Name: Trick or Treat: Cutting Through the Hocus Pocus of Automation Hype - Session 4
Uploaded: 2025-10-29T15:56:03.717Z
Duration: 40 min 8 s
Description: Trick or Treat: Cutting Through the Hocus Pocus of Automation Hype - Session 4

Transcript for "Trick or Treat: Cutting Through the Hocus Pocus of Automation Hype - Session 4": Okay. Welcome, everyone, and thank you so much for joining us for this special spooky edition of the SSENSE Blue Prism lunch and learn. I'm Michael, a community manager here at SS and C Blue Prism, and I'll be your host today alongside my fantastic cohost, Brian McDonald. Before we begin, you are very welcomed to submit questions through this wonderful webinar tool. When you submit questions, one of our wonderful team will either answer in the chat or we'll get back to you with a detailed answer after the event. Now as a community manager, I get to talk with our incredible network of Blue Prism users every day, and one group always stands out, our MVPs. For those who might not know, MVPs are most valued professionals who are celebrated by SS and C Blue Prism. They're passionate, expert volunteers who use our technology every day and give back to the community by sharing their knowledge. They truly live and breathe automation. Sorry. I I am I am just laughing at general's face right now. And today, though, we are we are gathered we've gathered four of them to help us celebrate a pre Halloween tradition, busting some of the biggest myths surrounding RPA and intelligent automation. It's time then to shine a light on the truth and reveal the reality from those who live it every day. Let's meet our panel. I would like to warmly introduce you all to our global MVPs, Fahim Syed, Jenelle Benares, Lindsay Dickin, and Mohammed Daqiri. Thank you all so much for being here. Thank you, Michael. Thanks, Michael. So Hello, everyone. Hello. So to kick this off, let's start with a spooky question that sets the tone for our agenda. I would like to ask you all, what's the biggest automation myth you've heard lately that makes you want to scream? I think we will go to Lindsay first. Yeah. Thanks, Michael. One myth that keeps coming up that, is a bit of an oldie but a goodie is, that we can automate everything. Automation is great, but, you know, we really need to make sure it's the right, tool for the job. Beautiful answer. Yep. Love that. Channel, how about you? Oh, it's been crazy for, like, forever. Everyone's talking about robots taking over us. Isn't that scary? I love that. Yep. Sayed, let's get to you next. So for me, the biggest myth about this topic is everyone is saying AI is taking all automation, but it's not the exact, exact one. AI is helping the automation here. Love that. Yep. Totally agree. And, Mohammed, finally, how about you? Yes. For me, everyone is talking about, artificial intelligence coming, and it will take place, on RPA, but it's not that easiest way. So there is a lot of things that we can talk about it. I love that. Yep. Fantastic answers. And all of that is a perfect lead in to our first deep dive. So over the next forty five minutes, we're going to tackle two of the most persistent automation myths, followed by a reality check from our MVPs who'll reveal some of the work that they're doing right now and how it's impacting humanity and their organizations. And finally, we'll take a look into the future of the Genetec automation. So our first myth is one we all hear a lot, and it's a headline grab. RPA is debt. The purpose of this segment then is to explore the real relationship between AI and RPA. Is it complementary or competition? And what is the role that RPA plays and will continue to play in today's workplace? So we're gonna start with you, Gerald. There is a lot of noise that AI is this new sheriff in town ready to take over. How true do you think that is? In my opinion, the calling AI is the new share pin down is a really good metaphor because AI is getting more powerful and powerful these days, but I don't think it's really taking over the RPA in its world. So it's actually complementing and enhancing what the I RPA capabilities are. So it's giving a deeper meaning or, a better definition for intelligent automation as we call it these days. People, like all businesses, are really adapting to adapting to AI to improve efficiency and getting more customer experience a lot more better, and that is really good. Right? Anything that we can give to to the world for a better service that we have, we must grab it, and that's how AI is really helping us out in this space. But I don't think everyone is really fully ready for AI in a sense. Right? So AI is a lot deeper and a broader range of, technology and topic to deal with. It's not just jumping into saying that, hey. I wanna do AI stuff. And there are capabilities that AI definitely can can take over, but RPA is still there. RPA is really good in terms of doing repetitive task, taking the taking the mundane task out from the human or the robot out from human. And it's just like I feel like the RPA is something that is really reliable, especially in when it when we are trying to automate the legacy systems, which are not going away anytime soon. Because just like remember when we first jumped into the year February that everyone was so afraid because of the changing of numbers, I think the transition will be as heavy as that. We cannot take all those, automation oh, sorry. All those applications out straight away and say that everything is AI. RPA is definitely still a thing and will still be a thing for a bit long before we call it dead, I suppose. Agree. Yeah. For sure. So where do you see AI and RPA intersecting most most effectively in your work? Yeah. So because, surely, RPA do wonders in business processes wherever we are. I am coming from a vendor side, and we've been dealing with a lot of different clients looking on how they want to improve their workspace with the use of these advanced technologies, RPA and AI. It is it is good. Just be since we started, using AI back in I can remember. Back in back in the early years, it has improved a lot of, accuracy and efficiency of the processes. K. So AI can perform complex cognitive tasks that we often face as challenge when we are working with RPA. I can remember when I started working on these RPA things back in 2013. We can't even read the invoices. But since we have, AI jump in and it has joined the bandwagon, it's, it's really working well with the RPA, and we can see a lot more successes and a quick turnaround and faster ROI in everything that it's doing. Because the way it the way I'm seeing it these days is we have an RPA. We have a process that we're automating using the RPA, and not everything is can be automatable using the RPA stuff. But we now have AI here in place. So we have some solid examples of that. For example, we got some, automation in the financial institutions where we get the AI to do the reading of the invoices, or we get the AI to read the referral forms for the health care, sectors. And we have AI also to help us out to do more cognitive tasks, such as, large language model and those kind of things that are bringing a lot more value in the workspace when we automate and use those two technologies together. Love that. Yeah. Thank you so much. We're gonna go to to you now, Lindsay. The the fear, of course, is that AI is going to replace RPA. But as Jen old alluded to, the tech can be very complimentary. Can you share an example in how in your organization, AI has enhanced an automation instead of replacing it? Yeah. For sure. One really exciting use case we've seen where AI has come in and actually opened the door for a process to be now a candidate for, RPA was, our fulfillment team. So not a technical team, but they own the business process. They own this business challenge. They identified an opportunity with generative AI to, help them read batches of check images, and pull out the data out of that and create a structured, dataset that now allows us to complete the remainder of the process with RPA and put that data entry and, complete the data entry piece. So, what's really cool about this is these tools are accessible by all of our team members and can be accessed by all of them. And so everyone's contributing to that, reducing backlogs on our software teams, and really accelerating delivery and bringing that value to our end to end process automation tools. That's beautiful. And a related question for you then, Lindsay. What from your experience, what what what do you think teams get wrong when they try to, you know, force AI into their automation strategies? Yeah. AI is a great tool. It's really exciting. And so I think that excitement can sometimes cause us to not stop and think about where are the right opportunities for bringing AI into our automation strategies. It's not an all or nothing strategy with it. We don't have to completely replace our what we've already done or delivered. So how can we find places where AI can augment RPA or other, areas to deliver that end to end value. So what we're seeing in our organization is we've gotten maybe 75% of the process complete with automation, and now we hand it over for that remainder piece. And now AI enables us to finish that. So we can get some quick value with our AI tools. We can understand how to use them as well, and really get some impact from, these new capabilities. Nice. Really sagely advice. Thank you so much. Brian, we're gonna come to you now. You spend day in, day out with organizations using Blue Prism, and you hear all of their concerns. What would you want to add here based on what you're seeing amongst your clients? You know, very similar stories to what everybody's shared here today. I think the biggest thing I'm seeing is that my organization is realizing that their RPA teams already have the skills in place to help the AI journey. Right? So, you know, we have processes, we have gateways, and now you can use AI to help enhance a lot of your automations they have in place now. We've talked about a few times so far today, and, you know, I think the biggest thing is, I work a lot of financial organizations, so they're concerned about, you know, data leakage, things like that, anything, you know, having inverse reaction to anything they're doing. So they really are concerned about, guardrails and making sure that everything is, kind of in structure or in place so that nothing happens with the reputation. So that's a big concern as they go through this AI journey is, you know, like I said before, you know, the the COEs and all the people that do RPA programs have kind of that, rigor in place, and they know that certain platforms can help them enhance that and, you know, along the AI journey and really are looking more that way that I'm seeing within my customer base. Wonderful. And, Brian, I think we're coming to you for our second myth of the day. Yes. Our second myth of the day is AI is coming from our jobs. So, Fahim, what's what are you seeing within your organization, or what what are your thoughts on this? Yes. Here is the reality of the organization that are actually implementing the automation. I would like to highlight four points on this myth. First point is, instead of laying off, companies are actually instead of laying off people, they are replacing them. Like, instead of re re replacing them, re reapplying the people. For example, say, here, the organization starts shifting towards the people where they actually required in more decision making, more cross functional work, and more multitasking, more than activities. For example, say, I will give you an example here, from my side. For a for a finance team, the process has been automated, for the payroll team for generating the invoices. So now the payable staff has nothing to do with this process. Now this team can spend more work towards the, vendor relationship management and fraud prevention and another, activities that are really required. So here, in these scenarios, they are looking the people the way they want to use in the organization. And the second point I would like to highlight is, here, when it comes to, automation, the main bottleneck bottlenecks are, awareness. This there are organization there's so many organization does not aware of automation. How can they implement in their organization? So for that, we need to, set up some seminars, how they successfully implement the automation instead of, replacing the replacing the people by saying that, okay. This is not, the exact way like that. And when I would like to discuss one more point on this, here, when the automate when when companies do say, automation to cut the jobs, this is not the reality. It it is a convenience regret. Actually, maybe some of the companies say automation plus the jobs. But when it comes to the reality, the companies have done some, some things like they do overhiring, when when when the company is having huge growth and the lack of vision, and there might be a pressure from the, stackholder to trim the budget. Because of this, some of the companies are using automation as a scapegoat, for cutting this job. At the end, this myth has, this this myth has refused to die in the twentieth, but automation is, not automation is empowering the people and not erasing them. Right. It you kinda alluded to this a little bit, but how have you seen automation change people's roles for the better? Can you expand on that? This is this is very this is, very, really a good question. I have been, in the automation field from the past seven years, and I have seen the people who have been, changes because of the automation. And they have their their their life is changing, and they're, I would like to say, they, their their career has been moved towards, other other level. For example, say, when one of the fraud managers comes to me and he was saying, ask a side for him. I have resources, four or five resources in my team, and they are keep on spending too much time on daily repetitive task, but they are not doing whatever the actual that I'm looking for fraud, for fraud analysis. So once the automation has been done, the peoples are not at all focusing on the repetitive task, and they are they are towards moving, process analysis. Some of the peoples have been moved to process analysis, and some of them moved to process leads. Some of them are become the automation manager in their operation team, and some of them are, setting setting setting up the, central, central center of excellence team for automation. Like this, I have seen so many people, from data entry to automation experts and automation process leads and automation testers. Like that, the automation has giving more opportunity to the people who can, evolve their career in towards automation. It's not just like sitting in the same place and, doing the same work. And it's empowering them, and it's giving more, more awareness towards automation and more, more career growth in the, real world, future. Great. Thank you, Sahid, for for that information. Mohammed, what are the I wanted to ask you, what what do you feel the most effective ways teams communicate automation's purpose to ease fear or resistance? Yeah. Sorry. Yes. As you know, business business team can be afraid from automation. But I think, when we explain them, when we explain the the business team why automation is implemented and show them the benefit, like how we can improve time, how we can eliminate repetitive task and, reduce, for example, error risk. We can also show them a real example, where automation lead to better outcome and better output. It could be an idea. Also, what we can do for me is to include them, include business team I need in the design and implement implementation stage because when they feel, heard and included, it will be easier to, to embrace the change for me. Right. And, also, what we can do, we can tell them that with automation, they will be free from, reaching task, and they can be more creative on other tasks other tasks, sorry, such, such as, analysis. Great. Thank you, Mohammed. So, Mohammed, also, if we shift the conversation from job loss to job evolution, what new skills or mindsets do you think, will define the most successful employees in an AI enabled workplace? For me, I think they need to be, for me, they need to be able to interpret, the data and understand, like, algorithmic reasoning. And maybe they need to have, a little introduction on, on some programming language. It it could be, it could be great for for them. They also need to have a critical thinking. Why? Because AI can do task but cannot be creative or inventive. Finally, with AI coming, business team needed to keep training and learn new things. It's like, like like a continuous learning. So they need to to to to learn a new new, new skills new skills to be better, on their task. Great. Thank you, Ahmed. So, first to Michael, I did dress up a little bit, not as great as you. I I do kinda have my cool Dracula throwback shirt, but I wanted to show it to you. And then and then, to my my question to you, Michael, is if you had to write an epitaph for this myth, what would you say? An epitaph. Happy Hobbit. Okay. So an epitaph for this myth. Here, rest the belief that AI would make humans obsolete. In truth, amplified our potential. I think that would be a beautiful message to put on an epitaph. I like it. Thanks, Michael. All right. Thanks so much. So we have spent a good chunk of time busting this. But now it's time for a reality check. We want to ground this conversation in real experience and pull back the curtain on the daily challenges and successes of our panelists. So we're gonna do a little bit of a roundtable here. Let's start with a fun one. What's something about your day to day right now that might surprise anyone on the outside of automation development? Mohammed, we're going to come to you first on this one. Yeah. Something funny. So when we talk in our organization within the RPA team, I mean, when we talk about algorithm and how to design a robot because, no one from business team sometimes understand what we say. So, for example, when we talk about database, when we talk about, HTML, JavaScript, c sharp, So they don't understand. Sometimes it could be fun. That's a funny thing. I love that. Lindsay, how about you? Yeah. I think, one of the realities of my role really is it's not always just being a developer and delivering work. There's a big piece of it that is the stakeholder engagement. You really have to build that trust with those folks that you're working with. You both have a role in ensuring the success of the automation and sustaining it. So, yeah, that's definitely a a big part of our role these days. Absolutely. So underrated. Jen Old, how about you? So for me, my day to day, nothing is really too shocking for me these days. Every day, it's something new. Something is like a new learning. Like, for example, I just jump into my desk, and I'm into an infrastructure issue. So and then there's a there's next day, I'll be looking into another set of processes, set of new challenges, and set of new things that we are looking to of looking forward to automate and trying to convince people to automate things so they can harness the technology better. So when everything is surprising, nothing is. I like that. Yeah. Sorry. How about you? Yeah. So here in the day to day, I have been interacting with different stakeholders from different departments. And we are we are creating the awareness for them how automation works, and we are taking some of the real real, real business process from them and showing showing the use of RPA and their once it is automated, they are surprised, and they are not believed they couldn't believe it is automated. And we are we are explaining them these all are automated. It it can be automated easily, so no need to worry. So we are empowering them towards the automation. Beautiful. Love that. Thank you so much. All fascinating insights. Thank you so much, everyone. It's really clear to me and I think to everybody that soft skills and communication are just as important as the code and the flows, in Blue Prism itself. So let's get into nitty gritty then. What is one challenge you're all wrestling with right now, and how are you tackling it? Syed, let's go to you first. For, if you ask me for one challenge, it is the, data structure of different files. If you say we are having we are automating different kinds of files, maybe with a large volume of data, Maybe it's a text file, a PDF file, or Excel file. And the data is not, not not not constant for all the process, and we have to think intelligently how can we make this, data into a into usable data with our Blue Prism or RPA so that, it can be, do all all all the tasks that are related to the application. The data is here main, challenge for me that I am getting focused on. Nice. General, how about you? So for me, the really challenge is just facing this miss misconception around AI and motivation taking over people's job. I'm working on the vendor side, and we always talk to our clients. And getting them on board sometimes is a bit tricky, and that's the that's the thing. Right? And just because of this misconception that we're trying to debunk today, so hopefully, people can understand what his benefits are. And I think I am always bringing up some good examples around there because we have some automation that we did in the past where the human is really doing this. They are really expert at what they're doing. But since they started doing the RPA or automating things, finally, the human find the time to take their personal time off, which they're really longing for. So once we have gone live, they took, like I think it was, like, a week or two time off, and everything was so refreshing afterwards. And that's so fulfilling. It's for me, it's always a good story to share that these things can really bring wonder and not taking over you. I I I love that. And we we did a similar thing recently in the, in the Blue Prism community. We had some back end tasks that we needed to automate, and it enabled us to get to some of our backlog that we've been waiting to tackle for quite a while. So similar story here too. Mohammed, how about you? What's one challenge you're facing right now, and how are you overcoming it? Actually, one challenge that that we are facing facing it now. So it's the implementation of, AI, brick in our process, RPA process. But we need to ensure all business construct constraint are respected. Something like, confidentiality, security, because we cannot send, the data customer to to some, LLM, for example, LLM server. So we need to implement a cloud, etcetera. So that's that's a real challenge for us today. Yep. Risk and governance is is something I think everybody is is is thinking really carefully about and and rightly so. So thank you so much for highlighting that. And then finally, Lindsay, to you, what what what challenges are you facing right now? Yeah. One opportunity we're really tackling right now is stealing. How do we take some of the great work we've done in some of the areas of our organization and, deliver that to other teams, bring value to them quickly because we've got the experience. So that's, one thing we're really diving into and and trying to figure out how we can, do the most to help our organization. Nice. Love that. Okay then. One last question in this section, and I think it's a really important one, especially for any automation team members who are listening right now, leaders of automation teams, coaches, mentors. What's an underrated skill or mindset that has helped you to succeed in either your automation in delivery of automations or in your automation career so far? Let's actually, let's go back to you, Lindsay, for this one. Yeah. If I had to sum it up in one phrase, I think it would be we can automate that, but should we? And I think it goes both ways. Sort of that idea of, you know, is automation the right tool? Have we fully evaluated it? But also, how do you advocate for automation as the right solution? There's lots of great opportunities and other tools out there. And sometimes automation really is the right fit from cost and budget, but, maybe not always the flashiest or dewist. So I think that's a really important mindset is have you think critically about what solutions you're delivering and and how to apply automation effectively. I love that. Don't make it down out to County Floss. Beautiful. Mhmm. Gerald, how about you? For me, I think, generated skills right here is just people always think that when you're doing the automation, it comes with a lot of coding and hard coding and stuff. But in my point of view, people should always someone who's jumping into this automation role, especially the developer roles, could there should be a proper business analysis or technical, not really heavy technical, but more of like a business acumen, understanding of the business. Because the way we automate, we're trying to reinvent things or engineer things to allow the robot to do the job, not really creating something new, if that makes sense. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Mohammed, over to you. Like Lindsay said in one phrase, I think we need for me, we need to be curious and ask ourself, why do I do I need to automate this task with this use case? Maybe I can I can just simplify it and avoid automation? So I think we need to be curious and understand the business case, the functionality parts. Love that. And finally, sorry. For me, yeah, just Jena already answered for answered for my my question here. So whenever, we are taking a process walk through from the business, so we are having a lot of, thinking in our minds when it comes to development. So we might be thinking, how can we, automate this part with the help of coding? Yeah. We don't have some of the features in any one of the RPA tool. So in such scenarios, we have to be in a a more intellectual thinking, and we have to, don't depend on only any one of the RPA automation tool. We have to think beyond, with the help of coding such as csharp, .net, or PowerShell, crypt, Python. These all are changing the game, with the help of automation for bringing the platform into one stage. Love that. Thank you so, so much. Really appreciate it. Okay. We are going to hand over back now to my wonderful cohost, Brian, for the next segment. So over to you, Brian. Thanks, Michael. So my next question is for Lindsay. We started hearing more about AgenTic automation. What does that mean in your world? Yeah. The way I heard it put, within our organization is agentic is the evolution of automation. So we're really good to see that partnership of agentic and RPA, to deliver those agentic automations that will expand, our impact and our value delivered. Great. Yeah. I hear similar stories from one of my customers. And then, Sayeed, same thing. What what does agentic mean in your world? This has been a hot topic everywhere. Okay. Everywhere in every organization, how agentic is playing a major role in RPA or any other business areas. Everyone is curious, but, yes, we are still trying to, implement this genetic with the help of RPA. But, yeah, this this is in the road map. We are still planning. Right. Great. Thanks for sharing. So, Janel, what what do you see automation evolving in the next year or two? It's it's it's really happening now, but it's gonna be continuing. I believe AI and RPA will continue to collaborate as we move along. For as a matter of fact, even in our company, we have built our own AI tool. We call it Angelica AI. So Angelica AI is like a large language model that's specializing in machine learning and enabling natural human like, like, language understanding, complex queries interpretation, and doing some informed decision for for us, which is really augmenting on how the RPA works and helping things to, what do you call this? I'm trying to write it right. But it's just trying to enhance things up in the RPA space. I believe in the next, year or so, it will be more a lot of these things where RPA will be dealing more and a lot more with AI, and they will continue to work collaboratively to do some really awesome, automation in the world. I agree with you. That's great. I appreciate that. And and then so, Mohammed, question for you. What scares or excites you most about the future of automation? It's not scare, not afraid, but, with perspective. I know that every technology and every invention, has its own weakness, and I'm very excited to explore, the weakness of smart automation. Actually, I have an idea about, the weakness of smart automation. It could be, the data business quality. It could be the complexity of the process. It could be also the of, the automated process, but I'm not really sure, because it's an idea, but I don't have the real answer. But I will discover it. I'm sure. Yeah. Okay. I think it's great insight to what a lot of people probably struggling with right now. So, I think a lot of people in the same journey as you are. Thanks, Mohammed. So I will, I think, pass this back over to you, Michael. So those were some amazing, closing thoughts. Thank you so much, everybody. And, Brian, thank you for guiding us through what the future of automation might look like, some truly exciting ideas from our panelists there. But on that note, we are at time. So, Syed, Jenold, Lindsay, Mohammed, on behalf of SSSC Blue Prism and our entire community, thank you so much for your time, your expertise, and for sharing the reality of automation delivery with us today. For everybody watching, you can find our MVPs and tons of other resources within the SSC Blue Prism community. We'll be sure to share links with you, so drop by and have a look. Our wonderfully friendly community are brilliant at giving advice and solving tricky challenges or even just cheerleading the work that you're doing. We really look forward to welcoming you into our forums or one of our global local user group meetups. If you missed any part of this webinar or you want to share it with your team, don't worry. We will be sharing the recording and a follow-up link with everyone who registered in the next few days. So from Brian, from me, and from our wonderful panel of automation realists, thank you again for joining this special edition of Lunch and Learn. Whether you celebrate the spooky season or not, we hope you have a wonderful month end. Thank you for being part of our community, and we'll see you next time. Thank you, wonderful MVPs, for joining us. Take care. Take care. Thank you, sir. Thank you, everyone.