Digital Lexicon Hub

The combined use of AI, process orchestration and robotic process automation to automate end-to-end processes involving judgment or unstructured data.

Intelligent automation extends automation beyond simple rule-based tasks to processes such as invoice handling, claims or customer onboarding, which reduces manual workload and cycle time while keeping humans for exceptions and approvals.

A finance team routes supplier invoices through a document AI model that extracts fields, an RPA bot that enters them in the ERP, and a workflow rule that sends invoices above €5,000 or with low extraction confidence to an approver.

Automating a poorly designed process makes errors happen faster. AI components add probabilistic errors, model drift and governance needs that rule-based bots do not have, so accuracy monitoring, audit logs and human review remain necessary.

IBM describes three building blocks: AI such as machine learning and language models that classify, extract and predict; business process management that defines and orchestrates workflows; and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) bots that operate application interfaces. APIs and Workflow Automation tools connect them. Agentic AI adds goal-driven agents that plan steps and call tools, while Business Process Automation (BPA) covers the underlying rule-based process design.