In the last several years, an all-new family of process automation technologies has emerged with a great deal of attention. These new products are quite different than the simple click recorders of yesteryear. Complex execution engines with fully developed management platforms are changing how business is done. Often coupled with increasingly sophisticated rules engines, analytics, machine learning, and cognitive computing, these new tools can perform tasks previously requiring human operators. More advanced tooling is now starting to involve context assessment, reasoning, decision-making, and automated orchestration of service process fulfillment. Collectively, this capability is known as Software-Based Intelligent Process Automation (SBIPA) or Intelligent Process Automation (IPA) for short.
An IEEE-SA working group of technology developers, service providers, sourcing consultants, industry analysts, academics and industry associations was formed with a mandate to develop standards and practices for the emerging IPA industry.