Intelligent Automation, Robotic Process Automation and it’s impact

In my last blog I touched upon Intelligent Automation broadly covering Machine Learning, Autonomics, Machine / Computer Vision and Natural Language Processing.

I will focus on Autonomics and it’s impact on business and IT. Autonomics are intelligent systems that apply self-adapting policies to “learn” from experience and respond to new conditions, with the potential to perform more and more complex tasks.

Autonomics are entering the mainstream in back-office work performing high volumes and routine tasks. It is predicted that it will completely transform the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry. However, the current systems are not “autonomics” in the truest sense but are evolving and will reach that stage in the near future.

Traditionally robots revolutionized the manufacturing industry largely in the context of assembly lines. Now Robotics Process Automation (RPA) is impacting the back office and process related work in the same way. Whereas in manufacturing, physical robots replaced workers doing repetitive tasks, in the office world, software automation ( termed as RPA) is replacing many of the repetitive tasks and associated jobs.

RPA is most effective where:

-          ·     Actions are consistently and steps repeatedly
·         Data is template based and data entered repeatedly in the same fields
·         Applications are rule-based

Many organizations have started to use it effectively across many functions but not limited to:

•          Data entry and validation
•          File and data manipulation
•          Automated formatting
•          Multi-format message creation
•          UI manipulation
•          Web scraping
•          Text mining
•          Uploading and exporting
•          Downloading and importing
•          Workflow acceleration
•          Currency/Exchange rate processing
•          Reconciliations   

Other than the horizontal / generic functions listed above some notable usage has been across specific industry verticals like:

·         Regulatory Compliance for Financial Services – RPA solutions not only address the regulatory compliance, by performing the function in the same way repeatedly but provides a detailed and sustainable audit log of activities – important requirement for compliance. Also the tools can be scaled easily as well as “learn” to perform new processes as they are introduced by regulatory agencies.

·         Mortgage Loan Processing – RPA tools execute routine rules-based tasks and therefore provide increased and accurate loan processing experience. By applying rule-based algorithms RPA tools resolve errors and increase speed through the loan origination systems. Also RPA tools can “learn” to analyze data in the applications and recommend cross-selling of other products to the customers like insurance, savings instruments, etc

·         Telecom Sector – Telecom providers need to switch circuits based on customer movement. However some of the decommissioning work requires verification from multiple systems and third party circuits and sources. Traditionally these have been resource intensive requiring multiple steps and checkpoints. RPA tools are providing increased efficiency as most of this process is rule based.

This is still evolving and with more cognitive and Artificial Intelligence built in, the RPA tools are becoming smarter. The impact is felt across many industries not limited to BPO only, not to mention the impact on jobs and change of roles and skills.

The robots have arrived in “white-collar” jobs!! Humans need to adapt to the new reality and create new jobs and skill sets to work with the robots. Humans have always adapted and though the near term future may have some pain, in the long term it will benefit all in moving away from repetitive jobs.

As the saying goes "Change is the only constant!!!"