The amount of work conducted by software robots around the world will increase by 50 percent over the next two years, according to a new report. The growth will be part of a fundamental shift in the nature of work toward significantly more collaboration between humans and machines, said authors of Content Intelligence for the Future of Work, a report conducted by IDC Research for automation technology provider ABBYY.
IDC predicts that sales of what it calls intelligent process automation solutions—a combination of content intelligence and RPA—will grow from $13.1 billion in 2019 to $20.7 billion in 2023. Often called attended automation, IDC emphasized that automation will increasingly be collaborative with humans.
“A growing number of employees will find themselves working side-by-side with a digital coworker in the future as technology automates many work activities,” commented Holly Muscolino, research vice president of Content and Process Strategies and the Future of Work at IDC. “Think human and machine. The human-machine collaboration is not just the future of work, but it is the new normal for today’s high-performing enterprises.”