What is RPA (Robotic Process Automation)?

Robotic Automation describes a task or groups of tasks of processes that would normally be completed by a computer user but are now automated by software.

For any benefit of doubt, I am not talking electro-mechanical robots, but rather simply, software automating some other software.

Robotic Automations can;

run on the desktop alongside a human (Desktop Automation)

run in a server room (Robotic Process Automation) without humans

Desktop Automation is also known as Interactive or Attended Automation

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is also known as Autonomous or Unattended Automation

Robotic Automation uses new forms of software specially designed to automate the software applications that humans normally use. Although this might sound strange, it allows humans to work much faster and provide greatly improved customer experience whilst also in some cases, may mean not needing humans at all.

All kinds of software integration and re-engineering projects occur to optimize tasks and transactions so that the need for humans to process them is reduced or eliminated. IT might be on a path to Nirvana of needing no workers through these transformation projects but in the meantime, just count the number of humans in the contact center and back office across the globe and you’ll see they still have a long way to go.

The need for Robotic Automation has never been stronger. CEOs are expected to run their businesses efficiently and deliver increasing shareholder value; added to the fact that enterprises cannot just cut costs to the bare bone and ignore the strong competition facing them. Improving customer experience and staying ahead of their competition at lower costs is paramount. How do you deal with this conundrum?

Robotic Automation in more detail

Users sit at a computer terminal most of the day processing tasks using legacy, web and windows applications. For the sake of argument, let’s say everything the human does (pressing keys, moving/clicking the mouse, reading/thinking) is manual. So, if we could train a physical robot to sit in the user’s chair and press the same keys and click the mouse accurately every time at super-fast speed then we have Robotic Automation. Obviously, a robot on the chair approach is not practical to replace the manual computer- based work of humans. However, the computer is already capable of being the “robot,” (in fact, it already is a robot, but generally restricted to operate within the bounds of a single process or application,) we just need to teach (automate) this robot to correctly read the business applications (both on-screen information and non-visible object information), select the right commands, apply the right thinking (rules) and navigate. If we put the trained piece of automation software on each worker’s computer and do just that, we have Robotic Automation.

Robots to replace or augment humans to make them more efficient

If we use Robotic Automation to do everything a user does from end to end, then we do not need the worker to perform that task anymore. This work can be transferred off the worker’s desktop to a server, mimicking  pretty much the same user environments. You now have autonomous Robotic Process Automation (RPA).

If we use Robotic Automation to do much but not all of what a user does, building automations more gradually, we can dramatically increase the amount of work they do and reduce their error rates. These Robotic Automations run on the user’s computer at exactly the same time the user is still using it. This is called interactive Desktop Automation.

Robotic process automation (RPA) tools are a way to cut costs, eliminate keying errors, speed up processes and link applications together. Enterprise architects must understand the capabilities of these tools and evaluate the need for them within their operations.

Table of Contents

• Market Definition
  • Definition of RPA Software
  • Flavors of RPA Tools
  • Flavors of RPA Tools Functionality
• Market Direction
• Representative RPA Vendors
  • Automation Anywhere
  • Blue Prism
  • Epiance
  • Infosys
  • Jacada
  • Kryon Systems
  • Lexmark (Kofax Kapow)
  • Nice
  • OpenConnect
  • Pegasystems
  • Redwood Software
  • UiPath
  • Verint
  • WorkFusion
  • Xerox Services (Soon to be Conduent)