A total of 600 managers from 13 countries were surveyed, including 40 from Germany. The respondents stated that they expected the technology to, first and foremost, make it quicker and easier to analyze data and help them boost customer satisfaction. And they appeared to expect this to happen soon: Half of the managers surveyed said they expected to be scaling intelligent automation solutions in their company within the next twelve months. In their analysis , however, the consultants add a note of caution: On the one hand, many of the companies surveyed lacked the right skills and resources, in particular for machine learning and artificial intelligence. On the other hand, sub-projects are still too rarely integrated in a company-wide strategy. Germany lags far behind other countries here.

Intelligent automation is a combination of the following elements listed by Springer Professional in its summary of an IBM survey : AI and machine learning, natural language processing, robotics, and predictive analytics.