Definition
Workflow automation has a long history in rules engines, robotic process automation (RPA) and integration platforms. AI widens what can be automated: reading unstructured documents and emails, making judgement calls, drafting responses and handling exceptions that rules could not.
There is a difference between automating a step and redesigning a workflow. Automating a step makes an existing process cheaper. Redesigning the workflow around AI, deciding what agents do, what people do and how work flows between them, is where larger changes in speed and capacity come from.