Insights from our Intelligent Automation roundtable v.1
By: Maxim Matias
Tags: Intelligent Automation, Rpa News, Rpa Tools, Automation, Tech

In April, DataSeries, an OpenOcean led initiative hosted a Virtual Roundtable together with UiPath about the “Rise of Intelligent Automation”. The session was moderated by Guy Kirkwood, Chief Evangelist UiPath.

INSIGHTS GATHERED:

COVID-19 UPDATE ON THE INTELLIGENT ENTERPRISE AUTOMATION SPACE:

Companies that have been looking to implement automation tools prior to COVID-19 are still doing it partially due to the return of investment being quite quick in the space. For a category leader such as UiPath, 2020/Q1 has seen no change. Q2 is expected to be relatively flat due to the high level of uncertainty. Q3 & Q4 have an optimistic outlook (e.g. — BluePrism just raised $124m enhancing the RPA market’s continued strength in the face of an economic downturn).

Clients that have already implemented RPA/Automation solutions and are scaling this throughout their enterprise are doubling down on extending these implementations. Perhaps this is triggered by the fragility and fear that has been caused by the new shift of forced remote working? On the other hand, organizations that haven’t implemented RPA are the ones that have put new explorations on hold.

Anthony Hsiao from Matterway sees a slow-down/freeze in the RPA market as part of their client base is from the automotive industry. You could best describe the current situation as “hesitant-optimism”. Matterway’s second-quarter client-acquisition pipeline doesn’t get canceled, it rather gets postponed once the high level of uncertainty has fainted. Similar to UiPath’s outlook, Q3 and Q4 are also quite optimistic — clients from the automotive and airline industry are continuing their conversations with Matterway (even those that are not costumers yet — this shows optimism about a budget lift-oft especially for “delicious” implementations).

On the other hand, Kulpreet Singh, Managing Director of Test Automation at UiPath stated that COVID19’s impact will heavily affect the spending for “nice-to-have” solutions since most organizations are asking themselves how to survive this crisis, maintain their current client base and strategize on how to make up for the current down-phase?

3 CLASSIC RPA/AUTOMATION USE CASES WE SEE

COVID19 is accelerating the decision-making process of organizations that have already deployed RPA solutions, but still have a high human workforce. RPA/Automation is only implemented in less complex functions and is lacking expertise in understanding how to apply this across multiple functions.

Large service providers that already have got RPA/automation knowledge want to take their knowledge to the market via platforms (e.g. IBM offering an automation platform for designing, building & running intelligent automation services, applications & digital workers on any cloud, using low-code tools wherever possible).

An interesting use case is a large scale organizational transformation using AI with orchestration and changing the operating model.

AUTOMATION USE CASES

Organizations are making a fundamental change in the “way we are working”. This is not just about how we work, but more importantly on how we are executing our tasks. We often hear complaints from practitioners that only a very small amount of the work can be automized (~10%). Organizations that are quite advanced with RPA are expressing similar concerns. There needs to be a paradigm shift in culture so that we understand how tech can make certain processes more effective and subsequently take the workload off our shoulders. To the worker, the technological core (preferably driven by RPA/Automation) should be a de facto that is unnoticeable and by principal make you more efficient. The technological solution should be the one dictating what can potentially be automated and what can’t. To the practitioner, it should make a difference to what is under the hood, but the user shouldn’t even notice that something is automated.

There are certain implementations that you need in order to understand something before being able to fix a problem. If you combine all technologies that an organization is using, then you would very quickly see that these technologies are not coming together. Instead, they are all close to each other, partially collaborating, but are not fully intertwined. This is where RPA/Orchestration comes in and is trying to answer the question of how all of these complex pieces can be put together. It is also important to re-architect decades-old systems and modernize them. The “geeks” and “gamers” were the pioneers who said that “if it’s too complicated, then we will make it easier”. We are just now starting to arrive at the stage where the “big checks” are starting to deeply think and strategize on how certain RPA/automation solutions could benefit their organizations. It is expected that by 2024, organizations will lower operational costs by 30% by combining hyper-automation technologies with redesigned operational processes (Source: Gartner).

To date, RPA/Automation solutions are mainly present in the back office and are just slowly moving to the mid/front wing. In reality, there aren’t a lot of people out there that are trying to push the boundaries further than task automation, yet. In theory, this where everyone is trying to get to, so it’s logical that we see companies such as Celonis, UiPath, etc emerge, but this is a space that requires continuous improvement. We are still far away before we can harvest the low hanging fruits from this space.

When automating intelligently, you got options, either change the whole structure and modernize the old systems, or you do small tactical implementations that are designed smartly and allow you to do this en masse. Restructuring these processes, thinking more holistically, applying the systemic change, etc, is what automating intelligently truly means.

We should also note that we are taking baby steps. This space might have been around for the past 20 years, but it only got its commercial lens on just about 3 years ago. Would you take advice from someone who has got ~3 years hands-on business experience when asking how to modernize/restructure decades-old business functions? I’m guessing the answer is “no”.

It is out of the question that there will be a lot of need for orchestration, stronger analytical power, more complex processes that will be automated, but we also need to look behind RPA and understand what to expect. If we are just at the beginning of the Intelligent Automation market, then in the coming years — we will come up with many functions that we previously believed were not capable of being automated. And just like we’ve seen in various verticals, there will be companies that will have a large share of the market with the reputation for being an orchestration company that can offer you solutions not just horizontally, but also vertically.

A glimpse into how we see the future: