A change...

As they say, the more it changes the more it remains the same!

I have been in the enterprise software industry for over two decades now, starting out as a consultant for implementing enterprise software at large corporations in North America. Digitization and transformative power of digitization have been talked about ever since I joined the industry. At that time, many of these projects were simply about replacing paper-based processes by computer based processes and, many converted back end computerized processes to ‘modern’ business applications with configurable processes and better laid out screens for data entry. Though, even today paper remains a force to reckon with, for information exchange in all kinds of business processes. In many cases it is simply the best way to exchange information. This is so, because our world is composed of thousands of large organizations, millions of SMEs and hundreds of millions of users and; computer systems don’t simply have the pliability of usage something that paper as a 'technology' is inherently bestowed with. That said, digitization of various processes across all industry verticals is happening at a rapid pace and provides immense opportunities to simplify our lives. By some estimates, over half a trillion dollars (USD) is spent on software every year and, at least a 100 million workers use software products every day. A large chunk of this money is spent on software created over the last two decades and, some on brand new software. Large and small organization or an individual user, all deal with software created over varying periods of time by teams of developers, designers and entrepreneurs.

Over the last two decades, technologies for digitization and, consumption mechanisms have continued to evolve at a rapid pace. The four pillars of technology, as described by Tom Siebel in his book on 'Digital Transformation: Survive and Thrive in an era of mass extinction', Cloud computing, big data, AI and, Internet of things; are creating massive changes in the way organization can innovate and compete in the marketplace. Another contemporary book titled ‘The Mathematical Corporation’ by authors Josh Sullivan and Angela Zutavern, describes emphatically how the key human skill for success in business will be to learn to give up on doing things that are easily done by the computers. They call out the upcoming extraordinary alliance between human and machine by assigning skills like comprehending, perceiving details/patterns, number crunching, remembering and documenting to machines while prodding humans to excel on imagining, creating, reasoning deductively and inductively and structuring problem solving. It is clear a new era of human machine collaboration is afoot.

Development of modular architectural patterns such as microservices and, education of workers (people who spend a majority of their time dealing with information systems in getting the business done) over the last two decades is also causing fundamental changes in how modern computing capabilities are consumed. The development of utility computing, communication and data interchange protocols (such as REST) and, modular architectural patterns such as microservices have now made it possible for us to conceive assembling computing utilities in a useful manner without having to necessarily rewrite/write the entire application in a single technology stack. In our history, human ability to combine and recombine technologies across domains has contributed the most to creating fundamental breakthroughs. The digital innovations are accelerated today by the workers who have become trained in using and personalizing a wide variety of software technologies, writing formulas in Excel or like tools, creating beautiful websites and presentations; all of which require them to learn and interpret how a developer wanted them to use the software. Modern workers (gen Y and Z) possess significantly advanced capabilities in using software while almost all humans can easily claim some digital expertise in using communication and social media software. Very rarely today, software is written with a user manual. A large part of this trend is ascribable to user education while some can be attributed to ‘human centered’ design.

Today software developers can build highly advanced and focused capabilities and, make these accessible globally using public cloud platforms and, create instant hits much like the pop stars from the music industry. Some examples of these capabilities are: translating text from one language to another, speech to text and real time translation, images accurately tagged by a computer vision algorithm, contract clauses read and interpreted by document understanding technology for a specific domain, automated data analytics dashboard rendering or, a financial analytics dashboard interpreted to a visibility impaired user using AI, NLG and speech to text. Development of cognitive capabilities using AR and VR form recent advances in end user computing. Deep domain expertise and software expertise required to create these sophisticated services make it probable that the development of these highly monetizable capabilities by organizations dedicated to building specific services; will be a continuing trend in the times to come.

As a product builder, it is exciting for me to see that such tools and advancement in human ability to use software are available today which allows us to deliver on the true promise of transformation; imagination being the only constraint. As an example, combining understanding of human speech and predicting music of an individual’s choice, has allowed Google or Amazon to build a personalized ‘radio’ (e.g. Google Home or Alexa) for each and every individual on earth (more or less). Application of predictive maintenance algorithms at large plants allows operators to get insights into failure probability and prescriptive diagnosis for each individual component like a valve that make production forecasting, maintenance planning and demand fulfillment processes much more accurate and real time. Recruitment applications can use predictive models to assess a candidate fitment to a job and, then assist interviewers though real time cognitive analysis of human emotions thus, helping improve quality of hire and in building better enterprises. Creating a seamless digital experience in processes such as mortgage applications through the use of cognitive technologies to read documents and extract semantically rich information (alongside existing applications) to carry out the process efficiently while, improving quality and accuracy to reduce compliance costs is now possible through the use of automation technologies such as from Automation Anywhere.

This brings me to the announcement that I have accepted the role of Regional CTO for IMEA (India, Middle East and Africa) for Automation Anywhere to help deepen the conversation about the use of automation technologies in realizing the promise of digital. Automation Anywhere automation platform excels in

·       extracting data from any application surface,

·       allowing users to build sophisticated bots in a no code or low code environment combining data, native application execution, scripting and microservices &

·       orchestrating and running software bots securely at scale for large enterprises in any environment of customers choice i.e. private, hybrid and public cloud.

The bot development environment provides access to services such as machine learning driven document understanding technologies i.e. IQBot to read and interpret various document types e.g. invoices, bank statements, mortgage applications and contracts etc.. The application surface reading capabilities combine computer vision technologies (AI Sense) with a native understanding of display technologies such as Windows or Citrix. An intuitive web based interface for designing and developing bots helps workers with a range of development skills design and orchestrate sophisticated digital tasks on top of a multitude of applications to accomplish something that in yesteryears would have incurred significant development costs. As discussed previously, AI enabled services are being developed to address a large number of highly specific requirements around cognitive functions and data analytics, a platform like this helps easily incorporate these technologies into application workflows and/or create new application workflows for the benefit of the end user. ‘Digital Worker’ (an Automation Anywhere coined term) further evolves this orchestration into a full capability functional or process specific worker such as for payables, customer service or payroll. These digital workers work alongside a human worker and, help him or her be more productive (in the words of Automation Anywhere, ‘Go Be Great’). Automation Anywhere Enterprise Bot store democratizes the development of sophisticated computing capabilities as bots and, provides global visibility and commercial opportunity to these innovators.

In my view, the power of these automation technologies can help simplify the lives of human worker, reduce the cost of running a wide variety of mission critical processes executed using a wide bouquet of applications that enterprises own and, improve the capability of the enterprises to perform better, faster and cheaper. Increasing the degree of automation of processes can also improve the quality of data these processes generate and, expand the digital footprint of these processes thus enabling richer and accurate data for analytics and, help quickly absorb the feedback from such analytics into business processes. This holistic loop then enables an enterprise to work with agility and compete in the marketplace. And, while doing so, frees the creativity of human mind to focus on tasks uniquely suited for human intelligence.

As a witness to the evolution of technology through the years, I can say one thing with certainty that though much has changed, the core mission of technology to help us live better remains the same. So, here is a toast to more of the same!