CFO Studio magazine with Todd McElhatton

24 cfostudio.com AUTOMATION RPA IS NOT DEAD… Cognitive Automation saved it! T he recent claim “Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is dead” grabbed attention and raised many questions. Is it dead? What led to its demise? How will it impact my organization? The obituary read that RPA appeared on the market a few years ago with great fanfare. It promised to be the nirvana for digital enterprise process automation. It would deliver enormous benefits with its configurable software (Bots), designed to perform assigned repetitive tasks faster and with greater accuracy than humans. There was even talk of eliminating human involvement altogether. The expectations were set that the Bots would be able to scale and drive significant savings. Unfortunately, it did not live up to the market hype and most enterprises were unable to scale their RPA programs beyond basic task automation. Ernst and Young found 30-50% of RPA projects were stalled, not scaled, abandoned or moved to other solutions. While RPA did not die, it was on life support when it came to digital process transformation. The market realized a recovery plan was needed to move away from simple task automation. For a cure, the RPA providers turned to the recent advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cognitive automation. They were able use these latest technologies to migrate to more complex digital automation solutions. So, RPA was successfully resuscitated and is still very much alive with a market estimated to be over $3B by 2022. As the BOT’s IQ increases, its potential expands dramatically. At its current rate of growth, broad enterprise adoption is expected within the next 3 years. To become a digital enterprise in this new paradigm, buyers need to cut through the hype to figure out how to scale automation. Here are four things to consider in any digital process automation journey. 1 It’s not about bots… it’s about cognitive automation The RPA providers did a fantastic job creating awareness on the benefits of Bots. However, automation is rapidly moving up the capability curve and making them even smarter. The new generation of RPA takes advantage of recent advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cognitive automation. This has allowed the market to evolve to intelligent automation and truly digitally transform business processes. According to Doug Gilbert, Sutherland’s CTO&CIO, “cognitive automation is based on technology bringing intelligence to information-intensive processes. It is commonly associated with RPA as the conjunction between Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cognitive automation.“ Intelligent automation comprises a suite of cognitive capabilities including; • deep learning tools with reinforcement algorithms; • image processing with handwriting recognition, image analysis and facial recognition; • natural language processing capable of determining intent, sentiment; • -text analysis using pattern recognition and correlations for unstructured data.” Cognitive automation is knowledge-based technology. Here, the machine goes through several human-like conversations and behaviors to understand how humans behave and defines its own rules. Due to the sophistication of these capabilities, they cannot be embedded into traditional Bots, meaning RPAmust utilize external solutions to add cognitive capabilities.