“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” A well-known saying from Socrates, these words have become more and more relevant as digital solutions and new technologies transform all aspects of our lives.

In a recent blog post we outlined that if you need to do something more than once, you should consider automating it. And AI makes automating processes easier. AI supports three key business needs: automating business processes, gaining insights through data analysis and simplifying engagement with customers and employees.

But AI isn’t just a technology; it should be seen as a solution that boosts business capabilities and solves broader business problems. And AI and automation aren’t the same thing. Automation makes a hardware or software capable of doing things automatically. AI  makes machines or software mimic human behaviour and intelligence. Automation can or cannot be based on AI. When the two are combined, data is transformed into actionable insights, enabling automation.

Here are a few examples:

Machine learning: A branch of AI, the aim of machine learning is to develop techniques that allow computers to learn. Perhaps the most common use of AI modules is seen in the financial industry involving the calculation of interest rates. Intelligent software can sort through historical pricing charts to develop a model that more accurately predicts the financial future by taking numerous factors into account. It’s these additional factors that indicate that artificial intelligence can benefit the finance industry.

Robotic process automation (RPA): Robotic processes automation mimics and automates human tasks. This is especially useful in situations where hiring people to do a specific job is too expensive. Forbes describes RPA as a gateway drug to AI. Robots require structured data. When data is unstructured artificial intelligence can be used to transform it into structured insights.

Decision management: Many of the more straightforward decisioning applications used in existing online environments are already powered using the cleverness of AI. Retailers and services can use AI to offer dynamic pricing within minutes. Were this done manually it would take far too much time to compute the necessary data.