When RPA Grows Up

Firms have targeted low-value opportunities for task-based automation and will increasingly seek to incorporate more advanced analytical and AI technologies as part of their automation. The RPA platform is evolving rapidly to meet these demands

- Raghu Subramani

With the buzz machine in IT on an overdrive in the past few years, digital transformation is made to mean everything that is done in IT nowadays – cloud, mobility, DevOps, analytics, automation et al. It is not entirely wrong; these technologies do figure in the scheme of things for digital transformation when done by design.

Take automation. In a recent poll by The Economist magazine, 93% of business leaders said that digital transformation starts with automation. But it is easy to run into quicks and if one equates automation with digital transformation.

Cautions Tony Saldanha, a veteran of many technology transformations at P&G, in his recent book titled Why Digital Transformations Fail, “True digital transformation is defined as requiring people, processes and systems in order to win in the next Industrial Revolution. Therefore, confusing digital goals with automation is the first reason why digital transformations fail.”

Automation – The First Step in Digital Transformation

That said, in his book, Saldanha also identifies automation as the first step for success in digital transformation. Described as the foundation step, Saldanha writes, “The first step is automation (or digitisation) of process. It delivers enterprise value by using technology to do work more efficiently and builds the foundation for further transformation.”

Organisations should understand two things about this foundational step of automation. First, it is not a do-once-and-for-all step. Neither should one attempt to automate all business processes end to end— it won’t work even with the best of automation technologies available. Second, automation itself is rapidly evolving in its capabilities to embrace AI, ML, analytics, process discovery and many others.