Gartner: 80% of Organisations Will Use Intelligent Automation by 2026
A new Gartner report projects rapid automation adoption across finance, HR, and supply chain with ROI realised in under 12 months for most deployments.
Gartner's latest Automation Adoption Forecast projects that 80% of enterprise organisations will have deployed some form of intelligent automation by 2026, up from an estimated 52% today. The report defines intelligent automation as the combination of robotic process automation (RPA), AI-driven decision engines, and workflow orchestration platforms.
Finance, HR operations, and supply chain management are identified as the three highest-adoption verticals, with process automation delivering median cost reductions of 22 to 35% in repetitive back-office functions.
Critically, the report finds that organisations achieving positive ROI within 12 months share several common characteristics: they began with a structured process discovery audit, they automated high-frequency tasks first, and they integrated automation into existing systems rather than replacing them.
The forecast also warns against what Gartner terms "automation debt" — the accumulation of fragile, undocumented automations built without governance frameworks. Organisations that automate without clear ownership and monitoring structures are found to incur remediation costs that frequently exceed the original savings.
For leadership teams still early in their automation journey, the report recommends starting with a formal process audit to identify the highest-ROI candidates before committing to any technology platform. The choice of tooling, Gartner emphasises, should follow the process design — not precede it.
This briefing is based on reporting from Gartner Research. Read the full original article below.
Read Full Article at Gartner Research
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