What comes after RPA? Part 1.

Whether successful with RPA or not, enterprises all over the world are asking themselves, what next?

We continue to read that getting RPA to scale is really really hard, and ever growing in delivery and maintenance costs. Even when some success is achieved, it typically happens in business unit silo's, with low bot counts. And worse, you are still stuck with the same costly old systems (lots of them), and all you've really done, is put an automated veneer (band-aid) on many old and tired processes.

So you are probably now looking to choose a technology from one of the newer sets of buzz words and acronyms that are flying around, to see what might more seriously impact operational efficiency or to move your enterprise more broadly into the digital arena. Really? Is this what we in business and technology have come to, as we head into 2020? Looking forward to another decade of more technological acronyms and proof of concepts that likely will bring no real change? The idea that we have to keep cherry picking from a list of the "future" next great pieces of silo'd technology is wrong. Are we yet again supposed to believe, that this time, the "next" thing will change the way we operate? We all know, deep down, something just isn't right any more! We cannot keep doing it this way.

I say, enough. I've been working with technologies that have been band-aiding legacy systems for decades and I believe, despite what you hear, there is only a little more juice left in all of these lemons. It's time to think about planting a new crop of fruit trees and revolutionize the way you do business.

Sure, my RPA company, OpenSpan, which has 100's of 1000's of RPA bots deployed all over the globe was sold to Pega and we do sell a bucket load of RPA every year. However, the reason I'm still at Pega is not because I see RPA as THE thing but because I only see it as a small part of something much much bigger. I see the future as DPA (Digital Process Automation). Some call this Intelligent Automation, Digital Ops, OneOffice but whatever you call it, DPA may just be one of the last major acronyms you will ever need to use. It's not a thing. DPA is a sum of many parts and for Pega, it's all built around a central core and it gives business and IT the ability to collaborate on the future of the digital enterprise. DPA provides the ability to impact the entire business and every one of it's customers in a way, that really changes the game.

You can build a major career in DPA today, for the long term, whether you are in business, IT, consulting or implementation. I believe it IS the future and the game changer. Watch this space for more from me on DPA but it's already here today proving in 1000's of customers, how far it can go. Here's a 3 min kick-starter for you on how a customer uses DPA not to just to up their game, but to change their game too.

Check it out here ; DPA for REAL - the 3 min video of a real customer using it

Edit (added) : here's the Forrester DPA wave link

Edit (addd) ; linke to What comes after RPA part 2