Salesforce offers products and services spanning sales, marketing, support, data and analytics, AI, and business connectivity. The company started in 1999 as a cloud-based software as a service (SaaS) customer relationship management (CRM) platform. Over the past 25+ years, Salesforce has grown through key acquisitions—like Slack, Tableau, MuleSoft, and more—to support over 150,000 organizations of all sizes around the world.
Salesforce is a complex platform that allows for endless customization. Specialized Salesforce developers can introduce custom objects or workflows, but this comes at a cost. The salary for an entry-level Salesforce Developer typically starts around $75,000, but this cost can quickly skyrocket to north of $200,000 for a senior-level Salesforce Architect.
As organizations expand their Salesforce footprint, it requires a specialized skillset to integrate each of the different products. These integrations can be complex, depending on the types of business data that users wish to see passed back and forth.
Salesforce is lauded for its flexibility and customization, but this often leads to prolonged onboarding and implementation. This becomes further complicated when additional business systems need integration capabilities with Salesforce. Despite these challenges, Salesforce remains the CRM market leader.
It’s possible to automate manual, repetitive processes directly in the Salesforce platform, with a skilled developer and some time. Businesses look to automate processes to save time and money and reduce human error.
In fact, there is such a high demand for Salesforce automation that they have published a Best Practice Guide covering key concepts, implementation, use cases, troubleshooting, and more. As organizations look to automate more processes within Salesforce, they often need to bring on additional resources in the form of consultants or headcount.
Kognitos is an AI automation platform that uses plain English to transform process documentation into powerful AI agents. Unlike specialized Salesforce automation or traditional robotic process automation (RPA) tools, Kognitos manages the entire lifecycle of automation.
The platform auto-writes code in natural language, asks for help when it needs it, and follows established business processes, all without depending on specialized developers to execute automation. The result is lower costs, faster speed to production, and delighted customers and employees.
Rather than automating directly within Salesforce, Kognitos offers a native integration that allows users to benefit from the key features of the Kognitos platform and the hyperautomation lifecycle. To get started, organizations simply need an active Salesforce account, API access, and a security token.
With Kognitos, users can automate repetitive Salesforce tasks such as creating:
Improve efficiency and reduce costs by integrating Kognitos with Salesforce. Rather than expanding their dedicated internal Salesforce teams, Kognitos allows developers and architects to automate repetitive tasks like lead routing, opportunity creation, and data cleanup.
Don’t let the complexity of Salesforce slow you down. Instead, lean into the customization that Salesforce offers, and let Kognitos automate complex processes without specialized developers. To see how Kognitos can help your organization, connect with our sales team or explore the full breadth of supported integrations.
For years, enterprise leaders have chased the promise of digital transformation through automation. The goal was to build a more efficient, agile business, much like building a high-performance machine. Yet, too often, these efforts have resulted in a collection of disconnected parts. Individual teams might have a few bots or scripts, but the systems don’t talk to each other. The result is a fragmented, brittle machine that can’t respond to change. This is the central problem that a modern automation strategy is designed to solve.
An effective automation strategy is not a list of tasks. It is a blueprint for building a digital nervous system for your entire organization. It’s a plan to connect disparate functions and create a cohesive, intelligent network that allows information to flow instantly and accurately. This article is for the executive who knows that a scattershot approach to automation is no longer enough. We will guide you through a new way of thinking, demonstrating how an intelligent, AI-driven platform can empower your teams to build and grow a truly resilient automation strategy.
Before we discuss a better way, it’s crucial to understand the limitations of traditional solutions. While they were a step forward, they often failed to deliver on the long-term vision of a cohesive business process automation strategy.
A resilient automation strategy requires a new type of platform—one that is built for intelligence and adaptability, not just execution. This is where a modern AI-driven platform provides a unique advantage.
The greatest friction in automation is the translation between a business need and a technical command. The next generation of automation platforms solves this with a revolutionary “English as code” approach. Business users can simply type out a process in plain English—for example, “When a new invoice is received, create a new record in our accounting software, get it approved by the finance director, and send a notification to the vendor.” The platform automatically documents and automates this workflow, empowering the people who own the process to drive change.
Real-world business processes are not perfect. They have exceptions, unexpected variations, and human judgment calls. A truly intelligent platform is built to handle this complexity. It uses a neurosymbolic AI architecture that combines the reasoning of symbolic AI with the power of generative AI. This provides the intelligence to handle exceptions without breaking down. When an agent encounters an unfamiliar scenario, it can use a “Guidance Center” to pull in a human expert. The agent learns from their input, automatically refining the process for the future.
A robust automation strategy needs a single platform that can orchestrate a workflow across multiple systems. A modern platform provides built-in document and Excel processing, browser automation, and connectors to hundreds of enterprise applications. This allows a single AI agent to manage a complete workflow, from an email with an invoice attachment to a data entry task in an ERP system. This approach consolidates the tech stack, reduces complexity, and ensures a cohesive process automation strategy for the entire enterprise.
To understand the full potential of an intelligent automation strategy, we must look at the specific back-office functions where it can have the greatest impact. These are just a few process automation opportunities that illustrate the power of a cohesive plan.
These examples are all connected by a single, intelligent thread. They illustrate how a modern automation strategy creates a seamless flow of information and action across an organization.
The strategic deployment of a cohesive automation strategy brings a host of measurable benefits that go far beyond simple cost reduction.
Adopting a new automation strategy is not without its challenges. The biggest hurdles are often legacy systems, data fragmentation, and a reliance on rigid, rule-based automation. The challenges in automating financial reporting include:
A modern platform is designed to mitigate these. Its ability to work with unstructured data and integrate with both modern and legacy systems ensures that a company can begin its AI journey without a complete overhaul of its existing infrastructure. Its natural language interface helps overcome the skills gap, as employees don’t need to be programmers to build and use automations.
The future of automation is not a world without human professionals. It is a seamless, strategic partnership between intelligent AI agents and human expertise. The ultimate goal of automation is to empower human professionals with better tools, enabling them to focus on what truly matters: strategic analysis, innovation, and business partnership.
As the industry continues to evolve, the distinction between manual work and strategic insight will blur. The data from various systems will flow instantly into the administrative systems, triggering intelligent workflows that ensure a smooth and compliant operation. The ability to build and grow an AI-driven back-office is the key to unlocking true operational excellence and securing a competitive advantage in the future.
A resilient automation strategy requires a new type of platform—one that is built for intelligence and adaptability, not just execution. This is where Kognitos provides a unique advantage.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) solutions like UiPath have been market leaders for good reason. RPA has been an excellent tool for automating simple, repetitive tasks with logic-based scripting and screen-scraping technologies. Where it falls short, though, is in addressing complex use cases or when minor UI updates can disrupt an entire automation workflow. Further, the slightest variations in input data can break the process, leaving RPA developers scrambling to identify and fix bugs before mission critical processes halt.
After years of overlooking the flaws of RPA, enterprise technology leaders find themselves questioning whether their RPA investments are truly bringing value to the business or if the maintenance costs and headaches are just too high. Even the market leader in the RPA space, UiPath, continues to fall short of business and investor expectations. Fragile bots are constantly breaking, and the subsequent maintenance drives costs far higher than anticipated, creating an urgent need for a more resilient, intelligent, and cost-effective automation solution.
Kognitos has created a cost-efficient SaaS platform rooted in AI and natural language, marking a paradigm shift in enterprise process automation. RPA incumbents are no longer the best or only option available. This analysis highlights six key dimensions where the Kognitos platform outperforms UiPath: usability, implementation, efficiency, cognitive ability, cost structure, and scalability and governance.
Kognitos’ natural language processing fundamentally reimagines human-machine interaction by using plain English rather than a technical coding language to interpret and execute business processes. This allows both IT personnel and key business stakeholders to create complex automations from simple instructions. In contrast, UiPath’s visual workflow designer requires an elaborate understanding of programming logic and its deep nested menus. Kognitos is supported by a neurosymbolic AI architecture which combines generative AI with deterministic reasoning to support the full-scale needs and dynamic nature of enterprise processes.
UiPath’s “citizen developer” approach meant to reduce pressures on IT by allowing anyone to access automation. Instead, business users had to become pseudo-developers whose low-quality implementations further exacerbated the burden on already-constrained IT teams.
Instead of anything resembling “shadow IT” or even “shadow AI”, the innovative features of the Kognitos platform and its hyperautomation lifecycle (HAL) methodology create opportunities for IT to support a larger scope and quantity of business needs. In addition, business users and key stakeholders hold influence and direct visibility into relevant automations.
With Kognitos, there’s no need to learn coding concepts or fumble with drag-and-drop editors, team members simply document their processes in English. The platform understands written business documentation natively, such as the instructions contained in a standard operating procedure (SOP) document from finance or HR. When processes change, users simply update the documentation in Kognitos’ natural language interface or provide guidance through a chat interface. By reconsidering the way humans work with machines— AI interprets documentation rather than people learning programming—Kognitos enables businesses to unlock efficiencies through automation without the complexity that plagues UiPath’s technical environment.
Kognitos users can become proficient in as little as 8-10 hours, because they only need to learn the natural language constructs instead of abstract programming concepts. Compare this with the 80-120+ hours required for users to gain basic proficiency in UiPath Studio, and you’ll see that learning time is reduced by at least 90%. New Kognitos users can create automations in just two weeks, in contrast to three months or more with UiPath. Over time, users see a compounding effect to accessibility as Kognitos’ AI capabilities learn organizational terminology, understand context, and simplify communication.
Kognitos is set up on a serverless architecture that drastically reduces cost of ownership compared to UiPath’s licensing and infrastructure. UiPath’s pricing model burdens organizations with an abundance of required components that drive up annual expenses via direct costs:
Kognitos’ pricing is radically different from UiPath’s, offering a consumption-based model that reduces or completely eliminates recurring costs of specialized developer salaries, infrastructure, and licensing fees. Kognitos offers true enterprise scalability without infrastructure capacity constraints.
UiPath implementations rely on well-compensated RPA developers that earn upward of $120,000, in addition to infrastructure maintenance contracts that can exceed $40,000 a year. Kognitos eliminates these unnecessary expenses with a platform that allows business users to create automations in plain English without specialized technical expertise.
Case studies reveal that help desk tickets are 75% lower with Kognitos than with UiPath. As downtime and IT support needs diminish, indirect costs are further reduced. Kognitos platform is reliable and effective, reducing intervention needs, delivering faster ROI, and alleviating financial and operational challenges tied to RPA.
UiPath’s brittle automation scripts require constant upkeep. In fact, 30-40% of bot capacity is typically allocated to maintenance rather than new automation. Kognitos’ self-healing capabilities and patented conversational exception handling reduce maintenance costs by 90% or more through:
Post-implementation change requests that usually take 2-3 weeks to implement with UiPath can be completed in hours with Kognitos natural language instructions.
Kognitos embeds GPT-4o, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Gemini 2, and custom models directly into workflow execution. This allows for contextual decision-making that remains impossible with UiPath’s rigid, rule-based framework.
This cognitive flexibility allows enterprises to automate processes with less than 70% structured data—a domain where UiPath would require an IDP point solution.
One of Kognitos’ differentiating capabilities is patented conversational exception handling. When the platform encounters an unexpected scenario, it asks a human for help in plain English. UiPath’s exception handling is limited to predefined error paths and would require manual intervention from developers when new issues arise. Kognitos can autonomously resolve 90% of exceptions on its own. Only especially complex cases are escalated to a business user, as the platform learns from every interaction.
Kognitos builds institutional knowledge through its Corporate Memory feature—a continuously updated repository of process decisions and resolutions. This enables:
UiPath lacks equivalent knowledge retention. In fact, with UiPath, the very first time an automated process is updated, it starts deviating from the documented process as described by the business users. There is no mechanism to learn from the past or provide anomaly detection capabilities based on the collected information of prior transactions.
Comparative analysis shows that Kognitos delivers 60-75% lower total cost of ownership (TCO) over three years versus UiPath.
| Cost Component | Kognitos | UiPath |
| Licensing Fees | $60k/year | $120k/year |
| Infrastructure | $0 (serverless) | $65k/year |
| Development | $50k/year | $180k/year |
| Maintenance/Support | $10k/year | $75k/year |
| Process Updates | $15k/year | $90k/year |
| 3-Year Total | $405k | $1.59M |
Kognitos demonstrates return on investment (ROI) in 3-5 months versus UiPath’s 12-18 month minimum due to:
UiPath’s opaque pricing model frequently leads to unexpected expenses from:
Kognitos’ all-inclusive pricing covers the complete automation lifecycle—infrastructure, AI skills, support, etc—without any hidden fees.
Kognitos excels at running high-volume, complex workflows and seasonal workload variation. The cloud-native architecture dynamically allocates resources to support practically unlimited concurrent automations. UiPath’s bot-based model has artificial scalability limits, and struggles to handle large scale deployments.
Stress tests show:
As a market leader in RPA, UiPath has an extensive list of technology partners. Kognitos has created an ecosystem of supported integrations to rival UiPath’s connectivity:
1. Universal Enterprise Connectivity
2. Intelligent Integration Capabilities
3. Enterprise-grade features
Kognitos integrations can be set up 75% faster than with UiPath, reduce 90% of integration maintenance, and achieve near-zero downtime because of the platform’s inherent AI monitoring and self-healing capabilities. API changes and updates are seamlessly managed throughout. The comprehensive integration framework allows rapid automation of complex workflows across any technology stack without sacrificing enterprise-grade security, reliability, or scalability.
No more managing or scheduling bots. Kognitos’ serverless architecture:
This serverless, elastic approach delivers perfect resource utilization compared to UiPath’s static bot allocation which underutilizes cloud resources. Kognitos delivers large reductions in cloud compute costs for bursty workloads when compared to UiPath.
Kognitos’ natural language processing (NLP) tools provide comprehensive audit capabilities, and the platform is capable of identifying regulatory risk factors in real-time. Each automation generates detailed records and process documentation in plain English, capturing:
This enables organizations to avoid black-box AI. They maintain complete visibility into the evolution history of each and every process and can use that data to:
In contrast, UiPath’s is significantly more cumbersome to review and audit. They follow a traditional approach that relies heavily on manual log analysis and demands extensive manual effort to piece together process histories.
With Kognitos, business users can input simple queries like “Show all PII handling steps in accounts payable automations” and the platform will generate comprehensive audit reports to ensure regulatory and industry-specific compliance including HIPAA, ISO 27001, SOC 2, PCI DSS, and more.
Kognitos documents all process changes, execution history, and AI learnings in plain English for unrivaled version control. Business users can easily review::
Because UiPath relies on technical expertise, version histories are inaccessible to 85% of business users. This inherently creates compliance and governance risk.
CIOs and other business leaders looking to invest in viable AI automation will find that self-improving agentic automation and the elimination of traditional coding implementations significantly reduces friction.
Kognitos delivers enterprise-grade automation in plain English, democratizing process automation for IT and business users. UiPath once changed the game for robotic process automation, but has critical limitations in cognitive flexibility, maintenance overhead, and total cost of ownership. When organizations can deploy automation faster at a lower cost, ROI follows in months, not years.
Kognitos is fundamentally reinventing how the world approaches automation. This isn’t simply incremental improvement over RPA technology, but a sweeping change for enterprises taking on digital transformation initiatives. The platform’s unique combination of natural language processing, self-maintaining AI, and serverless infrastructure position Kognitos as the successor to RPA tools like UiPath. If you’re currently comparing legacy RPA tools with more robust solutions like Kognitos, reach out to our team to discuss how we can help support your digital transformation and AI automation initiatives.
Disclaimer: All data was accurate at the time of collection on March 28, 2025. This competitor analysis article is intended for informational purposes only. While we have made every effort to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information presented, market conditions and competitor strategies may change rapidly. Readers should conduct their own research and due diligence before making any business decisions based on this analysis. The authors and publishers of this article do not guarantee the continued accuracy of the information beyond the date of collection and are not responsible for any actions taken based on the content of this analysis.
Enterprises constantly seek methods to streamline workflows and amplify output in the relentless pursuit of operational efficiency. Terms like “automation” and “orchestration” frequently appear in these discussions, often used interchangeably, yet they represent distinct concepts with unique implications for business strategy. For accounting, finance, and technology leaders in large organizations, discerning the precise distinction between Orchestration vs Automation is critical for making informed technology investments and unlocking genuine competitive advantage.
This article aims to clarify the critical distinction between automation and orchestration in business processes. We will define both concepts, articulate their individual roles, explain how they differ, and detail their combined benefits in streamlining operations, elevating efficiency, and managing complex systems. By illustrating how automation zeroes in on individual tasks while Kognitos, with its native AI skills, uniquely curtails the need for extensive, high-level orchestration across disparate products by embedding intelligence directly into the automated processes themselves, this content offers a comprehensive synthesis. In essence, it serves as a foundational resource for organizations aiming to implement or optimize automated workflows and system management, championing their role in achieving superior productivity, agility, and strategic control through Kognitos’s distinctive AI automation platform.
At its core, automation involves programming a system or machine to perform a specific task or a set of tasks independently, without requiring human intervention. It’s about replacing manual effort with technology for repetitive, rule-based, or high-volume activities. Think of automation as the hands and feet of efficiency; it executes predefined actions swiftly and accurately.
Examples of simple automation are pervasive:
These examples illustrate that automation typically focuses on individual, discrete steps within a larger process. It excels at doing one thing, or a closely related set of things, repeatedly and flawlessly. Its value is undeniable in boosting the speed and precision of individual tasks.
If automation is about executing individual tasks, then orchestration is about coordinating and managing those tasks—and often additional manual steps—across multiple systems, applications, and even departments, to achieve a larger, complex business outcome. Think of orchestration as the brain and nervous system that guides the hands and feet of automation. It designs and manages the sequence, dependencies, and interactions of individual automated steps.
An analogy often clarifies the concept of orchestration. Consider a symphony orchestra: each musician is an “automation” capable of playing their instrument (a specific task). But without a conductor, the result would be chaos. The conductor (the orchestration) ensures each instrument plays its part at the right time, in the correct sequence, harmoniously, to create the intended symphony (the complete business process). This coordinated arrangement allows for sophisticated orchestrated solutions.
The relationship between Orchestration vs Automation is hierarchical and symbiotic, yet fundamentally distinct.
While you can have automation without orchestration, you cannot have meaningful orchestration without underlying automation. Automation provides the power; orchestration provides the direction.
When effectively combined, orchestration and automation yield profound benefits for large enterprises, far surpassing what either can achieve alone.
These advantages collectively drive unparalleled productivity and strategic control for organizations leveraging both orchestration and automation.
Despite their powerful combined benefits, traditional orchestration and automation approaches present inherent limitations, especially when confronted with the complexities of modern enterprise environments.
These limitations highlight a crucial gap in the evolution of orchestration and automation, particularly for enterprises seeking truly intelligent and adaptive process management.
The combined power of orchestration and automation finds transformative applications across nearly all enterprise functions. These orchestrated solutions are reshaping how work flows.
These diverse applications demonstrate how orchestration and automation are enabling more complex, end-to-end process transformations.
Kognitos is pioneering a new paradigm that fundamentally redefines the relationship between automation and orchestration. Unlike traditional orchestrated solutions or basic Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Kognitos doesn’t just string together individual automations. Instead, it embeds native AI skills and reasoning directly into the automation itself, uniquely reducing the need for extensive, high-level orchestration across disparate products. Kognitos is a secure AI automation platform that simplifies complexity, while offering natural language process automation. This means businesses no longer need to build elaborate, separate orchestration layers to connect a dozen different bots or systems, because Kognitos’s AI can inherently manage the workflow.
Here’s how Kognitos fundamentally changes Orchestration vs Automation:
Kognitos doesn’t replace orchestration entirely (for truly massive enterprise-wide systems, some higher-level coordination is always present), but it significantly reduces the burden and complexity of traditional orchestration. It delivers automation that is intelligent enough to self-manage many of the “orchestration” challenges that previously required separate, rigid tools. This allows organizations to achieve greater productivity, agility, and strategic control through a unified AI automation platform.
The distinction between Orchestration vs Automation will continue to evolve, driven by advancements in AI. The future sees a seamless blend, where automation is inherently intelligent, and orchestration becomes less about rigid sequencing and more about adaptive, AI-driven coordination across complex, dynamic environments.
Businesses that embrace platforms like Kognitos, which embed native AI intelligence directly into the automation process, will gain a distinct advantage. They will be able to implement sophisticated orchestrated solutions with greater speed, less complexity, and unparalleled adaptability. This will free human talent to focus on strategic innovation, while intelligent systems seamlessly manage the intricate dance of business processes, from individual tasks to enterprise-wide workflows.
Agility and the ability to scale operations quickly are critical priorities for any large organization. As the market rapidly evolves and grows more competitive, scalability and agility enable organizations to pivot swiftly in response to changes in the economy, customer demands, and available resources. CIOs must support not just the IT department, but the entire organization by building highly scalable systems that support business expansion while maintaining performance and efficiency.
According to a Gartner report, 74% of CEOs believe AI is the technology that will have the most impact and influence on their industries. As a result, CIOs are under constant pressure to demonstrate value and tangible business impact from their AI investments. As CIOs look to meet lofty expectations, agentic process automation (APA) is poised to finally deliver on the elusive promise of agile and scalable enterprise automation.
| Problem Area | Benefit of Agentic Process Automation |
| Limited Scalability of Legacy Automation Solutions | APA uses serverless infrastructure and AI agents to scale dynamically without additional infrastructure or talent investments |
| Too Many Point Solutions | APA integrates with existing tools, reducing the need for multiple point solutions by leveraging built-in AI skills |
| High Costs of Scaling Legacy Systems | Agentic automation bridges legacy systems with AI, offering a cost-effective pathway to phase out outdated infrastructure and scale without increased operational costs |
| The Talent and Skills Gap | APA has a lower barrier to entry, lowering skills requirements and making it easier to upskill or cross-skill team members |
Automation has been on the radar of enterprise organizations since the early 2000s in an attempt to streamline workflows and improve operational efficiency. As process automation evolved, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) solutions emerged. While RPA offered some benefits as compared to previous Business Process Management (BPM) solutions, it faced challenges in scalability and agility due to its limitations in handling complex processes, frequent breakdowns leading to high maintenance costs, and ever-increasing direct costs.
APA solutions employ a serverless infrastructure, capable of scaling to the organization’s needs without the same infrastructure and skilled talent investments that make RPA untenable at scale.
AI agents make intelligent decisions based on your organization’s standard operating procedures, allowing for more agile and responsive operations (e.g., 24/7 support). Unlike RPA, APA can adapt to changing conditions without the classic software development lifecycle headaches, ensuring that business processes remain optimized even as variables fluctuate.
APA solutions are also capable of executing multiple tasks simultaneously instead of one after the other (serial), which accelerates process execution times and significantly improves productivity.
One of the biggest challenges organizations face in scaling operations is the fact that they currently employ too many point solutions—specialized software tools designed to address a specific problem. Large enterprises used an average of 112 SaaS applications in 2023 and new data suggests that this number is only continuing to increase. Point solutions undermine organizational agility. They are difficult to integrate and are a leading contributor to technical debt—a challenge cited by 91% of CTOs.
Agentic process automation can integrate seamlessly with various existing tools and platforms, learning from enterprise data to provide highly contextualized, end-to-end process automation. Furthermore, since APA is AI-native, it comes with a plethora of built-in skills that eliminate the need for many point solutions entirely. This is why many leading technologists, including Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, say that the end of SaaS may have already begun.
APA solutions come with minimal friction in terms of adoption, applicability, and infrastructure, empowering CIOs to replace point solutions and drive scalability.
Legacy systems, particularly on-premise installations, continue to constrain organizational scalability and agility in the modern era. While RPA and similar technologies have provided temporary relief by integrating with modern, cloud-based tools, they do not address the core limitations of legacy systems, which often tether organizations to outdated infrastructure.
APA offers a comprehensive solution that bridges legacy systems with cutting-edge AI technology. This not only facilitates smoother integration, but also provides CIOs with a practical pathway to phase out legacy systems in favor of serverless, cloud-native solutions.
Unlike legacy systems that require significant maintenance and hardware investments, APA solutions are inherently scalable. They can dynamically handle increases in workload without corresponding increases in operational costs, making them ideal for organizations seeking scalability and cost-efficiency.
59% CIOs admitted that staffing and skills shortages detract from time spent on strategic initiatives. This struggle has become a major hindrance for organizations, as existing talent lacks the skills to automate with incumbent solutions and requires support from larger maintenance teams to automate additional processes.
Agentic solutions bridge skills gaps by augmenting human capabilities instead of replacing headcount. Automating routine, non-strategic tasks frees employees’ bandwidth to focus on work requiring critical thinking and decision-making. AI agents deployed by APA solutions are capable of providing users with contextual information, simplifying process automation. This helps organizations avoid investing heavily in specialized human resources.
Agentic process automation is a powerful tool helping CIOs overcome scalability and agility challenges. It provides infinite scalability, process optimization, end-to-end workflow automation, run parallelization, and autonomous decision making. CIOs leveraging AI automation can enhance operational efficiency and drive strategic growth, moving from a cost center to a revenue generator in their organizations.
If you are considering how agentic process automation can help your organization scale, please reach out to our team for a personalized demo of how Kognitos can support your specific use cases.
Achieving true agility and scale in the contemporary enterprise landscape demands more than fragmented automation efforts. Enter the Automation Fabric—a groundbreaking concept representing the convergence of all automation capabilities under a single, unified, and intelligently connected platform. It’s not merely a collection of tools; it’s a cohesive ecosystem designed to streamline operations and unlock unprecedented business value. This article will introduce and define this advanced concept, alongside its close counterpart, the AI Fabric blueprint, as fundamental to the future of digital transformation.
The Automation Fabric integrates diverse automation technologies—from Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and workflow automation to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and process intelligence—into a seamless, interconnected network. This holistic approach ensures that people, applications, and information interact fluidly, eliminating silos and fostering a truly agile operational environment.
Digital transformation is a continuous automation journey, not a single destination. It progresses through distinct stages, each building upon the last to achieve higher levels of operational maturity and customer centricity. Initially, businesses focused on digitizing paper records, then automating individual tasks. The advent of the Automation Fabric marks a significant leap, signifying a more integrated and intelligent phase.
This evolution sees organizations moving beyond isolated automation projects towards a holistic strategy for business process transformation. The fabric acts as the connective tissue, linking various automated processes, data streams, and intelligent agents across the enterprise. This unified approach accelerates the entire digital transformation trajectory, fostering seamless workflows, enhancing decision-making, and driving innovation at an unprecedented pace. It transitions businesses from fragmented efforts to a cohesive, institution-wide operational ecosystem.
While the terms Automation Fabric and AI Fabric blueprint are closely related, they represent distinct yet complementary aspects of modern enterprise intelligence. Understanding their connection is vital for designing a comprehensive digital transformation strategy.
In essence, the Automation Fabric provides the robust framework for comprehensive automation, while the AI Fabric blueprint infuses this framework with intelligence, enabling continuous learning, enhanced decision-making, and the creation of truly autonomous automation capabilities. Together, they form the backbone of advanced industry transformation.
Adopting an integrated Automation Fabric delivers profound benefits that directly impact an organization’s bottom line, operational agility, and competitive posture. These compelling advantages underscore what are the advantages of automation fabric for modern enterprises.
Key benefits include:
These benefits make the Automation Fabric a strategic imperative for large organizations.
For enterprises seeking to construct a truly intelligent and unified Automation Fabric, Kognitos enables the principles of an Automation Fabric through its patented natural language AI and enterprise-grade automation, making it a pivotal digital transformation tool.
Kognitos empowers users to define and orchestrate complex, end-to-end processes using plain English. This innovative approach bridges the gap between IT and business operations, serving as the intelligent connective tissue for your entire Automation Fabric. Our neurosymbolic AI architecture ensures precision and inherently eliminates AI hallucinations, providing robust AI governance and control over every automated step within the fabric. This positions Kognitos as a foundational component for a truly comprehensive AI fabric blueprint.
Kognitos simplifies the complexity of building and operating an intelligent Automation Fabric, enabling large organizations to accelerate their digital transformation with precision, control, and unparalleled agility.
The Automation Fabric is not merely a theoretical concept; it’s a practical blueprint for industry transformation, impacting various sectors by streamlining complex operations and fostering innovation. It allows for the deployment of autonomous agents that redefine how work gets done.
Consider these real-world scenarios enabled by an Automation Fabric:
These examples highlight how the Automation Fabric drives significant industry transformation by enabling interconnected and intelligent operations.
Building a robust Automation Fabric requires a strategic and phased approach. It’s more than just buying digital process automation software; it’s about reimagining how your organization operates. This serves as a blueprint for implementation.
Consider these strategic steps:
Following this blueprint ensures a successful business process transformation and the realization of a truly integrated Automation Fabric.
The Automation Fabric is not merely a technological trend; it represents the inevitable future of enterprise operations. As organizations strive for greater resilience, agility, and competitive differentiation, the ability to weave a unified, intelligent automation ecosystem will become the defining characteristic of market leaders. The vision of an AI fabric blueprint guiding holistic industry transformation is rapidly becoming a reality.
Kognitos empowers businesses to build secure, auditable, and adaptive autonomous automation through natural language AI, Kognitos enables organizations to minimize disruptions, maximize efficiency, and foster truly resilient operations. This marks a significant leap beyond fragmented automation journey efforts, delivering a new standard for intelligent digital transformation.
CIOs are under tremendous pressure to reduce costs, both within their own IT departments and by directly supporting other business lines. Capgemini Research reports that 56% of business leaders expect to prioritize cost reduction over revenue growth for this fiscal year.
Even though CIOs are feeling pressured to cut costs, 50% of organizations report that they will continue to increase strategic investments. Agentic process automation (APA) is one powerful investment that can achieve multiple goals for CIOs by driving massive ROI, cutting costs, improving operational efficiency, and increasing productivity. In fact, intelligent automation technologies—which APA falls under—are expected to reduce costs by 22%, while also increasing revenue by 11% in the three years after implementation.
While legacy automation solutions including business process management (BPM) and robotic process automation (RPA) delivered some tangible benefits to CIOs, their untenable maintenance costs and low agility in support of enterprise scale ultimately limited both adoption and impact. In opposition, APA can quickly unlock benefits for CIOs through a combination of natural language processing, generative AI, and built-in skills.
| Problem Area | Benefit of Agentic Process Automation |
| Mounting Manual Labor Costs | Directly reduces labor costs by automating routine manual tasks of varying complexity |
| Operational Inefficiencies | Improves efficiency, resulting in reduced work hours and lower labor costs |
| Increasing Cybersecurity Costs | Bridge talent and skills gaps and drive down cyber risk with AI automation |
| Mounting Technical Debt | Consolidate point solutions and drastically reduce maintenance costs of legacy systems |
APA significantly reduces costs associated with manual labor. Examples include data entry, customer service, invoice processing, inventory management, and other repetitive tasks. Take financial services, for example: loan application processing tasks such as document verification and credit score assessment can be quickly automated, so loan officers can focus their efforts on more complex cases and building stronger customer relationships. McKinsey estimates that tasks comprising up to 30% of working hours could be completely automated, translating to trillions of dollars in savings.
APA is far more adaptable and intelligent than previous technologies like Robotic Process Automation (RPA), which operate within rigid frameworks and require significant development work when processes change. Contrarily, APA is capable of learning and adjusting automations in real-time with minimal human intervention. This adaptability enables complex workflows at enterprise scale, without sacrificing performance or efficiency, making it an ideal solution for businesses looking to scale their operations without proportionally increasing their workforce.
Bain’s Automation Scorecard 2024 Report reports that the top quartile of organizations prioritizing automation investments were able to cut costs by an average of 37%. On the other hand, organizations investing 5% or less of their IT budgets in automation could only manage to cut costs by 8%.
APA has the potential to be even more impactful than legacy automation solutions like RPA that require substantial upfront investment, specialized developers, and significant maintenance. Kognitos uses pre-trained models that operate in plain English, enabling multiple business users to automate processes and reducing IT bottlenecks while preserving oversight.
Not only are tasks being automated, but implementation and maintenance headaches are significantly reduced, empowering employees to work as efficiently as possible and pushing agility in the organization.
Cybersecurity is a significant cost center for CIOs, and is expected to remain so in the face of increasing cyber threats and more sophisticated data breaches. In 2024, the average cost of a data breach climbed by 10% to $4.88M.
In addition to infrastructure, pervasive cyber skills gaps and talent shortages further drive up the costs associated with cybersecurity. Attracting and retaining cyber talent is expensive, and demand far outweighs supply, making cybersecurity a top cost center for CIOs.
APA solutions help bridge skills gaps by making more efficient use of cybersecurity personnel. Rather than spending time continuously monitoring networks for potential breaches or isolating malicious traffic, team members can deploy AI agents capable of autonomously addressing issues that arise. Organizations can cut costs and improve cybersecurity without adding headcount.
79% of tech leaders cite technical debt as a significant hurdle in achieving their business objectives. So much so that they dispatch anywhere from 25%-40% of their developers’ time to addressing tech debt.
CIOs have struggled to replace point solutions and retire legacy systems without business disruption. The emergence of APA provides an opportunity to consolidate point solutions and cut costs for both the system itself, as well as its maintenance costs.
APA has the potential to be even more impactful than legacy automation solutions like RPA that require significant upfront investment, specialized developers, and substantial maintenance. Agentic platforms can streamline workflows of similar or greater complexity, incorporating previous point solutions into a single end-to-end platform and further accelerating cost savings.
Agentic automation solutions provide CIOs with the opportunity to do what previously seemed impossible—reducing costs while optimizing resources to drive AI innovation in the organization. As leaders and business executives, CIOs must drive strategic change across key focus areas to deliver substantial cost savings.
AI automation will be crucial for CIOs to grow their strategic influence and drive their organizations forward. If you are a forward-leaning leader looking to prioritize strategic automation investments at your organization, reach out to the Kognitos team to see how we can help position you for greater success.
For large organizations, the accounts payable (AP) department often faces significant hurdles. Think about the time wasted on manual data entry from invoices, the slow and complicated approval processes using emails or paper, the constant follow-up on exceptions, and the delicate balance of paying suppliers promptly yet strategically. Plus, the ever-present risk of errors or even fraud can really put things down, consuming valuable team hours and resources. If your AP team is wrestling with these challenges, you’re likely exploring ways to make operations smoother and strengthen your financial controls. The good news is that technology provides a powerful answer: accounts payable automation. And the key to success lies in identifying the best accounts payable automation software that truly aligns with your specific organizational needs.
Choosing to automate accounts payable isn’t just a minor upgrade; it’s a smart, strategic move that can bring substantial improvements. It shifts the AP function from being a reactive cost center to a more proactive, controlled, and insightful part of your financial operations. Organizations that have automated their AP function report up to 81% lower processing costs and 73% faster processing cycle times, as per Forbes.
However, with so many options available, figuring out the right fit can feel overwhelming. This guide is designed for finance leaders and the IT teams supporting them. We’ll break down what makes an effective automated accounts payable system, the crucial features you should evaluate, and the important considerations for making an informed decision. We’ll also explore how modern solutions, especially those powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI), are setting new standards, and what to look for when you’re on the hunt for the best accounts payable automation software for your company.
An automated accounts payable system is a tech solution created to digitize and simplify the entire journey of an invoice. From the moment it’s received all the way through to when the payment is recorded, it aims to minimize the need for people to manually handle things. Its main goal is to automate accounts payable workflows, making them faster, more accurate, and easier to understand.
Here are some of the core things these systems typically include:
| Core Component | Description |
| Invoice Intake | Electronically capturing invoices, regardless of whether they arrive as PDFs, email attachments, through EDI systems, scanned documents, or supplier portals |
| Data Extraction | Utilizes OCR and AI to automatically extract crucial information from invoices. |
| Validation & Matching | Automatically verifies invoice accuracy and compares it to purchase orders and goods received records. |
| Approval Workflow | Electronically routes invoices for approval based on custom rules (e.g., dollar limits, department codes). |
| Payment Integration | Connects with existing payment systems or ERP software to facilitate approved payments. |
| Archiving & Reporting | Securely stores digital invoices, maintains audit trails, and provides performance reports. |
For companies still relying heavily on old-fashioned, manual processes, a common question pops up: Is investing in automated accounts payable really worth the cost and effort? The evidence strongly suggests it is. The use cases go way beyond just making things go faster:
These compelling benefits of AP automation software show that it’s a valuable strategic investment, not just a minor operational change. It truly pays to automate AP processes.
Identifying the best accounts payable automation software means looking beyond just basic computerization. The leading solutions today incorporate smart features, flexibility, and are designed with the user in mind. Here are the critical features and capabilities you should be evaluating:
Evaluating potential solutions against these criteria will help you find software that truly meets the needs of a modern finance department looking to automate accounts payable.
Beyond just the features, several practical factors will influence your decision to automate AP functions:
There isn’t one single “top” or universally best accounts payable automation software. The ideal solution is the one that best fits your organization’s specific needs, your current technology setup, your industry, and your overall business goals. Instead of looking for a one-size-fits-all winner, focus on thoroughly evaluating your options based on the key features and considerations we’ve discussed. Prioritize solutions that offer strong integration capabilities, powerful AI features, flexibility, robust security, and a user-friendly experience. Trying out a proof-of-concept (POC) or pilot program can be incredibly helpful in making your final decision.
As you explore your options for the best accounts payable automation software, remember that the right solution can significantly transform your finance operations. By carefully considering your unique needs and evaluating potential vendors against the criteria outlined, you can make an informed decision that sets your organization up for greater efficiency and control.
If your organization relies on traditional robotic process automation (RPA) tools like UiPath, you might be grappling with hidden costs, fragile workflows, and developer bottlenecks. It’s time to ask: is there a smarter way to automate?
At Kognitos, we’re redefining automation with our AI-native HAL (hyperautomation lifecycle) platform that turns simple instructions into self-maintaining AI agents. We’re automating the most complex processes in natural language with enterprise scalability. Forward-thinking CIOs are making the switch. Here’s why you should consider it, too.
There’s no doubt that UiPath revolutionized RPA, but its limitations have become impossible to ignore:
Sound familiar? You’re not alone.
Kognitos isn’t just another RPA tool—it’s a paradigm shift toward agentic process automation that’s actually in production. Here’s how we outpace UiPath:
Kognito’s HAL platform doesn’t require specialized developers to create a workflow. Business users input simple instructions using natural language and HAL auto-writes the automation. For example, writing an automation might be as simple as typing “Process invoices from Outlook, validate amounts, and update SAP.”
There’s no learning curve with HAL’s intuitive interface. CIOs and technology leaders can choose to empower HR, Finance, and Operations departments to build automations themselves.
Our AI agents are adaptive, automatically adjusting and addressing any UI changes, differing data formats, or updates to processes—without manual intervention. Automations can become fully autonomous while also maintaining a trusted system of record.
HAL’s auto-debug and auto-test features fix errors in real-time, reducing maintenance costs by up to 80%.
Kognitos can integrate directly via API with your systems, like SAP, Salesforce, and more, for faster and more reliable workflows.
Our serverless infrastructure provides scalability to your organization, while also maintaining security with staging environments, role-based access, and audit trails to ensure compliance.
Deploy automations in days, not the months you can expect with UiPath. One Kognitos Fortune 500 client automated their invoice processing workflows in three days, versus six weeks on UiPath.
Provide a faster path to ROI with 50% lower total cost of ownership (TCO) as compared to incumbent RPA solutions like UiPath. Overnight, Kognitos can help slash licensing, developer, and maintenance.
Legacy RPA tools like UiPath aren’t AI-native, and are trying to adapt to the AI era. As competitors adopt agentic AI and hyperautomation, clinging to outdated platforms risks loss of efficiency, missed opportunities, and stagnation of innovation.
Let’s play out a scenario. You’re a CIO tied to UiPath. Manual bot upkeep drains IT and developer resources. Not only do they lose efficiency on maintaining brittle RPA workflows, they become a bottleneck for the organization. You miss opportunities at every turn to automate complex, dynamic processes, because you don’t want to overwhelm already strained developers. IT teams are stuck fixing bots, not driving strategy. IT is seen as simply a cost center, instead of a team bringing innovation to the organization.
Worried about disruption? Don’t be.
Kognitos offers a free pilot program, so CIOs can test-drive the platform with their most painful UiPath workflow. As your company migrates from UiPath, our team supports in converting existing automations to achieve zero downtime. Lastly, our dedicated onboarding team will provide you with enterprise training and on-demand resources to set your team up for success.
The future of automation isn’t about more code—it’s about more clarity.
Kognitos turns business users into automation heroes, slashes costs, and keeps workflows agile in the face of change. Are you ready to leave UiPath’s limitations behind? Request a 15-minute demo or sign up for free community trial access to HAL to see how Kognitos can transform your automation strategy in weeks, not months.
Automate smarter. Automate simpler. Automate with Kognitos.
Operational excellence is a strategic approach focused on continuously optimizing business processes, workforce capabilities, and enabling technologies to maximize organizational efficiency. While it requires cross-functional collaboration among executives, Chief Information Officers (CIOs) play a pivotal role. Modern operational excellence hinges on the office of the CIO deploying and managing enterprise-wide technologies that touch every business unit—from cloud infrastructure to AI.
A 2024 Gartner CIO Survey found that nearly half of technology leaders are struggling to demonstrate the value of AI investments. Third generation AI-powered automation platforms can be transformative in delivering return on investment by growing efficiency, accuracy, and innovation by orders of magnitude over previous generations of automation tooling.
CIOs focused on an operational excellence strategy have a tremendous opportunity to position IT as both an efficiency engine and a growth catalyst for the organization.
Unlike legacy automation solutions like RPA, IPaaS, IDP, and others, AI automation platforms offer the sophistication needed to tackle a wider variety of use cases while drastically lowering barriers to implementation. The newest generation of agentic process automation solutions can analyze inputs, make decisions, and execute autonomously based on documented business processes, freeing valuable personnel from mundane, repetitive tasks. Here are some reasons why your organization should consider using automation to achieve operational excellence strategies.
AI automation systems maintain consistent output and productivity without fatigue. This enables organizations to roll out increased operational programming like shifting to a 24/7 and 365 operation. Likewise, the inherent scalability ensures that operations run smoothly and efficiently, even during short-burst, high-demand periods and cyclical seasonality, significantly reducing volatile shifts in productivity associated with manual labor processes.
Automating business processes has a direct relationship with employees’ satisfaction. In fact, a survey conducted by Salesforce reported that 90% of automation users felt that automation improved their productivity, and 85% said automation tools boosted collaboration between different teams. As automations become smarter with AI, they’re more reliable than ever, saving employees’ time in performing mundane, repetitive tasks. Instead, employees can significantly boost productivity in more strategic tasks requiring collaboration to drive toward key business objectives.
Efficiency gains offered by AI automation platforms translate to a direct reduction in costs. This has certainly been a key driving force in both AI and automation adoption. Organizations can take a leaner approach to business operations, leveraging every resource effectively for maximum impact.
Data entry is a prime example of an unnecessary, resource-heavy activity that can be easily automated to save substantially on labor costs. In supply chain management, for example, AI automation can allow for closer monitoring of supplier performance and inventory levels, thus optimizing sourcing within the supply chain.
In finance, AI can automate reconciliation and compliance tasks, ensuring accuracy and reducing burden on team members. And with self-maintaining AI automation systems, enterprises can reduce their dependency on skilled-labor workforces that are challenging to source due to high demand and skill gaps in the job market.
The fundamental flexibility of AI-powered automation platforms means that organizations can adjust their operational capabilities in the blink of an eye, catering to new business requirements as they arise. These are scalable, bot-free, and no-maintenance SaaS platforms that can run business processes, easily integrating with critical ERP, CRM, and other systems directly through APIs.
The inclusive software category convergence occurring through AI automation allows for horizontal scaling. Put a different way, because AI automation easily integrates multiple technologies and replaces others while automating tasks, organizations reduce their dependency on point solutions that drive up technical debt and silo department technologies. This option to pursue truly dynamic, cross-functional technology is pivotal in industries like retail, information technology, and financial services, where programming like Know Your Customer (KYC) are top-of-mind.
AI automation is revolutionizing governance and compliance by standardizing processes without error. Unlike humans, who naturally introduce variables, advanced AI systems consistently execute processes with remarkable precision. The most advanced platforms even provide full transparency into the AI’s autonomous decisions—read: no black boxes—and make regulatory oversight easier by creating comprehensive audit trails.
Consider how an AI system might handle something as intricate as the American Tax Code. It can track historical processes, automatically adjust to annual regulatory updates, and ensure that each and every transaction is well-documented. This is about more than just reducing human error. It’s about creating a dynamic, responsive compliance ecosystem capable of evolving in real-time. The result is a powerful approach to governance that combines the rigor of Lean Six Sigma principles with the adaptability of cutting-edge AI, giving organizations unprecedented control and insight into their operational compliance.
CIOs prioritizing operational excellence will directly benefit from investments in AI automation. They will see their businesses stay competitive against emerging challenges and also position themselves to seize the advantage over competitors less equipped to respond rapidly.
The use of AI-powered automation will be vital for maintaining efficiency and achieving strategic goals. CIOs must harness these technologies to ensure their organizations not only meet but exceed their operational objectives, setting the stage for a future characterized by innovation, efficiency, and sustained success.
If you’re a forward-thinking CIO looking to achieve operational excellence goals, reach out to a member of our team to see how Kognitos can position you for success.
