By: Atamjeet Kaur
Brandon Nott, Vice President of Customer Success at UI Path emphasized on automation first approach, i.e. changing the approach we look at work in today’s era. Digital transformation in any organization should start with automation first. Today’s era is the dawn of AI (Artificial Intelligence) and organizations that see the future in AI need to invest resources in RPA – Robotic Process Automation. RPA is a practice where robots can take over redundant tasks that are repetitive in nature and not challenging for humans. The software robots can execute same tasks, procedures and other operational activities that humans currently perform by interacting with existing systems. RPA offers faster execution of tasks and fewer errors with learnings made in each attempt. This is strategic approach that focuses on value added work.
By citing example of Japan’s decreasing population and increasing workload, he mentioned that robots have been engaged/ deployed to listen to people working in sales teams and by only listening to people performing daily operational tasks, these robots are able to collect requisite information and further generate and compile reports.
Automation first is not about replacing human jobs with robots, instead the repetitive, non-value adding redundant operational tasks can be provided to robots to be completed. At the same time, human resources are then able to put their time to better use in terms of performing tasks that generate more value and challenge for them to learn, explore new and creative services, service delivery and solutions. Survey results on how comfortable humans will be to work alongside or as supervisor to robots, it has been revealed that about 10% of the users look forward to managing AI robots, 88% are comfortable working alongside robots and about 91% are comfortable to manage matrix teams consisting of humans and robots.
Mr. Nott further explains convergence of three steps that leads to automation. First is ‘Business Process Optimization’ where existing organizational processes are analyzed and areas where there is opportunity to optimize these processes exists are explored and identified. Second is ‘Computer Vision’ which means robots having capability to see the computer systems and servers physically and extracting information from visually collected data to complete next steps of any business process or save it for use/ implementation in future. And third is Summer of AI where technology can be used to it full potential. He suggests that AI has about $48.5 billion market opportunity by 2021, however, only 4% of CIOs have implemented Artificial Intelligence in their organizations until 2018.
He demystifies AI by breaking it down to following processes: 1) Visual Understanding, 2) Document Understanding (OCR), 3) Process Understanding and 4) Conversational Understanding. Once these processes have been executed, then the actual work of 1) Deploying and Managing, 2) Version Controls and Updates, 3) Advanced Model Monitoring and Management, 4) Continuous Improvement of Artificial Intelligence and 5) Creating new AI models from the learnings made from process optimization/ automation.
Automation will change and expand the way workforce performs any tasks today and that more focus will be on human development to put AI to best use to enhance human potential by brining in challenges and creativity.
About the writer:
Atamjeet Kaur is project management professional with over decade of successful experience while working in various industries. She has completed her Masters in Computer Science and holds multiple professional credentials as PMP, ITIL and Six-Sigma Green Belt. She is owner of her own consulting corporation providing project management and business consulting services to both Canada and US based organizations. She is member of Project Management Institute and active volunteer for PMI chapters where she had facilitated PMP exam prep courses and been session host for professional development conference amongst others. In her free time, she enjoys playing badminton and gardening.
You can connect with Atamjeet on LinkedIn here.