As businesses have accelerated their digital transformation, some have found sustaining this growth to be challenging. Automation has emerged as the solution, especially if companies can look at it as more than a substitute for workers.

“In its simplest form, automation … is about applying technology … to perform tasks that were once exclusively done by us humans,” said Jerry Cuomo (pictured), IBM fellow, vice president and chief technology officer of automation. “But if you stop there, you’re not getting the full value. Step two is to augment our skills.”

Cuomo spoke with John Furrier, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during IBM Think. They discussed how automation is helping businesses scale amid digital transformation and how it interacts with other technologies and processes to help companies improve. (* Disclosure below.)

Digital transformation requires automation

Businesses across industries have been embracing digital services for years now, and the pandemic accelerated this trend. As these services attract more users, companies often face challenges with scaling to accommodate this growth. Automation reduces workloads and augments human skills to make this expansion possible, according to Cuomo.

“With 10x more users, [companies] can’t hire 10x more support staff … so their support desks are lit up,” Cuomo said. “So, as they scale digitally, automation is the relief that comes into play. The digital transformation needs automation.”

Automating tasks lets businesses get the full value out of their digital expansion, and AI builds on that foundation. Traditional automation has limits, and AI provides the necessary resources to break past them, according to Cuomo. Just as automation helps scale digitization, AI helps companies scale automation, especially when there’s unstructured data at play.

“If there is more ambiguous data — unstructured, noisy — you need a human in the loop, and when you get a human in the loop, it slows things down,” Cuomo explained. “AI and its subordinates … start to make sense of both unstructured and structured data together.”

Companies have an abundance of digital tools available to them today, and they can all build on each other. If businesses hope to make the most of these investments, they need to use these technologies together, according to Cuomo, who added that mass digitization necessitates automation, which after a certain point, necessitates AI.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of IBM Think. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for IBM Think. Neither IBM, the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE