Germany among top 3 markets

Intelligent automation involving artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly gaining acceptance in German SMEs as well. At the same time, not least because of the corona pandemic, automation is now expanding to include processes in sales, marketing, customer service and supply chains.

This is reported in the new "ISG Provider Lens Intelligent Automation - Solutions & Services Report Germany 2020" by Information Services Group (ISG). Intelligent automation is currently used primarily to reduce costs. In the long term, however, companies want to use it primarily to increase their productivity and minimize risks to their business operations.

ISG ranks Germany among the top three markets worldwide for the use of intelligent business automation, along with the United States and the United Kingdom. Of the companies in Germany that already have automation solutions in place, more than half have automated their customer service, closely followed by sales and marketing, finance and accounting, and supply chain functions, according to ISG.

ISG has also recently observed an increased implementation of ML in business processes of German companies that want to use it to support human decision-making. NLP (Natural Language Processing) and intelligent document processing would currently be at the top of the list of planned projects.

In the study, ISG also points to the special German feature of the Works Constitution Act, which grants employees far-reaching co-determination rights in automation measures via the works council.

ISG therefore recommends that companies in Germany willing to automate closely and continuously coordinate with the works council to ensure smooth change management and successful automation of business processes.

On the automation service provider side, the leading vendors are currently investing significantly in their on-site presence in Germany, according to the ISG study. According to the study, they are hiring more local staff, actively seeking acquisition candidates and partnerships in the region, setting up so-called "innovation labs" in Germany and working with local universities to support the promotion of young talent. In the "Intelligent Business Automation" submarket, ISG examined a total of 21 providers, eight of which were able to position themselves as "Leaders" and two as "Rising Stars".