Nobody likes to hear their baby is Ugly.... #RPA
Olivier Gomez (????)
Automation & AI Expert & Advisor | [email protected] | Global B2B Influencer & KOL | Speaker | Author | Delivered over $100M P&L Impact to clients
When it comes to RPA/IA (Intelligent Automation), Nobody likes to hear their baby is Ugly.. Especially when it is not true but we know the parents can never really objectively tell ;) so let me try to share my view here....
First I do not think the issue is with RPA at all, nor IA ,the issue described here (https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/what-heck-broken-bot-syndrome-jim-walker/) is that the overall IT ecosystem is becoming more and more business critical as we add bots to the employee mix and we do not like when things go down ...
As we deploy/scale bots to free up Human to do better/cooler things , we are changing the employee mix and we will ultimately have as many bots as we have employees .. which is a good thing obviously .. but with Scale will come Responsibility ..
Let's acknowledge, we have issues sometimes with employees and it takes effort, focus, leadership and investment to manage and grow Human capital.
Let's also acknowledge as well we will have the same situation with the digital workforce. Digital Employees will break (for different reasons: 1) related to the ever changing environment they are in 2) multi-vendors, 3)legacy bots pilling up, etc ... and the larger the Scale the larger the impact and the cost ..
Every IT leader would dream to have 80% of their budget for innovation and 20% for RUN but unfortunately it is most of the time the opposite and IT leader get stuck with 80% RUN cost for all the reasons we know. ---> There is absolutely no reason why our Digital workforce will not end up in the same paradigm where most of the energy is allocated to RUNNING the bots ..
The way to look at it is simple .. I see 3 main phases in this IA industry
Phase 1 = DISCOVERY , POC/POV, Hype etc .. --> we are done with this one
Phase 2 = SCALE .. --> the one we are in right now ( most of the fortune 2000 at least)
Phase 3 = RUN & MANAGE ... --> very few people have a large footprint to understand this one .. no one has reach the 1bot for 1human level ...
They way I understand the message from IRPA/AI and others around the BROKEN BOTS Syndrome is very simple and it make sense to me ..
RUNNING the bots, especially at scale will take effort .. the risk of spending all our effort/money there is very high and we need to start looking at ways to automate the RUN of the bots
I very often have this issue with my french/english where I misunderstand the core message from someone ... I think here the entire Industry is saying the same, but sometimes in different ways and with a different AGENDA ...
--> Intelligent Automation is great and we all believe in it and it will SCALE, but when at SCALE .. we will need to MANAGE the IA footprint and I assume the last thing we want to do is to use HUMAN fix BOTS ;) ... lets have BOTS fix BOTS :)
OG
Analysis.Tech | Analyst | CEO, Founder, Automation Den | Keynote Speaker | Thought Leader | LOWCODE | NOCODE | GenAi | Godfather of RPA | Inventor of Neuronomous| UX Guru | Investor | Podcaster
4 年We should chat, I have many accounts with 1000+ and 5000+ bots of both kinds (most of the worlds largest RPA implementations have been implemented by my teams). RPA attended and unattended. And in the 20+ years I've help 1000's of customers automate billions of processes, transactions and tasks but there is a misnomer about RPA at scale (automations of UI's). It is ABSOLUTELY about RPA - once you understand the core to the underlying RPA technology and the way the IT real-estate is structured, supported and funded. True, you cannot get to RPA without IT (I find it surprising this is just now being understood) because I've been doing this since 2006 - with IT). But, it is what it is, some vendors tried to fool the business and have been burned on both sides of the house. But just because you add IT to the mix does not suddenly make the PRA technology, nor the applications you are running against any better. They can be managed but more importantly, the choices for automating the work now go way beyond UI automation and RPA. Most now now realize also, removing human hours from "bits of work", is but a fraction of the cost to the enterprise of the actual work. RPA is a tactical bridge, a part of Intelligent Automation but it is NOT Intelligent Automation !
Returning to my true passion: Business Analysis, Solutions Design and Product Management
4 年Couldn’t agree more Olivier. ??
B2B startup marketing leader | Demand generation | ABM/ABX | SFDC & HubSpot admin | Meme collector | Seinfeld fan club president | Tell your dog I said hi ????
4 年Validation and exception handling are both so critical in reducing the risk associated with robot production. Positive and negative validation needs to happen at every step, in every bot. Exception handling needs to be tailored to the process while also taking into consideration associated or interdependent processes. Most are not taking this far enough in their implementation, which makes run and management much more difficult.
Business Excellence and Digital Transformation | Lean Six Sigma Black Belt | RPA, ML, AI, Blockchain | Certified Scrum Master | Agile Practitioner
4 年Another great day, need to make sure to learn that new AI thing I saw other day. Open laptop, - 'Bot failure mail' . Need I say more ??
Founder, Chief Digital Officer, Technology Strategist and AI Evangelist
4 年Absolutely agree OG, many of us have used the human/digital worker comparison for years, when are firms actually going to think about robot HR (run) and Training (change) let alone considering on going cost (salary) and funding innovation (benefits). Allowing cost for decommissioning when systems and processes change (pension contribution). All many see is one off build cost and minor amounts for a license each year. It’s really important to look beyond what’s in the sales material and actually understand what one is building. Is this the right direction? almost certainly, advanced tech is where we are all heading. Is it as easy as many people say? No, not at all.