strategy strives to balance bots and humans.

If you’d like to learn more about how KnowledgeLake process automation can take your organization to the next level, reach out to your KnowledgeLake rep or drop us a line. We would love to set up a time to talk.