Prajakta Gandhi | 4 min read
“Ok, I will destroy humans.”
So sayeth Sophia, a humanoid robot who has appeared on The Tonight Show, modeled for the cover of the Brazilian iteration of Elle magazine, and was even granted Saudi Arabian citizenship.
Fortunately, Sophia is not the kind of robot that companies have “hired” to enhance operations using Robotic Process Automation (RPA). Those bots don’t physically resemble the iconic androids of pop culture like the model from Lost in Space (“Danger, Will Robinson!”) and they certainly wouldn’t be confused for Sophia in all her uncanny valley splendor. In fact, they are essentially simply software programs. Their function is entirely to help (not destroy!) workers by handling repetitive tasks and speeding up processes—as one writer put it, “it allows humans more time to be humans.”
“RPA is taking a manual task and scripting it [and] automating it so that nobody has to do it,” says Bob Benton, Senior Solution Engineer at FortressIQ. This timesaving, cost-effective process frees up employees to perform more complex tasks and can completely revolutionize how you do business.
RPA vs. IT Automation
RPA and IT automation are intrinsically related—the last letter in RPA does stand for “automation” after all—but they serve difference purposes. IT automation adds insight and efficiency to the end-to-end process, while RPA typically eases things for individual users. Both are valuable, but by its nature, RPA solves a specific, structured problem (e.g., repetitive data entry), while IT automation invites a more extensive, albeit perhaps less defined, array of opportunity. The experts at Katalyst can guide you in implementing both into your organization.
“You can create automation at a tactical level in a way that doesn’t require the strategic planning, oversight, and results that RPA will provide,” says David Armendariz, General Manager, Technology Division at Lucas Group. “It has to be something that the organization sees as a strategic advantage and a part of their business plan. If it’s not a part of their business plan, then it’s just more money you’re throwing at some tech that you’re never going to get a return on. [It’s] an option to allow us to be more effective and productive and grow our business.”
Many RPA strategies are based around “screen scraping,” in which a program records a human user’s mouse movements and clicks that are subsequently duplicated by a machine ad nauseum, at a much faster pace than a person. As always, with any automation, that requires people who truly realize the benefits of the technology to an enterprise.
“It’s not typically the tech stack itself, whether it’s automated or not, that causes ineffective or unproductive implementation,” says Armendariz. “It’s typically the marriage between the tech and the human capital within the organization. You have to have people within the organization trained, who understand, who are interested in not only the actual processes themselves but how they are tied to the business.”
RPA vs. AI
It’s easy to conflate RPA with AI, and there are instances of overlap. However, RPA does not need to be “intelligent.” In fact, it runs smoothest when the machine doesn’t have to think or learn on a regular basis. AI embraces complexity, but RPA demands consistency.
“One misconception is that almost anything can be automated,” says Benton. “There’s a lot of decisions in [unstructured processes], and you can try to anticipate a lot of variations, or as a machine make decisions, but I think that can be very challenging.”
The real decision ultimately lies with an organization’s leaders, who must assess whether their business is up for the challenges and rewards RPA can offer.
“Any adoption of technology [comes down to] the company culture,” says Armendariz. “Any time you’re trying to drive innovation, or just new ways of thinking, it always comes down to dollars and cents. What value is it going to provide? Is it going to be saving time or saving money? Hopefully, both.”
