Overall Spending on Intelligent Automation to Hit $232 Billion by 2025

Overall spending on intelligent automation will come in at an estimated $12.4 billion this year, but this figure will surge to nearly $232 billion by 2025, according to a new study from KPMG.

Intelligent automation — which includes artificial intelligence, robotic process automation (RPA), and machine learning — will thus become an even larger part of the digital transformation efforts of companies in the years to come, and it will increasingly become a key driver of return on investment in the area of technology.

“Growing evidence shows that taking a strategic approach to IA, by focusing early on creating new business and operating models, can yield 5X to 10X dividends,” states the big four professional services firm in a report released this week.

Image via KPMG

Today, very few firms have taken anything approaching a strategic approach to intelligence automation. But the report, “Ready, Set, Fail: Avoiding Setbacks in the Intelligent Automation Race,” highlights the use cases that will drive the increasing investment.

Half of companies today have either made no use of cognitive and AI technologies (13%) or are still just examining their potential (37%). Nearly one-in-four (24%) have at least entered the pilot or proof of concept stage, but just 12% have even advanced to being making “selective use” of these innovations.

This, however, will begin go change rapidly, according to KPMG. In three years, half of companies (49%) will be using cognitive and AI technologies at scale with another 40% either at the selective use (29%) or pilot/proof concept (11%) phase.

For Donald Ryan, the study author as well as director of advisory and market research at KPMG, these findings reflect the overall takeaway from the report. While companies do see vast potential in intelligent automation, they are not yet prepared to truly make use of it.

“The surprising part of the survey is not that managers’ expectations are high for IA but rather that their organizations’ readiness to implement it is low,” said Ryan.