Teaching – and Talking to – Robots: The Benefits of Cognitive-Enabled RPA

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) tools are being widely adopted across a wide range of enterprises and industries. By executing narrowly defined, repeatable tasks, RPA bots can drive dramatic productivity increases and significant cost reductions. For as little as $10,000 to $15,000 a year to deploy and maintain, a single bot can perform the routine, administrative tasks of five to ten people.

RPA is being applied to a wide range of generic business processes related to Finance and Accounting, such as order management and invoice processing, as well as HR functions such as payroll and pension management. In additon, RPA bots are being deployed for industry-specific tasks such as credit card and loan processing in financial servcies, claims processing in insurance and third-party administration in healthcare.

Somewhat counter-intuitively, RPA is not just for “simple” tasks; indeed, the technology is ideally suited to convoluted workflow processes that are both labor-intensive as well as highly prone to human error. For example, in a large, complex environment, account reconciliation can be a painful undertaking that involves rigorous compliance standards and multiple steps to match and verify numbers and records. When people are in charge, they invariably get sloppy or take shortcuts. Robots, meanwhile, aren’t smart enough to cut corners; instead, they follow the directions they’re given to the letter, ensuring accuracy and compliance.

Cognitive Capabilities

Benefits notwithstanding, traditional RPA systems have several major drawbacks. For one thing, the bots can’t handle anomalies or learn from experience. If the steps they’ve been instructed to follow don’t align with the reality of the function they’re working on, they can’t devise a solution. Rather, they report the anomaly as an exception that requires human intervention. This results in a productivity gap for shared services operations managing large volumes of unstructured data, because standard bots can’t navigate the nuances involved in, for example, email requests.

Today, self-learning applications are enabling bots to quickly identify a mistake and apply a fix, without requiring a rewrite of the bot’s instructions. When an exception arises, the cognitive tool flags the exception. And when that exception is fixed by a human administrator, the bot captures the fix and applies it going forward. As a result, the tasks of updating and optimizing RPA tools are significantly streamlined. Over time the expertise of these “cognitive bots” can match that of an operation’s top agents.

Natural language processing tools, meanwhile, analyze the context of words and phrases, enabling business users with minimal technical training to interact with RPA systems by using plain English commands. For example, a user from an accounting department can simply type, “I need to create a cost center for the marketing team,” and the robot understands what’s needed and executes the task. If the request is worded differently, such as, “Create a cost center for marketing,” the robot responds.

By simplifying and speeding the process of updating and reconfiguring RPA tools, integrating cognitive capabilities into basic RPA functionality reduces the need for constant intervention and oversight by technical experts. Given the scarcity of that technical talent in today’s market, smart tools can significantly reduce the productivity-sapping bottlenecks that characterize many RPA initiatives.

Optimizing BPO Capabilities

Cognitive-enabled RPA initiatives extend the benefits of automation and drive additional cost savings and increases in productivity. Equally important, by applying smart tools to continually optimize the automation of routine tasks, enterprises can focus their energies on strategic decision-making and on enhancing their shared services and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) capabilities.

One characteristic of this strategic mindset is the ability to effectively deploy Agile methodologies that leverage collaboration between technology teams and business users – collaboration that is essential to reaping the full benefits of RPA. In addition, enterprises can focus on process optimization and identifying new opportunities to drive intelligent automation. Finally, a mature BPO strategy includes an RPA Center of Excellence (CoE) to enable oversight of the overall automation strategy, prioritize initiatives, manage organizational change and serve as a focal point of innovation.

RPA has had a dramatic impact on the ability of organizations to reduce costs and increase productivity in managing basic business processes. As the integration of RPA and smart tools continues to evolve, smart enterprises will seize the opportunity and leverage these emerging capabilities to fundamentally redefine their approach to managing business processes.

Source: futureofsourcing.com-Teaching – and Talking to – Robots: The Benefits of Cognitive-Enabled RPA

RPA Is a Bigger Threat to White Collar Jobs Than Artificial Intelligence

Independent analyst firm, rpa2ai has released RPA50™, the first in a series of in-depth research reports on Robotic Process Automation (RPA). RPA50™ is the industry’s most comprehensive listing of RPA vendors to-date.

The RPA50™ infographic lists the top 50 global vendors within the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) marketplace. It also identifies eight different vendor categories and provides guidance on when to consider which category of vendors.

In addition to vendor summaries, the research analyzes the RPA ecosystem and marketplace development, examines the impact of RPA, highlights implementation challenges and the role of professional services.

Key research findings include:

• RPA has a greater potential to significantly automate and change the work of millions of white collar professionals than Artificial Intelligence (AI).
• The RPA marketplace is attracting a significant amount of venture capital investment, enterprise attention and employee anxiety.
• While it can be an effective way to improve efficiencies and processes, RPA is regularly mis-sold as Machine Learning (ML) or Artificial Intelligence enabled. In reality, most RPA products have little to no ML or AI capabilities.
• RPA products vary widely in their provenance, functionality, architecture, deployment options and geographic footprint. One size does not fit all.
• Business buyers are often avoiding and not involving IT in their decision making processes – resulting in failed implementations.

Analyst Quotes:

“The RPA market is witnessing hypergrowth and enterprise expectations are sky high, so some degree of short-term disappointment is natural,” notes rpa2ai Founder and Chief Analyst, Kashyap Kompella, “but as the technology matures, RPA can change the global services landscape and impact a number of white collar jobs.”

“Enterprise systems and applications rarely talk well with each other,” adds analyst, Apoorv Durga, “so, there is a serious need for software like RPA that can automate repetitive re-keying and other manual tasks. But don’t forget that technology is only one aspect of an enterprise automation strategy.”

“RPA is more of art, than science today,” says Alan Pelz-Sharpe, strategic advisor to rpa2ai, and adds, “aspects such as differing cultures, current state and the tech stacks can be major drivers for success of RPA initiatives.

Source: PRNewswire-RPA Is a Bigger Threat to White Collar Jobs Than Artificial Intelligence

Will Robotic Process Automation Bring Down The Curtain On Outsourcing?

If there is one area that Robotics Process Outsourcing affected widely is near and offshore jobs. Robotic process automation (RPA) is applied to a variety of business processes by automating rule-based monotonous tasks and bridging temporary gaps. Basically, the RPA engines are loaded with highly-specific process knowledge which enables rules-based automation. Today, robotics lifecycle is automating almost half the traditional back-office functions which are being augmented with automation and are offsetting the cost of locations, noted a Deloitte Financial Services paper. So far, the early stages of adoption have shown businesses great benefits. According to recent statistics, robotic automation market will reach $4.98 billion globally and is forecasted to grow at a rate of 60.5 percent.

Some of the key functions that robots follow are:

• Gather, validate and analyse structured and unstructured data
• Record and transport information and data
• Communicate effectively with users, clients and customers
• Learn, anticipate and forecast the behaviour outcomes effectively

So, how is RPA a threat to the BPO industry? A Sage Intaact blog indicates that RPA has the potential to make many outsourcing relationships obsolete. According to the top four accounting organisations, the costs savings of RPA over outsourcing are around 70 percent. Along with the cost-saving factor, RPA also gives organisations complete control over the automation process, can be scaled to suit demand, simplifies communication and delivers accuracy for rule-based tasks.

Do BPO companies and teams fear the onslaught of RPA? The fears are largely exaggerated and Tom Davenport of MIT Center for Digital Business and Deloitte Analytics says that automating types of tasks with a machine may not be earth-shattering, but the early adopters of RPA do seem to have generally achieved some impressive returns on investment. Citing an example, he emphasised in a blog post as to how one telecom company that automated 160 different processes, achieved an ROI that ranged between 650 percent and 800 percent.

• According to Davenport, the processes that were structured and codifiable enough to move to services outsourcers are the same ones that will be automated.
• Many outsourcers have realised this and now offer either their own proprietary RPA solutions or “white-labelled” versions from other vendors.
• Currently, business processes that show a high degree of knowledge and expertise, from radiology to legal document review, are already being partially automated.

Will Cognitive Automation Spell The Doom For Outsourcing?

Which brings us back to the question — will automation kill the era of outsourcing and what kind of impact it will have on the labour market? Davenport revealed that all automation systems require human involvement in the form of configuration, oversight and maintenance. Also, the role of outsourcers will change in the future where they will have to go beyond mere labour arbitrage. Outsourcing companies will have to provide a range of automation technologies and reskill process and technology experts. Here’s how Davenport puts it — the mere fact that human involvement is required at every stage of the process for cognitive automation indicates RPAs will not make the vast majority of human functions obsolete.

RPAs Won’t Affect Outsourcing

Even though BPOs will become less profitable in the future, the technological advancement of cognitive automation will converge, mature and will be augmented by humans. The question that most outsourcing companies are grappling with today is to what extent will this affect the business of offshoring. On the upside, RPAs will enable companies to achieve unparalleled levels of process accuracy and efficiency and at the same lower the cost as compared to the work that can be done by human employees.

In addition to this, RPAs can effectively provide activity logs and evidence of how decisions were made, ensuring they meet auditing requirements. Besides, the trend will not just affect a few sectors but will be a global employment and economic trends. In terms of India, where outsourcing is one of the biggest sources of employment in India, this will affect the labour outcome.

A research report from KPMG’s Cliff Justice highlighted the shift to RPA is a double-edged sword. It will not only digitise labour with advanced machine intelligence, big data, analytics, mobile technologies and cloud computing, but also hugely impact the knowledge worker labour market. However, a section of economists suggests that RPAs will impact the labour market positively by expanding the job market and created new roles.

Source: analyticsindiamag.com-Will Robotic Process Automation Bring Down The Curtain On Outsourcing?

Gearing Up for the Fifth Industrial Revolution – a Glass Half Full

Two years ago, the World Economic Forum (WEF) published its Future of Jobs report – exploring employment, skills and workforces in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This sparked debate – and growing concern – around a changing global employment landscape as the result of disruptive technologies, studded with widening skill gaps, new jobs and job displacement.

“The Fourth Industrial Revolution, combined with other socio-economic and demographic changes, will transform labour markets in the next five years, leading to a net loss of over 5 million jobs in 15 major developed and emerging economies.”

Recently, at a London-based robotics event, attendees were asked the same question that the WEF did: did your job exist when you were in primary school? The 67% ‘no’ response was hardly a surprise – the job landscape is evolving constantly, so it’s naïve to expect to be on a career path set during our early school years.

Headlines of this type are often strongly associated with ideas of robots replacing humans in every profession – although clearly there are always roles more suited to humans and their capacity for empathy. But rather than accepting this pessimism as truth, let’s embrace the new generation of jobs that automation will offer us.

We grumble at the fact that our current careers may not have been mapped out for us at infant school, instead of celebrating the fact that we somehow emerged prepared for the jobs we have today. To ease our fear, it might help to recognise that tomorrow’s workforce is more than capable of taking the same path if we guide them wisely: the fact that government is now backing education initiatives that will support children in their future professional lives is a leap in the right direction.

Last year, a group of liberated educators took steps to evolve the curriculum so that children are prepared for a future with automation – the creation of new qualifications and courses dedicated to human centric skills such as leadership and collaboration was evidence of this.

It’s refreshing to hear that 2018 is set to see government beginning to back educational initiatives with cyber skills training; hopefully the next step is more government funding surrounding training for the jobs students will need in the age of increasing automation.

In addition, we’ll need to address the current gap of skills needed for robotics and Artifical Intelligence (AI) by investing in software development, systems design, engineering, programming and data science amongst other areas, to ensure workforces of today – and tomorrow – are skilled to take charge in the robotics world. Taking into consideration the hole in numbers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects currently in university, we have a five-year lag in students moving into this area.

It’s time for government to get smarter when it comes to incentivising students in this direction – this doesn’t necessarily require radical thinking. How about reducing tuition fees for STEM subjects as a start, and creating conversion routes from other subjects?

Until then, we must focus on educating students in a way that will help them collaborate with AI in the years to come. The essence of roles that will be filled by children currently in primary school will be their humanity. Curriculum must continue evolving so that the members of the future’s workforce leave school with skills that focus on adaptability, collaboration and resilience. Instead of focusing only on the retention of facts, it’s time to teach how to question these facts.

If we can build on current momentum and continue to bridge the gaps to encourage new ‘age of automation’ careers, headlines in 2018 and beyond might look more optimistic, pointing towards a future where robots and humans work collaboratively to deliver improved services and bright new opportunities. It’s up to us to decide how full – or empty – the glass looks when it comes to the future of jobs.

Source: futureofsourcing.com Gearing Up for the Fifth Industrial Revolution – a Glass Half Full

Cashing in on the Future

A financial incentive is a key driver for new business initiatives and investments. Future of Work technologies have a lot of potential to reduce costs, but they also have many additional benefits, called non-cashable benefits. Despite their name, it is possible to drive additional revenues through these to maximize the gross profit.

RPA vs Outsourcing

Today, Robotic Processing Automation (RPA) is one of the most mature Future of Work technologies. It is great for managing rules-based, data-heavy and repetitive tasks and integrates with existing systems – even legacy applications, without the need for a drastic overhaul. A conservative industry estimate is that an RPA robot costs one-third of an offshore employee and one-ninth of an in-house employee. RPA can also process many routine tasks faster and more accurately than most humans, allowing for significant reductions in overhead/FTE costs.

We have found that the typical ROI for RPA is between 300-800% over 5 years, with an average payback point achieved in under 18 months. The savings are not always back-loaded – in some cases of drastic process optimization, we have seen returns within as little as four months.

While BPO has helped many businesses achieve savings in the past decades, there are several underlying flaws with the offshoring model. For instance, it moves work to cheaper locations across the globe, resulting in work that is disconnected from the in-house processes (as discussed in the previous blog). Aside from this potential inefficiency, there is a high rate of attrition (offshoring roles traditionally have high growth and low salary), as the offshore labor market has become saturated over the years. So, while it may have started off as a cheap solution for most businesses, it tends to not remain economical due to increasing operational tensions, competitive labor markets and high inflation rates.

Who is Losing Out?

When there are larger costs for your resourcing solutions, it is the customer and employees who ultimately take the biggest loss. While labor arbitrage through offshoring may generate net savings, customers tend to suffer from lower-quality or less responsive services. This is an inherent trade-off to moving work hundreds of miles away. Additionally, employees tend to encounter issues with miscommunication, which can lower the quality of employment satisfaction. This is where a comparison between existing outsourcing models and RPA comes into the spotlight. Labor arbitrage through RPA tends to generate even larger savings, but without the bulk of the downsides listed above. In fact, RPA is increasingly recognized for the non-cashable opportunities it provides to a business.

Cashing in on the Non-Cashable Benefits

We like to represent the benefits of RPA under Mary Lacity’s “Triple Win” model. Automating processes that consist of routine, manual tasks can benefit not only the company, but also the employees and customers. The following are some examples of the common benefits we’ve seen among our clients:

Company

• The economics of RPA means that you are guaranteed to get hours back to your business. Time spent doing repetitive tasks can now be shaved off or dedicated to more valuable work.
• Processes done by robots are always more accurate and faster than those done by humans. This provides a competitive advantage and improved output quantity and quality.

Employee

• RPA takes the robot out of the human, so employees can look forward to more enjoyable and purposeful work
• Employees learn new skills such as administrating robot workforces or working alongside assisted automation

Customer

• Optimized workflows translate to faster turnaround times and improved service quality for customers. We often see improved customer satisfaction levels from RPA
• Customers also enjoy service consistency and round-the-clock availability

Summary

High cash benefits are possible not only through the large ROI of Future of Work technologies like RPA, but also indirectly through non-cashable benefits. The benefits far outweigh those seen in traditional outsourcing models and provide promising solutions for both the business and the customer. These non-cashable benefits may be more difficult to quantify, but can ultimately make a significant business impact.

Source: blog.symphonyhq.com -Cashing in on the Future

IT service automation: A global CIO learns from a millennial

This is the first installment in a series on IT service automation by Pink Elephant expert Jan-Willem Middelburg. The series follows the journey of a fictional global CIO as he realizes that his well-regarded IT organization must radically change the way it delivers IT services. The first chapter below, “Dear CIO, are you ready for the self-service generation?” describes the encounter that sets the CIO on his quest.

It is 9 p.m. and you are staring out the boardroom window across the millions of lights of the city. You are looking back on a day packed with meetings… again. In the morning, you met with the IT steering committee, the risk auditors and the CFO. Your afternoon was filled with your deputy CIOs, each fighting to receive a portion of next year’s budget. It is that time of year again.

As you pack your briefcase and start toward the elevators, you notice the intern still working away. A typical millennial with the latest headphones and a million devices scattered across his desk. The guy was “lucky” to have been chosen out of hundreds of applicants for the summer internship at the CIO Office and, so far, he has been a tremendous asset to your team. The speed and agility with which he can complete complex analyses has frequently surprised you, and you have already decided that you will probably hire him after the summer. You look at your watch and decide it is time to send him home.

You walk over to his office and slowly tap against his screen. The intern lowers his headphones and immediately sits up straight, realizing the global CIO is addressing him. “Tomorrow’s a new day, time to go home,” you hear yourself mutter and the intern immediately looks at his watch, which lights up as he turns his wrist. The intern presses some last buttons on his machine and accompanies you to the elevators.

As you ride the elevator, the silence is uncomfortable, and you start some small talk: “Having a late dinner with your girlfriend tonight?” The intern quickly looks at his phone and replies with a smile: “Dinner should be at my friend’s house in 28 minutes,” he answers. “My girlfriend is staying at her parents this week to finish the paper for her online degree, so we decided it’s better to Airbnb our place for the week.” When the elevator door slides open, you keep wondering what the guy next to you just said.

Right there, at the parking lot in the pouring rain, you realize that you need to make your enterprise ready for the self-service generation. Not just for the young intern who grew up with technology, but for your customers who will also expect the services of your company to be available immediately and with the push of one button.

When you reach the main entrance, you see that it is raining cats and dogs. Your car is parked in one of the executive parking spaces only a few yards away, but you see that even the small distance will get your suit soaked. At the same moment, a small car pulls up at the entrance and the intern opens the door to the back seat. You suddenly realize that the guy already booked an Uber while he was closing his computer upstairs. There’s no thunder as you run for your car, but you feel like you’ve been struck by lightning.

As the intern steps into the Uber, you ask one more question: “Do you still ever call anyone?”

The intern replies: “Just my parents; they are very traditional. Have a great night, boss!”

Right there, at the parking lot in the pouring rain, you realize that you need to make your enterprise ready for the self-service generation. Not just for the young intern who grew up with technology, but for your customers who will also expect the services of your company to be available immediately and with the push of one button.

From service management to IT service automation

The next morning you wake up energized. You order an Uber to take you to work, and whilst you are in the backseat of the car, you reflect on the situation with the intern from last night. Everywhere in the world, new service providers are popping out of the ground with “disruptive” business models. Spotify, Uber, Booking.com and Netflix are some of the main examples that everybody is talking about. They are able to attract massive groups of users and — like the intern — many people like to use these services, because they are instantly available with the click of one app or similar interface.

As you think about this a little more, you wonder what would happen if you could make the services in your organization available in a similar way with IT service automation. What if your employees could select their IT services by themselves and order them as easily as booking a rideshare service? Is provisioning a test server really so much different from booking a driver?

For years, you have worked really hard to achieve operational excellence of all global IT services. Your service catalogue is well-defined and you have consistently managed to reach the targets of your service level agreements (you became CIO for a reason…). You have a very effective and efficient Service Desk that delivers services all over the globe with high satisfaction levels. So, what is the difference between your organization’s services and the services your intern likes to use?

In a traditional service model, the user interacts with the service provider at every step, from request and proposal through paying the invoice and sending feedback. In the automated service provider model, the self-service portal — a technology layer — automates many or all of the steps.

As your Uber drives into the parking lot of your office, and your driver swipes that he has completed his ride, you suddenly realize the difference: The services your organization offers are control-oriented and frequently include manual steps. The services Spotify, Uber, Booking.com and Netflix are offering are user-oriented and completely automated.

Source: searchcio.techtarget.com-IT service automation: A global CIO learns from a millennial

The Robots are Coming – Should You Fear or Welcome Them

How does your enterprise compare with peers?

A few weeks back, we opened our Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Pinnacle Model study to enterprises to compare their RPA adoption performances head-to-head. Everest Group Pinnacle Model^TM assessments are unique in that they correlate quantified outcomes and capabilities with a special spotlight on the Pinnacle Enterprises that are outperforming their peers. As part of the study process, we also interview select participants to gather qualitative information about these same enterprises.

Having completed a number of these interviews and looking at some of the early tabulations from those have completed the RPA adoption survey, I’m sharing some of my early thoughts below.

Four thoughts on our RPA Pinnacle Enterprise survey results

• The robots are truly coming, but the fears about the impact on jobs is way overblown – it is clear from our conversations that RPA is going to have an impact in many different parts of the organization, including both front office and back office, but the number of jobs being impacted is not going to be the primary value proposition. Yes, cost take out will be part of the equation, but it is highly likely it will impact slices of jobs and/or departments that will allow for those employees to be transitioned to higher-value tasks.
• Improving the job for employees – One of the clear messages that we have heard so far is that employees are embracing RPA. In fact, the branding of these initiatives is about getting rid of the worst tasks of their current jobs and includes names like “Smart Automation” and “We Innovate.” In fact, many of these employees are already implementing their own home automations like Nest, Alexa, Google, Rachio, etc. and are becoming quite comfortable with these quality of life improvements automations. One of the enterprises we spoke with actually talked about seeing improvements in their employee retention rates when they were included in these initiatives and allowed to improve their own jobs. However, change management has not been “easy,” and companies have adopted various ways to create awareness about the benefits of RPA and how employees can use it to be more effective in their jobs. Some of the examples of approaches include workshops, training programs, newsletters, project of the year, and hackathons.
• The real skirmish is between the business units and IT for ownership – one of the interesting aspects of this analysis is to see where the study participants reside in their organizations. In the conversations, it becomes apparent the business is the one driving the conversation and IT has been the reluctant partner. But I got the sense this was changing pretty quickly, and IT was beginning to see the light that they have to be part of these implementations for a variety of reasons. Also, organizations have internally gone through a debate as to whether to approach this is an IT project or a business process redesign. We will be interested in hearing how your organization is thinking about this. Participate in the study.
• We are just getting started – we can see it in the data and with our conversations, enterprises are running multiple RPA initiatives and projects are spread across RPA implementation stages. At least 65% of respondents are in the process of scaling up their RPA efforts or running steady-state automations. However, the majority of enterprises are still in their rookie year when it comes to setting up RPA CoEs (or expanding existing automation CoEs). The implications is that the initial proof of concepts projects are seeing enough promise that formal teams are being stood up to begin the scaling process.

Source:  everestgrp.com-The Robots are Coming – Should You Fear or Welcome Them

Robotic Process Automation changing the spectrum of business processing, to witness a CAGR of 33.3%

The global robotic process automation market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 33.3%during this year up to 2023 to reach 2,821.0 USD by 2023. Factors propelling the growth of robotic process automation market include increasing adoption of RPA technology for enterprise scale deployments, implementation at broader scale enabling easy implementation and high return on investment. The report segments the robotic process automation market by solution (interaction solution, automated solution (business process, industry specific, infrastructure automation, others), decision support and management solution) by Process (rule based and knowledge based), by Type (software tools and services), by Application Services (BFSI, healthcare and life sciences, IT & telecom, transaction intelligence, consumer services, others), and by region (North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Rest of the world (ROW)). The report studies the global robotic process automation market over the forecast period (2017-2023).

Robotic process automation technology involves application of smart software to perform high-volume, repeatable tasks such as data processing, entry and integration by reducing humans intervention offering quality, reduced time thus, increasing profit margin. Unlike traditional application processing software, robotic automation offers a platform easing the business processes.

Browse full research report with TOC on “Global Robotic Process Automation Market Outlook, Trend and Opportunity Analysis, Competitive Insights, Actionable Segmentation & Forecast 2023”

Key findings from global robotic process automation market

• The automated solution is accounted to hold for largest share of robotic process automation market in 2016. Further, the infrastructure automation is expected to register high growth rate on account of increasing implementation of RPA technology in shared service organizations such as BPOs
• Banking financial services and insurance (BFSI) application services is expected to grow at highest rate. The BFSI sector is in continuous effort to reduce the operation cost and increasing profit margins increasing the adoption rate of RPA technology
• Geographically, North America is the largest market adopting RPA technology in the small and large scale businesses. The growth in the region is primarily due to presence of large players and continuous development of the RPA technology over the past few years
• The adoption of RPA technology in Asia-Pacific region is set to register high CAGR over the forecast period. The increasing adoption and spending in healthcare, automotive and retail services drives the demand for the implementation of RPA in the region
• Key players in robotic process automation Market are Peg systems Inc., Blue Prism PLC, Verint System Inc., Xerox Corporation, IBM, Arago Us, Inc., Accenture, Thoughtonomy Ltd., Ipsoft, Inc., Soft motive Ltd. among others.

Robotic Process automation – Alternate to outsourcing

RPA being an emerging technology is being adopted across various business processes across the globe. Robotics process automation (RPA) is a further step to the evolution of business process outsourcing. The technology enables to reduce the cost of operations by reducing requirement of employees to perform high volume rule based task. RPA technology offers companies an alternative to outsourcing and has high impact on reduced cost, making organizations to adopt the technology at high rate and broader scale across the globe.

Robotic Process automation Market – Regional Insight

North America region held the major market share in robotics process automation market. The growth in the region is attributed to adoption of RPA technology at broader scale. Further, the presence of major players in the region propels the growth for the robotics process automation implementation. The implementation of RPA software by small and medium enterprises at higher rate led to an increasing market share in the region. The implementation of RPA software and tools in BFSI sector is increasing rapidly in U.S. increasing the market size in the region. The greater adoption by financial, healthcare, human resource and banking sector drives the growth of RPA market in Asia-Pacific region. Further, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) software continues to grow significantly in the Asia-Pacific region, driven by trend opted by enterprises to create more of digital workforce in order to reduce the cost.

About Energias Market Research

Energias Market Research launched with the objective to provide in-depth market analysis, business research solutions, and consultation that is tailored to our client’s specific needs based on our impeccable research methodology.

With a wide range of expertise from various industrial sectors and more than 50 industries that include energy, chemical and materials, information communication technology, semiconductor industries, healthcare and daily consumer goods, etc. We strive to provide our clients with a one-stop solution for all research and consulting needs.

Our comprehensive industry-specific knowledge enables us in creating high quality global research outputs. This wide-range capability differentiates us from our competitors.

Source: globenewswire.com – Robotic Process Automation changing the spectrum of business processing, to witness a CAGR of 33.3%

Automation & AI – the human workforce’s new best friend?

Could AI and automation become the employee’s new best friend at work? Gareth Hole at NICE answers that question in this exclusive op-ed for CBR.

Robotic Process Automation is a huge trend with businesses across the world. By combining artificial intelligence with other technologies, organisations are automating routine, repetitive businesses processes to improve efficiency and drive better results. According to the National Association of Software and Services Companies, RPA can already reduce operations costs as much as 65 per cent, with ROI within as little as half a year.

Every business has processes that can be automated from start to finish by an unattended robot, working without intervention, 24/7, without errors, collecting and executing tasks from a queue. But what about the business processes that have decision points requiring human intervention or communication skills?

This is where attended desktop automation comes into play. Attended desktop automation allows a dedicated, smart desktop robot to help a human with certain tasks. This robot can mimic human actions, from copying and pasting information, to data inputting and even opening up applications and performing actions. It can even exceed what a human could achieve on their own, by gathering and analysing large amounts of data 100% accurately and rapidly in real-time and taking actions based on the results. All of these activities can occur on an employee’s desktop, in the background, triggered by any type of event, such as a button click, switching tabs, checking a field has specific data or even a complex combination of multiple events.

Recent improvements in algorithmic techniques and the expansion in the use of deep neural networks have also enabled significant improvements in the technology’s ability to deliver value.

In the contact centre industry, for example, where agents often have to juggle multiple tasks, (talking to customers, sourcing information, inputting data etc), attended automation certainly lightens the load. It allows those agents to focus on talking to a customer whilst tasks like looking for relevant data in multiple applications or figuring out what the best next step to take is, are done for them in real-time.

With this approach, the human and the desktop robot are working side by side, in full collaboration, with humans overseeing the execution of each activity. Humans can then focus on more interesting, valuable work, while also being empowered to make the best decisions in real-time.

Large businesses that run attended desktop automation robots, enabling their employees to make the most of their expertise and focus on the essence of their jobs, report high customer and employee satisfaction and operational efficiency which leads to a better bottom line. One of the UK’s largest mobile network provider, has automated 32 processes across a wide variety of process types, realising a saving of over 4 million seconds per month in automations alone. Using both attended and unattended automations, there is also the expectation of delivering about £1 million per year of additional benefits from these processes.

Attended automation can also identify events and processes that require training, enabling managers to take the necessary steps to improve the employee’s performance. For example, if the employee is required to read a disclaimer as part of the call but the disclaimer text was only open for two seconds, the system can detect that it is most likely that the employee did not read the disclaimer, and an alert will be sent to the manager.

Managers, in turn, will be better equipped to focus their limited time on delivering tailored coaching and support. This will help employees further hone their customer service skills, as they focus on delivering the sort of service that builds loyalty and satisfaction, and not on mundane, routine tasks.

Deciding on what to automate can be a huge challenge. With customer expectations constantly changing and new channels of engagement emerging, deciding on where to begin, as well as the long-term plan is not always straightforward. This is where attended desktop automation can again help, this time by gathering process information to uncover further opportunities to optimise those processes in real-time.

There is also the issue of how automation fits in with existing systems and processes. For example, does process automation still have value against a backdrop of investing in ‘best of breed’ IT systems? With traditional automation, the value can often be challenged but with attended desktop automation, a smart desktop robot can leverage even more value out of those systems to help their users in real-time.

Every organisation, in every vertical, has repetitive, time-consuming, error-prone processes which demand accuracy and speed, and don’t necessarily rely on human ‘out of the box’ thinking. The automation of these processes has become a reality but there is a growing realisation that humans can add more value to an organisation when freed from this repetitive and mundane work.

Attended desktop automation does not just save organisations valuable employee time. You could go as far as calling it the employee’s new best friend, keeping them engaged in the most important and valuable tasks for the business. After all, who wouldn’t want their own smart robot helper?

Source: cbronline.com-Automation & AI – the human workforce’s new best friend?

Robots May Not Take ­­­Your Job After All

Over 150 years ago, British author Samuel Butler predicted the rise of artificial intelligence, calling for a “war to the death” against machines – and arguing that that “the time will come when the machines will hold the real supremacy over the world and its inhabitants.”

Today, the inevitable conflict between man and AI-powered machines permeates our national discourse, as the threat of technological unemployment looms large. Elon Musk recently told a gathering of governors that AI is “the greatest risk we face as a civilization.”

Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images

But while the national narrative tends to reflect Butler’s dystopian fears for the 3.5 million truck drivers rendered obsolete by autonomous vehicles, or Mark Zuckerburg’s often mischaracterized vision of an educational future devoid of teachers – early adoption of AI suggests a far more collaborative reality.

Because in practice, AI often shines a light on areas where replacing humans with robots leads to suboptimal results – but cooperation between humans and machines, create outcomes that are better than either might achieve independently. Google Translate results may be technically accurate, for example, but fail to transpose idioms or slang that human translators can interpret. Interactive voice response (IVR) systems, unable to deal with the breadth and complexity of customers’ needs, trap frustrated consumers within the endless computerized loops until a human, armed with information gathered by computers, can direct them toward a solution. And in the education context, outcomes for AI-driven courses have failed to produce results, at scale – without the thoughtful support and encouragement of real-world teachers.

Of course, the concept of human-machine symbiosis isn’t entirely new. Average chess players paired with laptops famously took down chess masters and supercomputers in one 2005 match. PayPal’s founders paired human analysts with sophisticated algorithms to tackle complex fraud challenges – giving birth to the technology that undergirds mercurial tech titan, Palantir.

At American colleges and universities, human-computer symbiosis is allowing faculty like University of Michigan Professor Perry Samson to leverage students’ mobile phones to collect real-time information about student behaviors, and modify instructional strategies to improve learner outcomes. Technology helps teachers understand how students answer problem questions, whether they take notes, get confused, tag content in books, or review lecture material after class. Rather than replace them, technology is making human teachers more effective, at a time when even the most advanced AI isn’t able to data mine its way to non-obvious hypotheses that improve student learning. Educators, empowered by data, are drawing on human intuition and creativity to identify correlations between student behavior and outcomes. Technology isn’t just making teachers more effective, it’s enabling a new era of pedagogical innovation as a growing number of educators experiment with flipped, blended, and adaptive courses.

This approach is not unique to education. In customer service, the failure of IVR to deliver a positive customer experience has led to a blended approach that leverages AI to match customers with the customer service reps most likely to address their content needs – or even personality. Rather than replace call center operators, companies like T-Mobile are using AI platforms (like little-known “unicorn” Afiniti) to drive improved results of existing employees – by simply using AI to learn from historic interactions to better pair customers with their call center representatives. Same team, same customers, but upwards of 5% improvement in sales outcomes and retention with significant impact on the bottom line.

The applications of blended AI are broad. Stanford researchers have used advances in machine learning to develop a human-machine hybrid for translation, allowing bilingual human translators to move faster than they could if translating everything manually, while also improving the accuracy of machine translation. The blended approach allows for quicker translation on the basic language and uses humans to finalize the more subtle portions of the translation for context and culture.

A final dimension that most futurists are missing in discussing AI is that it actually creates whole new categories of jobs in training AI technology, explaining the contextual situations that AI machines don’t handle well (sarcasm) and measuring efficacy. Just as computers never really eliminated paper, we realize that AI – like the internet and renewable energy – will create whole new career paths.
In each case, AI is transforming the way humans interact with each other, in ways that make those interactions more efficient, effective, and even more meaningful. Could it be that AI might actually facilitate more authentic connections between individuals? The robots may still be coming for our jobs. But rather than competing with people, AI may turn us into the real supercomputers – and, in an ironic twist, make human interaction even more human

Source: Forbes-Robots May Not Take ­­­Your Job After All