ISG Provider Lens™ report finds Brazil is ahead of most countries in conversational AI and paperless transactions but still at an early stage with some forms of automation
Brazilian companies are expanding their use of automation, recognizing the importance of flexibility and adaptability under changing business conditions, according to a new research report published by Information Services Group (ISG), a leading global technology research and advisory firm.
The 2021 ISG Provider Lens™ Intelligent Automation – Solutions and Services report for Brazil finds business confidence increased in the first half of 2021 as the country responded to the COVID-19 pandemic with vaccines and other measures, leading half of all companies to increase technology investment despite ongoing political, economic and supply chain issues.
Traditional enterprises in Brazil are turning to digital transformation to prepare for potentially devastating disruptions like supply chain interruptions caused by COVID-19, but they are also under pressure from new, smaller, highly automated competitors, the report says. Established companies are being challenged to scale their automation from isolated departmental efforts to the enterprise level.
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“Investment in IT is one of the most promising paths to the future for Brazil”
“Investment in IT is one of the most promising paths to the future for Brazil,” said Chip Wagner, CEO of ISG Automation. “Industries such as banking, financial services, e-commerce and retail have shown digital transformation can expand the nation’s economy beyond raw materials.”
Intelligent business automation is still at an early stage in Brazil, with most companies focused on discovering appropriate use cases, the report says. Automation is being applied to supply chain and logistics operations, as well as conformance and compliance with tax and fiscal processes. Financial firms have automated complex processes around home financing, debt collection and credit. But broader potential exists in retail, healthcare, telecom and pharmaceuticals, ISG says.
In conversational AI, Brazil is already a leading market, with high rates of adoption for voice-based user interfaces such as Siri, Alexa and Cortana, according to the report. This has accelerated the development of complex human-machine conversation scenarios, and conversational intelligence is heavily used in contact center chatbots, virtual agents and voice assistants. Brazil is the world’s second-largest market in terms of the number of bots deployed and transactions handled by them. However, bots are being added so fast that many still have only basic functions and lack monitoring, curation and retraining, ISG says.
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Brazil is also ahead of some other major countries, including the U.S., in becoming a paperless economy, according to ISG. There is less need for intelligent document processing, as typical applications such as paper-based invoicing and claims processing are already executed electronically in Brazil. The government and public sector are also highly engaged in e-government initiatives, such as electronic voting machines and the SPED digital bookkeeping system for tax declarations.
Other forms of automation, including artificial intelligence for IT operations (AIOps) and process and task discovery, are less widely adopted in Brazil than in other countries, the report says. Use of AIOps is expected to become more critical due to the high incidence of security threats and overall vulnerability of Brazilian companies to cyberattacks. Process mining is still commonly seen as a tool to be applied once by consulting or audit service providers, and more flexible use models will be needed to popularize its use in Brazil, ISG says.
The 2021 ISG Provider Lens™ Intelligent Automation – Solutions and Services report for Brazil evaluates the capabilities of 61 providers across five quadrants: Intelligent Business Automation, Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations (AIOps), Conversational AI, Intelligent Document Processing, and Process Mining and Discovery.
The report names IBM and Stefanini as a Leader in three quadrants each and names Accenture and Capgemini a Leader in two quadrants each. ABBYY, Celonis, CPQD, DXC Technology, Google, Kofax, Microsoft, Nama, Software AG, TIVIT, UiPath and UpFlux are named as Leaders in one quadrant each.
In addition, Automation Anywhere, SAP Signavio, Sinch Chatlayer, Stoque and Wipro are named as Rising Stars—companies with a “promising portfolio” and “high future potential” by ISG’s definition—in one quadrant each.
