Intelligent Automation and AI are long past their days of being cutting-edge tools that forward-thinking organizations are experimenting with. At this point, they’re organizational imperatives, especially for industries facing pervasive labor issues.
That was the prevailing theme at Naviant’s 2025 Innovation Day event in Madison, Wisconsin, an event designed by Naviant experts to provide attendees with a “one-stop shop” for the latest must-know developments in the industry.
If you aren’t a Madison, WI local or otherwise couldn’t attend, no worries. This blog will catch you up on the top 4 takeaways you need to know about the state of intelligent automation and AI in fall 2025.
The State of Intelligent Automation & AI in Fall 2025 – 4 Takeaways to Know
1. The Labor Crisis Demands Automation and AI
The most immediate catalyst driving intelligent automation and AI adoption is necessity, and for many industries, this has been spurred by severe labor shortages and workforce burnout. And as you can see below, statistics shared at the event underscore the urgency of this challenge:
- Public Sector Struggles: What do you do when you have jobs that serve a vital purpose, but which virtually nobody wants due to their repetitive, tedious nature? The public sector is feeling this strain, with over 50% of state and local governments reporting difficulty filling certain open positions and keeping them filled, impacting critical functions that serve the public.
- Manufacturing Gap: The manufacturing sector in America alone is projected to face 2 million unfilled jobs by 2030 due to a significant skills gap and extreme difficulty finding potential candidates.
- Healthcare Burnout: Almost 50% of healthcare workers are burned out, and this is largely due to the high volumes of administrative tasks and paperwork they must complete, which sometimes keep them away from the more fulfilling parts of their jobs: face-to-face patient interactions.
These challenges are being alleviated by intelligent automation and AI, from automating the tedious parts of jobs that once made them undesirable to using AI and automation to reduce the volume of administrative tasks that healthcare professionals are burdened with.
Consequently, 92% of companies plan to increase their spending on automation over the next three years, reflecting the rapid pace at which the market is evolving.
2. The Shift to End-to-End Process Orchestration
The evolution of intelligent automation tools means moving past simple, task-based automation toward complete end-to-end process orchestration.
You’ve probably heard of UiPath, a company that originally rose to industry leader status through its Robotic Process Automation (RPA) technology, which mimics humans on a desktop to complete rule-based tasks. Today, UiPath, who Naviant now partners with, provides a platform containing a wide variety of capabilities, including RPA, AI, and IDP.
This evolution in technology is allowing organizations to think about processes that span multiple steps and applications, rather than just the simpler, rule-based tasks RPA was limited to.
For example, a process might involve intake, data lookup, research, and analysis across numerous applications and systems. The UiPath platform provides the means to interact with these systems using a combination of back-end APIs (for data connections) and UI interaction (acting like a human user). By orchestrating these technologies together, organizations can automate highly manual, cyclical workflows and integrate different applications into one seamless process. Now that’s end-to-end process orchestration.
3. AI Used to QA and Upskill the Human Workforce
While it’s true that some jobs that largely consist of tedious, rule-based tasks will be taken by AI, most will be augmented with AI, not completely overtaken. We examined a case study of this development where a large Florida county court was struggling with high turnover among court clerks. The trouble was, it took a year or more of tenure before these clerks could fully master the complex docketing process.
To solve this problem, the county decided to use AI not as a replacement, but as a quality control and training tool. Under this plan, the human clerks continued doing the work, but the new AI system now acts as a Quality Assurance (QA) layer. If the AI flags an entry as incorrect, the human-in-the-loop system accelerates the clerk’s knowledge by teaching them what they did wrong from a docketing perspective. This strategy addresses the staffing issue by ensuring greater accuracy and accelerating employee knowledge, while mitigating the negative connotations associated with AI implementation by showing the tool’s efficacy as a teacher and assistant rather than replacing an employee entirely.
4. Still Grappling with Paper? Intelligent Automation Can Help.
If you’re still juggling paper in any part of your organization, it’s worth your time to hear the story of Kent County, Michigan.
As Michigan’s fourth most populous county, Kent County’s county court system was plagued by massive amounts of paperwork associated with criminal, civil, probation, and juvenile cases. The documents were constantly being shuffled between clerks, judges, and magistrates, leading to a “Where’s Waldo” scenario, but for case information.
To solve the problem, the county spearheaded an initiative called “Operation Paperless,” aiming to make every piece of case information electronic and automate processes using workflows. Naviant partnered with the county to implement Hyland’s OnBase WorkView, a case management solution that replaces spreadsheets and Access databases by collating complex information into one efficient place.
The operational gains were immediate: the initial rollout processed 784 filings and achieved a 59% throughput, successfully beating the 50% industry benchmark. This success created a repeatable framework that the county plans to roll out across five times the number of groups over the next 12 months.
Bonus Tip: Change Management
While not directly tied to this use case, I can’t skip this clever change management takeaway Kent County shared: Sometimes, you need to be flexible when leading change.
In other words, during the changes that occurred during this transition, Kent County was planning to switch from DocuSign to a different signature integration for judges’ signatures.
But when the judges pushed back on this idea, explaining their comfort level with DocuSign and demonstrating how efficient it had been for them, the team took a step back and decided that this part of their plan wasn’t a necessity.
This moment of flexibility reminded them that change isn’t always the best option available to you, and that any change decision must consider the user experience and consult the people who will be directly affected by your decision. You can learn more about this concept of avoiding “change for change’s sake” in this blog.
Act Now
The ability to transform your organization and move your team’s work life toward higher-value tasks is now within reach. With this knowledge, you are now empowered to take action, improve your internal workplace, and most importantly, “better serve” your end customers and constituents.
