RPA has passed its peaky hype and we're now staring into reality for the first time in 6 years. And it's a messy picture.... the market has largely bought into three software tools and tens of thousands of people have invested a significant amount of their time training themselves on them. 

However, beyond scripts and bots and dreams of digital workers scaling up rapidly to provide reams of value, most enterprises are fast coming to the realization that they need an actual process automation platform capability that ingests their data, visualizes it, machine learns it, contextualizes it and finally automates it.  Essentially, the whole lifecycle of data components needs to be integrated into a single platform in order to take maximum advantage out of automating processes through scripts, bots and APIs.

AntWorks comes out of the closet to make its integrated automation play, taking the fight to the Big 3

Fresh off a series A round of funding with SBI Investment Co in July 2018, AntWorks has come out of the 2019 gate ready to up their profile and expand their enterprise footprint for their brand of intelligent automation. And why not choose the lovely island of the Maldives to press home its vision for its Process Automation Platform that integrates data ingestion, visualization, machine vision and RPA...

Having tracked the product for several years, and also researching the lions share of early adopters of automation products, AntWorks' machine vision is an outstanding product, and Fractal math has significant advantages over Bayesian. Visiting with the core team just last week, having them show how it can extract text from images within images is something that can provide a huge edge in the market as users wise up to what they really need to integrate data. One of their use cases involves taking a picture of a coupon flyer to find out intel on what products are being promoted, special packaging, size, flavors, dates of promo etc.. They can tell you, for example, how many ounces are on a Pringles can in an image on an image on an image (label on a can in coupon on a page of coupons).

Yes, this really is slick stuff, and last year 350 users of automation products show how AntWorks is stacking up when it comes to embedded intelligence:

Click to Enlarge

Five things enterprises evaluating intelligent integrated automation platforms should know about AntWorks

While HFS has been tracking AntWorks since early 2017, this was its first "official" analyst briefing. We took away a variety of facts as well as future direction and strategy points. Here are the five things we learned that we consider relevant to enterprises evaluating intelligent automation tech and partners:

1) Its platform offers up integrated intelligent automation – AntWork’s ANTstein platform consists of modular components including “cognitive machine reading (CMR)” sort of a computer vision meets machine learning-based smart OCR, RPA , and a smart analytics components. While these are available piecemeal, they are designed to work together. The primary client entry point today is with its CMR module. So rather than adding AI to RPA, AntWorks adds RPA to AI. HFS created our Triple-A Trifecta framework (eg: RPA, AI, and smart analytics) to make the point that you can start anywhere with intelligent automation, but our research shows most firms start with RPA and then can struggle with scale. Clients that start with CMR are tackling unstructured data which can then help unlock greater functionality with RPA downstream. ANTstein offers a path to integration which can enable end-to-end work flows and the potential for the coveted scaling of IA. AntWorks is launching its new version of ANTstein, Square, imminently.

2) Its machine learning engine leverages fractal data science rather than neural – While the sciences are different, why it matters to enterprises is that you can train some business process algorithms faster as there are finite sets of patterns and outcomes in many business processes. Fractal science tends to work best with a finite set of outcomes, rather than infinite, where neural would be more appropriate.

3) Innate process and verticalization depth – AntWorks’ leadership team came from the BPO industry (eg: Infosys BPO, WNS, Capita, Mphasis BPO), where deep understanding of business processes is essential. This deep process knowledge in the areas being automated by enterprises today is largely lacking from most AI and RPA software companies. AntWorks is applying this process focus to develop domain-specific use cases for horizontals like finance and accounting and HR and more notably industry-specific use cases like title search in mortgage or claims processing in insurance. The service provider community has really been bridging the gap between intelligent automation software and domain knowledge to create end-to-end workflows. AntWorks’ domain use cases bridge its full stack and demonstrate the potential of integrated IA.  

4) RPA innovation – While AntWorks missed the first wave of RPA, it is working to offer RPA product improvements in areas clients are grappling with such as bot productivity to ensure its relevancy. Its forthcoming Square release of ANTstein is purported to enable dynamic reallocation of idle bots and multi-tenancy of multiple bots on one machine. One of their clients in attendance at the event indicated this would be a major resource saver.

5) Bot cloning – As many enterprises have already invested in one or more of the leading RPA software players, AntWorks needs a value proposition beyond follow the leader RPA. An interesting concept they are working on is “bot cloning” – essentially replicating existing bots and porting them over to their platform. Given its current focus on unlocking unstructured data for enterprises as their lead selling point, this may create a logical bridge to RPA as long as it works. As enterprises increasingly focus on outcomes rather than the enabling technology, this may create some conversion opportunities as enterprises look for ease of integration to enable end-to-end workflows.

Bottom line: AntWorks offers a path to integrated intelligent automation, provided enterprises embrace its full stack. One more large round of funding and it will be a real force 

Go global with its platform play. AntWorks, fuelled by funding and early client success, is making a major push to take its product to market globally. While its full stack platform offers enterprises a tangible path to integrated intelligent automation, the reality is that today they are best known for their cognitive machine reading capabilities. AntWorks needs to continue to focus on its domain expertise which has the greatest potential to showcase end-to-end workflows that work across its stack – essentially showing intelligent automation in action (the Triple-A Trifecta). Currently, there are a lot of piecemeal IA tools in the market that requires custom integration to tie them together to enable straight-through processing of automated workflows. As enterprises grow weary of having to continually piece together the components that enable intelligent automation, the focus on tools will become more about what delivers the best results and can scale. AntWorks’ investment in people and expanded geographic footprint will help take the message to a broader range of prospects outside its core client case in Asia Pacific. Additionally, the firm needs work on its global channel strategy. A solid network of partners, particularly strong service partners who understand the tech and value proposition, can help AntWorks reach a broader range of prospects. 

Secure more investment funds to fight for a limited supply of talent. What's needed next is a significant second round of funding, not dissimilar to those being ingested by UiPath, Automation Anywhere and more recently Blue Prism.  The sales team, under the experienced leadership of Bill Schrank, need added firepower, and AntWorks needs to prove its RPA story aggressively... how can they truly bring it all together and negate the need for enterprises to purchase expensive RPA licenses when ANTstein provides it all for them in a one-stop solution?  And finding the talent is tough as the Big 3 currently soak up any semi-decent professional with a pulse capable of understanding and communicating the value of integrated automation.

Combat "RPA fatigue" to re-energize a weary and frustrated market.  Too many enterprises have been oversold the same old story of no-code and the fact this is supposed to be "easy".  So Ash and his crew need to make the case that clients of AA, BP and Ui can jump ship without losing face.  In addition, weary service providers and advisors need to be convinced to put similar resources into AntWorks that they already have into the others.

Posted in: Analytics and Big Data,  Robotic Process Automation,  Intelligent Automation

The future is so exciting, we need to focus on our disruptive talent to make it all happen... just like the Blue-footed Booby!

Posted in: Confusing Outsourcing Information

I just couldn’t resist the annual pilgrimage to Mumbai to experience the Indian IT elite’s gathering, in the case my concerns that the offshore-centric IT service delivery industry was getting complacent were misplaced.  Sadly, they were not.

It has been two years since the NASSCOM leadership forum of sell-side IT execs was held in Mumbai (after a pretty disastrous diversion in Hyderabad last year), so it was pretty obvious that attendance was clearly down, compared to two years’ ago.  Am sure numbers will be reported otherwise, but it was pretty easy to navigate the entire venue without having to resort to the traditional scrimmage position to hack through the usual sea of people.

My takeaways:

The atmosphere was “relaxed”.  Seriously.  The traditional urgency has somehow dissipated to this bizarre - almost chilled-out - mindset from most of the people there.  “Aren’t you guys worried about Brexit or this Chinese/US trade war escalating.  Surely that could really hurt Indian service delivery?”.  Most people just shrugged.  No-one seems to care that much anymore… everything is just fine, and, I hate to say it…. BORING.

Digital as a term is done.  Yes, even in India.  After the last few years of digital overdosing, the only time the word is now uttered is when an Indian provider exec explains that “half their revenues are now digital”. 

“AI” is the new Digital.  And absolutely no one can define it.  Great.  Hurry up Quantum…

Service providers fell into two camps:  inspiring and downright awful.  Yes, we literally hammered our way through 30 meetings and I can honestly report that about a third were truly inspired conversations… the other two-thirds were dull as dishwater.  Some came to us with a precise vision and focus, others literally had nothing to say beyond “we’re doing OK”. There was nothing in between.

There is a depressing lack of service delivery disruption.  All the execs wanted to pitch was their amazing new pricing models that incorporated some RPA and some type of “outcome” pricing.  Few were pushing their ability to disrupt actual service delivery with a next-generation talent development strategy. Few were talking about how they were helping clients with innovative role development, with change management programs, with co-investment plans, with the re-platforming of IT for their clients.  And no-one was talking about investments in cognitive assistants and blockchain… it was all about dumb RPA bots and new-fangled pricing models that helped them win deals. Who is advising these people?  Don’t they – at least - talk to decent analysts anymore to tune up their messages?

Where were the CEOs?  We got visits from Salil Parekh (Infosys), C.P. Gurnani (Tech Mahindra) and mid-cap CEOs Keshav Murugesh (WNS) and Nitin Rakesh (Mphasis).  In addition, we were treated to Accenture’s CTO Paul Daugherty, which was welcome… and Capgemini’s Thierry Delaporte, co-COO (and potentially the next CEO) did manage to make the trip. However… Cognizant, HCL, Genpact and TCS all failed to serve up any C-Suite royalty. 

Isn’t this supposed to be India’s premier IT event?  And what about IBM and DXC, two of the largest IT employers in the country?  I don’t think a single leadership soul from those giants made the effort.  Not to mention Deloitte, EY, PwC… all huge beneficiaries of Indian IT talent.  Where were they?

Where were the RPA dignitaries?  Considering RPA was pretty much the most discussed topic this week, apart from AntWorks co-founder Govind Sandhu and a rumored sighting of Automation Anywhere’s Mihir Shukla, they all gave this conference a wide berth.  Considering the Indian IT service provider channel probably represents the largest growth opportunity for the RPAs, this was a huge miss from them.  And from NASSCOM for not inviting them along.

What happened to the analysts?  Aside from single individuals from Gartner and Forrester, only a handful of lower tiers analysts were seen parked in the meeting lounge desperately trying to pitch their wares to Indian marketing folks (pretending to be excited by them). Even the HFS trends session was thrust into an obscure breakout room that ended up with wall-to-wall standing and disappointed people being turned away.  When I mentioned to some NASSCOM folks that it “may have been wiser to stick us on the main stage”, the response was “We’re truly sorry, but we have to be careful not to upset the other analysts”.  As if anyone would have cared… there were hardly any there in any case… and when did the feisty Indian IT monster of yesterday worry about upsetting a few people?

Thank god for Rishad!  The one truly bright shining light was the effervescent Rishad Premji gracing the halls, bouncing around on stage, talking to everyone he could, even having beers with his buddies in the hotel bar.  Someone with a vision, oodles of passion… saving the day for a tired old show that badly needs a facelift.  I must apologize to my friends at Wipro, but can you just let this guy run for PM?

The Bottom-line: It’s time to change the Indian IT record… or this industry will be disrupted by… something else

I can recall all the way back to my first NASSCOM invitation in 2002… this was THE event of the year, back then.  Anyone in IT services who meant anything just had to be there. This thing literally used to be Davos for global IT.  Now it appears to be descending into a microcosm of an Indian IT industry bordered on complacency… content to make quarterly numbers and little else. 

Having spent time, in recent months, at industry events in the US and emerging European locations, something is going wrong in India. Is Indian IT losing its luster?  Has it settled for what is has… losing its ambition to keep disrupting the world of technology, like it did so magnificently between 1995 and 2015?  Will we see IT services firms headquartered outside of India creating the next big shift, leveraging more talent from emerging locations such as Ukraine, Poland, Russia, South America and China… and lessening their reliance on India? 

Posted in: IT Outsourcing / IT Services,  Outsourcing Events

Posted in: Policy and Regulations

Bathgate.  Alastair Bathgate... Unshaken and stirring the pot, but doing it his way

Anyone who's known Blue Prism CEO and Co-Founder Alastair Bathgate over the years has seen a marked change in his executive presence, especially since the IPO two years ago.  While he still insists on driving his Volvo SUV, while his buddies are prancing around in fancy Aston Martins and Bentleys, he is a more assured and confident individual than the chap I first met seven years ago, when we first alerted the world to RPA.  Yes, he still has the same honest style and just tells you what he thinks, but there’s a certaswagger about him now – he sees the future of his firm and is hell-bent on taking it there.  And yes, if only he could use his wine pricing app for RPA, all his problems would be solved =)

In short, it's been a mildly frustrating couple of years for RPA’s early mover and market maker, Blue Prism… the firm was the first (and still only the first) pureplay RPA firm to go public, with every dollar spent being visible,  all staff moves closely scrutinized, and a CEO who’s had to divide his time between board meetings and investor days instead of harassing the conference circuit as aggressively as his rivals.

Meanwhile, while some of his competitors have been in stealth mode, raising all sorts of private investment and offering licensing models that appear (on the surface) a lot cheaper, while selling the “This is easy, this is no/low code, we can train you in weeks and get you a nice certificate to share with your friends on LinkedIn”.  This is what I personally detest about the software business… anyone can sell dreams, confuse executives too scared to ask critical questions like “how exactly does this work again?” especially when you have the lovely term “robotics” to excite greedy CFOs and CEOs eager to find new ways to increase margins.

'Refusing to get carried away' may have hurt Blue Prism in the short-term

Cutting to the chase, the Blue Prism team has stuck together for almost a couple of decades and has stayed true to its very British style of keeping the discussion realistic, refusing to get too carried away with the hype and the fantastical stories gripping many starry-eyed executives eager to slap RPA success on their CVs... not unlike the SAP and Oracle roll-outs of the 90s and Workday and Salesforce escapades of the last decade. 

Now it’s all about stitching the wonderful skills of building scripts, macros, document processing and screen scrapes with the emerging excitement of Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Augmented Reality and Computer Vision.  Yes, folks, you thought the hype-train of the past 30 years was bad, the one we’re venturing into is going to drive many of us completely nuts. 

It’s been pretty hard for Alastair Bathgate not to get irritated by the challenge of his highly-visible firm taking pot-shots from other firms, playing on the excitement this market is generating, promising enterprise clients dreams that will likely turn into nightmares when they set their expectations to achieve outcomes their staff simply do not have the skills to achieve – with a hodge-podge of processes far too messed up to fix, simply by slapping new software components over the top. 

However, Blue Prism’s low-hype, pragmatic approach could pay attractive dividends as the hype-phase dissipates and fresh investments are made in re-thinking the whole RPA/AI model

While his firm may not have been quite as successful as UiPath in forging lucrative partnerships with professional services firms and lacks some of the terrific messaging and vision of Automation Anywhere… while having to tackle a publicly-listed firm persona and widespread (unjustified) confusion over its pricing model, you have to credit Alastair, Dave Moss, Pat Geary and Martin Flood for sticking to their knitting and focusing on what they know best – keeping the conversational balanced and realistic and investing in the sales and technical talent they believe they need to keep developing their product.

It went unnoticed to many that Blue Prism recently landed a $130m investment round.  What excites me about this investment is the firm will actually get the money over the next two years and we can see exactly where it is going… on its product-specific developers in Manchester and an exciting new group of research in London, where 25 crack AI thinkers will be working hard to take Blue Prism’s solution into the place it needs to go. The firm already has a diverse group of 250 salespeople... now it can focus on the development areas that hold the key to who will ultimately will this automation arms race.

Upping its RDA game and expanding its presence in Japan are immediate needs that it needs to deliver

In addition, the firm is working hard to fill the gaps in its current solutions… while it prides itself of the back office unattended automation, if has suffered at the hands of AA and UiPath when it comes to very RDA-centric (Robotic Desktop Automation) engagements (what we call “unattended watched RPA”). 

Plans to release (in version 6.5) document processing capabilities to support end-to-end processing of document workflows which also acts as an OCR system to classify documents, extract key-value pairs and encode verification steps into the digitization process, could well propel the firms back to the front of the market as the reality of delivery exceed these dreams of great visions. In addition, Blue Prism plans to deliver full Japanese and simplified Chinese language capabilities with this new version release… essential add-ons as it plays catch-up to UiPath in this region.

The Bottom-Line:  The real work starts now as RPA evolves to become a key component of the AI tool kit

The stark reality we’re currently facing is getting ahead of market confusion to forge genuine learning journeys for ourselves, our careers and our companies.  At our AI-enabling Operations roundtable last week in New York, we all agreed that AI is Nascent, New, Hard … but it is, most certainly, Inevitable.

The most important clarity that most organizations have gained over the last several months is that AI is not some monolithic thing or a singular technology.  Instead, we’ve come to understand AI as a toolkit, or “a bucket of stuff” that enterprises can use to make their operations more intelligent; building blocks that include various elements of foundational AI moving across a spectrum toward more packaged solutions. 

The one common denominator among the executives was that they were all determinedly seeking to evolve their experiences from RPA to join the dots to the next steps of achieving enterprise-wide automation and AI capability… essentially integrating the tools and hatching a real plan to get it done.  This is where the likes of Blue Prism, Automation Anywhere, UiPath, Pega, Kofax, and AntWorks need to head next; building on the RPA digitization to create real solutions that go far beyond scripts and bots… solutions that can help re-invent the underlying institutional processes that have held back firms for years.

Posted in: Cognitive Computing,  Robotic Process Automation,  Intelligent Automation

Let's get to the point: most of the past five years have borne witness to our industry postulate on the why and what of digital (and many still do).  It's time to focus on the how.

Unlike the wild grandiose claims from most services and tech providers that everything they do, these days, is "Digital"... it is far, far more than simply investing in new technologies.  Digital is about embracing interactive technologies, mobile, social and analytics to drive new revenue and customer experiences, as well as harmonizing business silos to support these digital outcomes.

However, success in digital initiatives is much less about technology adoption... and much more about people and culture, and the ability to manage that change. Code errors can always be fixed, workflows stitched together, apps integrated... but taking enterprise teams through the whole volatile experience, helping their staff learn new techniques, creating an environment where an enterprise can keep evolving on its own accord, and not rely on armies of consultants until perpetuity, is how we evaluate the performance of today's ambitious service providers. 

With this evaluation objective in mind, HFS shortlisted and assessed 10 leading providers: Accenture, Capgemini, Cognizant, EY, Genpact, IBM, Infosys, KPMG, TCS, and Wipro across the following five dimensions of digital-change prowess:

1. Embracing emerging change agents;

2. Creating true partnerships;

3. Promoting the principles of OneOffice;

4. Enabling change management for digital labor;

5. Driving real business outcomes.

Click the table to view more detail

For a limited time, we are making our new report: "The Top 10 Digital Change Management Service Providers" completely free to HFS subscribers. (Click to download)

Posted in: Digital Transformation,  Digital OneOffice,  Sourcing Change Management

There aren't too many people who can boast to be one of the true pioneers of the emerging robotic process industry, or whatever we end up calling it, but one man who didn't need to recreate his resume in 2017 is Francis Carden, one of the original brains behind recreating desktop automation to become Robotic Desktop Automation (RDA) which is such a key component of the broader RPA offerings attracting so much noise and attention today.  And he now leads the whole robotics strategy for customer engagement and data orchestration giant Pega. 

Francis - a British Floridian these days - is never one to hold back, and when one cynic mercilessly described some of today's RPA rollouts as "lipstick on a pig" at our recent New York FORA event, he just had to take it one stage further to declare them as "lipstick on a pig's arse".  So without further ado, let's hear from the granddaddy of RDA himself...

Phil Fersht (CEO, HFS Research):  Francis - firstly, tell us about the OpenSpan business you co-founded and how this evolved to the acquisition by Pega?

Francis Carden (VP, Digital Automation and Robotics at Pegasystems): In 2004, a group of “tech head” advanced windows operating system engineers approached me about forming a company using an automation technology vastly different from anything proceeding it. It let companies rapidly automate, through the Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) of windows applications, any task or process that a normally would be done by a human on their desktop.

On first hearing of it, I had to laugh and said to myself, “It sounds like screen scraping.” I didn’t believe what they were proposing was even possible.  But I did a deeper investigation into the background of these engineers and the technology and found it both unique and incredible. So I bought in – and even invested a significant amount myself. Today, we label our RPA technology “Deep Robotics” given it is so different. 

In 2005 we started OpenSpan and over the next three years, as CEO, we convinced a consortium of Atlanta technology angels and then attracted four Tier 1 VC firms that what we had was something different. The customer base grew rapidly. Our patented technology started life as being called “Surface Integration” because it was so different from screen scrapers of the past (and current RPA). But we quickly settled on “Desktop Automation” (known today as RDA), and “Automation Broker” (known singularly today as RPA). We ended up implementing most of the world’s largest RPA projects over the next 10 years.

Then Pega acquired OpenSpan in 2016. Pega recognized our RPA approach was markedly different from any other RPA vendor. After we got talking, I realized our unique technology would be even stronger if it were part of something “bigger.”

What I mean by that is organizations on the digital transformation journey shouldn’t aspire to RPA as the end game. You really need to look at RPA as a short-term plug to fill the gaps on the road to get there. When you deploy RPA, you’re just masking the poor processes behind it. And when application UI changes, the bots are prone to break. It might be weird to hear me – an RPA vendor - say that. But it’s the truth.

And that’s where Pega’s digital process automation (DPA) software comes into play. Pega enables you to digitally architect those processes the right way, from the ground up. No more organizational silos, no more inefficiencies, no more needlessly manual processes … and really, no need for RPA to always be the first option. RPA gives you a digital automation jump start, and when it’s time to deploy DPA, those bots can be put out to pasture.

And the good news, at least for us, is that everyone is on a digital transformation (One office as HFS call it Phil) journey, and it really never ends. RPA and DPA are the perfect one-two punch. So the tie up and combined value prop with Pega was, and has been, an ideal match.

You've been the undeclared granddaddy of RDA, so what is the key "difference" between RDA and RPA... unattended and attended... etc?

Imagine if every compiled windows application ever built allowed itself to be automated from within its own code, robustly and in real-time. You wouldn’t need any RPA, right? However, very few apps running on windows are easily automatable at the UI layer – at least, without resorting to screen scraping techniques like MSAA, UI automation and OCR. 

In 2005, we patented a more sophisticated approach to UI automations – a “plug-in” like architecture that enabled any compiled windows application and all its objects to be non-invasively automatable in a single architecture. This “deep robotics” automation occurs inside the windows layer, inside the memory of the machine, and runs as if the original developer of that application had natively built it.  This plug-in like approach automates at the application’s original speed (10x to 100x faster than scraping), highly robustly, and far less susceptible to application UI changes. More importantly, and hence the dual name “attended RPA,” it even allows the desktop worker to use their machine, keyboard, and mouse while the automations are running. This is something unheard for old school scrapers and other RPA products. It is this pure form of RPA that also enables it to be used as RDA, giving every worker their own personal robot or “co-bot” to automate from one percent to 90 percent of their work. Agile RPA. And only then, after you’ve rolled out RDA, should you look at those same processes ready for full automation with RPA (unattended as opposed to attended) operations.

Before the Pega acquisition and continuing since, we have 100s of 1000s of bots deployed across some of the world’s largest enterprises in all industries. By the way Phil, being a Grand-daddy makes me feel old, but I did calculate that I’ve been doing automation of the UI for 20 million minutes of my life!

So what happens next as RPA (assume RPA includes RDA here) moves from "tinkering" to broader enterprise adoption - where do you see clients finding the most value, and how can they scale their people and tech platforms to accommodate?

Good question, Phil, and the key word to the question is “tinkering’ – which is how most RPA vendors excuse themselves, after 10 years of trying, for not getting many customers to really scale or still stuck in pilot stages.  

It is hard to believe, looking at the crazy RPA vendor valuations today, but yes, most RPA projects are tiny compared to scope of the company’s using them. RPA is not new, so the real question enterprises need to ask is, “What’s stopping this large-scale adoption across the globe, and why do RPA vendors keep insisting it’s because it’s new” 

Attended RPA (RDA) scales -- that’s a fact. It automates all the easy stuff in an agile way. But RPA unattended constantly struggles with trying to automate everything, both the easy and the hard stuff. Putting RPA band-aids on top of old and tired processes is just wrong for the long term. As Gartner says, “RPA is a tax on legacy,” but businesses are often so enamored by the hype.

But the thing is, RPA will indeed scale if it’s part of something bigger. RPA is tactical to the extreme. Digital transformation is strategic. What happens though if you combine the two? This is where software robotics shines. Using RPA and RDA to plug gaps that currently prevent digital transformation allows business and IT to align to solve the real problems. This gets you real and rapid ROI from RPA out of the gate, but equally, it encourages planning to then “fire” the robots as fast as you deploy them. Not something you’ll hear other RPA vendors promote Phil. With robotic automation capabilities embedded and fully integrated into the heart of Pega’s DPA, we are seeing enterprises really changing the way they compete in a race to become them most digital company in their market(s). Analog companies, using tactical RPA only as the glue, or those not buying into your one-office analogy, will simply not survive.

Francis, we're seeing some tentative moves from "big iron" ERP vendors such as SAP into the process automation space, but do they really want to delve into this world, or are they merely ticking the "we have an RPA module" box?

Like I said, if all new applications were built to be truly digital and open, then there is no need for RPA at all. But we’re living in the real world here. While we wait for that to happen, the real “transformation” vendors selling the digital dream need to be able to use tactical technologies like RPA to help their customers plug the (hopefully) short term gaps. This gives customers quick relief where they are strangled by their legacy systems with no other integration capability. If a vendor doesn’t have this kind of automation, this sets the customers up for failure – they need to automate now to compete, not six or 12 months from now when your big overhaul project is finally done.

There are now 30+ RPA vendors, but I think the bubble will burst on these companies riding the hype wave. Most of them use many of the same old scraping technologies, and none of them have a unified DPA play to help companies for the long term. I’m not sure how long these RPA companies will be able stand on their own. Consider that Pega now includes bots as a standard capability of our DPA platform. We’ll give you all the bundled bots you need as part of your DPA strategy. So yes, we’ll likely see more consolidation in this market.

And how do you see the "blending" if classical RPA with some of these newer AI products on the market?  It feels to me that RPA has really evolved from the process/operations side of the business, while AI is some magical vision being pushed hard by IT, but lacks in real business applications?  What is real versus fantasy in your view?

This is the biggest myth of RPA. The idea that AI will help accelerate getting RPA to scale. It’s a red-herring perpetuated only by those in the RPA industry. No bias there then!! I concur with you Phil that AI is central to becoming a truly digital company. However, the idea of using AI with RPAdoesn’t fly – at least not right now. AI must live central to anything an enterprise does, everywhere. AI needs data, and LOTS of it. But very little of that will come because of RPA.

In order for AI to be really valuable, it needs data from as many systems as possible as well as data feeds from interactions with as many customers as possible, in real-time or extremely fast. Only then can you use AI start to predict what customers are going to do and/or create models that make the best decision for each individual customer. RPA would likely touch less than 1 percent of 1 percent of that data, so if anything, the RPA world is embarrassing themselves by trying to join these two tactical vs. highly strategic dots.

Don’t get me wrong, AI can create work for RPA bots, and maybe some RPA feeds some data into AI, but that doesn’t make RPA Intelligent. At the heart of AI is a digital company with data feeds from every source feeding into it. The DPA (one-office) movement is joining real transformation technologies together, acting as one, with AI at the center. The vendors that have DPA are the ones delivering IT and business on the promises of the past – a real digital company – and envy of their peers!

Thanks for the insights, Francis... we'll be watching Pega closely in this space this year as the market finds its sea-legs... and some more attractive lipstick!

Posted in: Digital OneOffice,  Robotic Process Automation

There’s nothing more jarring than an ex-Gartner analyst desperate to continue dining off a legacy analyst industry that is actually trying to change. And lo and behold, Just before the Christmas break, a blog emerged on LinkedIn with an enviably click-baity title ‘Is Gartner research quality under threat?’.  

Simon Levin, a Gartner Alum and owner of a boutique business “The Skills Connection” that helps tech vendors lobby their way through the Gartner and Forrester MQ and Wave processes, plies his trade on the fact he “knows” how to work his friends at Gartner, to help his vendor clients get their dots edged in a more positive direction for the firm.  And why not?  If I was a CMO, and lobbing Simon some moolah can help get some sort of leg-up in the process, I’d probably give him a shot.  And however you performed, there is no doubt Simon will claim it would have been worse without him.  It’s like that hair product “Rogain” that claims to slow down hair-loss… you’d never really know if it actually helped unless you went completely bald…

 Simon makes the case that now most his former Gartner buddies he worked with in the 90’s are being quietly “retired” and replaced with a new breed of youthful analysts, and their

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Posted in: None

It's not everyday you can find a prolific industry expert, living and breathing AI and IT services, who wants to return to the analyst industry to make her mark.  So when a former Gartner legend - and one of the brains behind the market development of Wipro Holmes - was eyeing a return to the analyst fold, we didn't need too much encouragement when Tapati Bandopadhyay came calling...

Phil Fersht (CEO, HFS Research): Welcome Tapati! Can you share a little about your background and why you have chosen research and strategy as your career path?

Tapati Bandopadhyay (VP Research, HFS Research): First of all, thanks for giving me this opportunity Phil, to get back to my favorite world of analysts and research, in a firm that can make any enthusiastic 40+ feel like a 20 something again!

I have been a nerd all my life, and very proudly so. I wrote my first year PhD exams when my girls were 2 and 1-year old and I used to study for the exams from 12 to 4 at night and loved every moment of it. Even now, I cannot get sleep if I don’t read at least 20 pages of something completely new, something to anticipate and to be excited about when I wake up the next morning!

In last ten years I have probably taken the Strength-Finder 2.0 test at least three times, and each time my top two strengths remained exactly the same: Futuristic and Analytical. I think I am destined to be a research analyst and strategist! The upside of it has two key aspects: 1- analysts are future-makers, if we don’t push the real to the imaginary and back, the art of the possible is not likely to transform into the science of the real anytime soon; and 2- in addition to being future-proof and creatively bot-proof, analysts’ jobs are also recession-proof, as we can apply our analytical skills to find cheaper ways to do things with same or even better quality.

What are the areas and topics that you’re focusing on in your analyst role with us?

AI is my area of strength and there’s so much going on currently that I think we in the research and analyst world have a great responsibility right now, to clear up the clutter and let people focus on what’s real vs. what’s plain hype. Never losing sight of the Big Picture is becoming increasingly difficult in this technology-blurred world of “AI-defined everything”. While I love all the math models and algorithms and routinely devour new research papers in areas like deep belief nets, XAI, NLG, or imagination augmented AI, ultimately we have to keep it simple and human-centric. Only then all this technology hullabaloo will start making real business sense.

AI and IoT are highly connected, especially with 5G becoming mainstream in 2020 and even 6G at the works to come in by 2025-2028. Therefore I will be quite actively tracking the IoT space, chasing Nicola Tesla’s 1926 dream of creating a world-wide human-machine combined brain, which will become real when we achieve the next level of HFS OneOffice- the hyperconnected intelligent enterprise.

Talking about Things, I will cover the manufacturing and industry 4.0 research agenda too. I have always loved machines- be it those mammoth hydraulic presses at the Tata Motors truck factory, or the precision drilling machines at GEC Marine Glasgow. Manufacturing is truly the parent industry where tangible economic value gets generated with the land-labour-capital inputs. Only, the labour is now the ‘phygital’ workforce- with smart machines augmenting our quality of work and productivity, while freeing us up from loads of hazardous or boring tasks. That’s where AI, IoT and industry 4.0 connect beautifully in my mind-map, creating a simulated digital twin of the physical machine-world.

What trends and developments are capturing your attention today in technology and business operations?

I take what Andrew Ng said about data being the new oil, to data becoming the new glue, the invisible ‘ether’, the collective grey matter of the world. In sync with what you envision about the next OneOffice becoming ubiquitous in a hyperconnected world, the data oligopolies that we all know to exist today will come crashing down. We have already seen this happening just as the entry barriers to AI algorithms went down with the cloud-based pay-as-you-go models, and the entry barriers to top talent got broken in an open world of millennials comfortable in crowdsourcing. Now, with machine learning itself becoming partially autonomous, with unsupervised learning in a limited way and then with AutoML, human learning will also have to undergo transformation, where enterprises will learn from each other’s data, intelligence, experiments, experience, and thrive in a fairly co-opetitive world of frenemies where ultimately mankind and the unsuspecting individual, wins.

Is the analyst industry much different now than when you were at Gartner a few years ago? What is changing in your opinion, Tapati?

I think the analysts in this agile, new-age, ‘open research’ side of the world, are far more than mere subject matter experts. We are bolder, actionable and direct, hands-on folks, been-there-done-that type, and I love it. We are also listening better, to build our perspectives from a 360 standpoint. Not just technology, not just business, but the ability to cover all aspects, keeping the end-customers at the centre. Because, whatever be the industry or technology, if the end-customer is not impacted, nothing else matters.

So I see three key changes: 1- the idea of open research and collective intelligence, given that even IBM and Microsoft have now become proponents of open models; 2- the cognitive agility- to think fast and slow as the situation demands, and 3- to be direct, actionable and relevant with a holistic perspective – keeping the end-customers at the centre of any value universe.

So, Tapati, what are you working on first for our clients?

I am planning to cover the practical aspects of applied enterprise AI, as I have experienced this freshly and first-hand and have learned a lot. I have some very strong views and counter-views, on how these AI algorithms and their applications will pan out in the immediate and intermediate future, and the subsequent to-do’s. We will have to stay ahead of the curve. Hence I plan to share these as predictions and actions kind of PoV’s. I will also be covering the IoT and industry 4.0 with our India team along with the global team.

And given I have the locational advantage of being based out of India- the services factory of the world, and especially in Bangalore- world’s no. 2 silicon valley, I will work with a lot of tech start-up’s and service providers on their AI and automation initiatives, and IoT and manufacturing vertical practices.

And, what do you do with your spare time (if you have any...)?

Oh, I have to try very hard to play the cognitive catch-up game with my three children - my teenage girls and our 3-year old German Shepherd – named after our most fav physicist Dr. Feynman, we most humbly accept the fact that he is the smartest in the family.

I love to read physics books and fictions by the likes of Archer and Grisham, but I get constantly rebuked by my girls on not reading enough. Therefore I always try the easier way of asking them questions and then listening to every word of wisdom that they have internalized, post reading the tough non-fictions.

I also love to paint and play Indian music on the piano. And I love to cook for our friends and family. So next time any of you are in Bangalore, you have to come prepared. It’s a statutory warning- there’s no getting away from my unique cuisine while you’re here!

Welcome to HfS, Tapati. Delighted you have chosen us as your analytical home and can't wait to see those first pieces of insight to hit the press =)

Tapati Bandopadhyay (pictured above) joins HFS research to lead our India research operations and expand coverage of AI and IT services.  You can read her bio here.

Posted in: None

In 2008 Lehman Brothers nearly took down the global banking system... in 2017 Greece's debts were poised to destroy the European economy... today, we are staring at a stock market that gyrates up and down double-digit percentages in a single day, based on one awkward tariff tweet-up between Xi and Donald...

We're talking about the world's 5th largest economy going into immediate meltdown.  This is more than a UK-only debacle

So... who cares about the world's 5th largest economy potentially plummeting into a complete meltdown? Let's just have a good giggle at those idiotic British politicians hell-bent on destroying the country over a referendum staged 2.5 years ago on a topic no-one actually understands.  Yeah, let's not worry as they'll be screwed, and we can all make Brit-jokes at parties as those idiots run out of medical supplies and are forced to import frozen butterball turkeys pumped full of Ractopramine and several other GMOs... yum.

Here's the bad news - Lehman and Greece are small-time when you consider the potential damage a complete Brexit failure will cause, if - as it possible - the UK government paralyzes itself and lets its economy degenerate into a warzone of regulation chaos, complete data disaster, supply chain meltdown and political purgatory.  While we have boldly - and positively - predicted (see earlier post) that Brexit won't actually happen, there is also the distinct possibility that Brexit and no-Brexit blindly meander into the nothingness of a "No-Deal" scenario.

We have predicted that - at the end of the day - politicians are surely not that selfish, and voters really aren't that stupid to allow their country to descend into complete economic and social chaos... and madness.  But that's because we, at HFS, have assumed a modicum of intelligence does exist in the world. But, we could be sadly naïve.  However, there is some hope - and that hope is the simple fact that if we Brits commit the ultimate harakiri of a No-Deal Brexit, we take the rest of the global economy down with us.  You thought Lehman Bros was bad?  You've seen nothing yet folks.

Why this could be a $15 trillion global decimation

If we look at similar shocks to the stock market over the last century, it takes relatively little to create a major downturn in global asset values. We don’t need to look too far back this decade to see how even a moderate dip on global stock markets cans seriously impact the health of the economy.

If we look at the Asian financial crisis in 1997, for example, we can see just how quickly the collapse of even a relatively small economy can wipe off a huge percentage of global stock values. If we look at the potential consequences of not only one of the world’s largest economies, but one tightly integrated with the global economy, it’s not hard to see how much of an impact this could have on the major stock exchanges. That’s not to mention the major role the UK currently plays in global finance – with some estimates advising that the City of London manages over $9 trillion in assets, three times the size of UK GDP.

In a no-deal scenario, almost overnight the UK will no longer be compliant with EU rules and regulations – of which the previously discussed GDPR is just one of. There are countless other regulations that have formed part of the business environment of the United Kingdom, Europe, and by extension, the rest of the global economy, that are likely to emerge during the real-time stress testing that a no-deal crash out will lead to.

We can simulate (with the same degree of absolutely no certainty characteristic of the Brexit process) a major tumble in global stock prices by examining how previous shocks to the market have impacted in the past. And it’s worth noting, that our estimates are generally very conservative compared to other financial crises over the past century.

In the following illustration, we can see how some significant impacts to the value of stock markets can play out – particularly in areas most likely to be impacted by Brexit. In this simulation, we can expect the value of the twenty largest stock markets to drop by $14.9 trillion as a result of the major market shock of no-deal Brexit.

Click to Enlarge 

Bottom Line: A no-deal Brexit has far-reaching consequences, and could knock chunks of value from global stock markets to send us crashing into a serious economic depression

The warnings about the implications of no longer being compliant with GDPR are chicken-feed compared to the true global impact of allowing Britain to hive itself off from the EU with no insulation from the multiple disastrous consequences. In the past, major financial crises have been caused simply from a much smaller and less integrated economy defaulting on debts, now we’re facing the very real prospect that one of the world’s largest economies will wake up one morning with a completely different rule book, and much more red-tape and bureaucracy between it and the rest of the world. It’s not hyperbolic to say, the consequences to the global economy could be huge.

In a sick way, maybe this No-Deal scenario is what we all deserve to open the eyes of the politicians and gullible voters of the world for losing their grip on reality.  Maybe a period of poverty and hardship will knock us into shape to prepare for the next chapter of economic and political life.  

Ugh - we seriously hope it doesn't take a crisis of these immense proportions for everyone to wake up to the world we are shaping, where facts are merely tools to shape opinions and this sense of entitlement that so many people possess is threatening to destroy everything we've worked so hard to create.

There never was a "Brexit deal".  Brexit was all about pissed off working class people (mainly older folks) sticking it to the rich and to "foreign" people they saw 'stealing' jobs (they were never going to do themselves in any case).  So the only "Brexit" these people wanted was to ruin the economy for the wealthy British middle class and to stop immigrants coming into the country (and kicking out the existing ones too).  This is why the situation is such as mess.  The real motives behind Brexit are not the ones being discussed in Parliament or in Brussels.  It's a mess and needs to be somehow reset so the real debate can take place.  Otherwise this never ends.  

We all agree at HFS that change can be good, and we must embrace change... but changing to what?  That is the issue right now - what is wrong with the current system and what is the ideal system we need to move to...  and its not only the UK grappling with this problem...

Posted in: Policy and Regulations

Posted in: IT Outsourcing / IT Services,  Digital OneOffice

What better than to hand out some awards to people who have absolutely no clue they are going to win one... and for actually doing something in 2018 to impact the world of IT and business services that actually shook up the rules of the game?  And what better to offer up zero prizes beyond a fleeting recognition that they actually did something impactful?

No, they did not pay me $10K to sponsor a table at a penguin-suited gala dinner, and no, they did not coerce a bunch of analysts to sift through hours of painful "innovation submissions".   These are purely based on my personal experiences of 2018 and my judgment on ten folks who deserve some recognition for shaking things up in 2018!

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The "They just didn't see us coming Award",  Daniel Dines, CEO UiPath

When HFS introduced Robotic Automation to the world in 2012, the industry was transfixed around Blue Prism - the firm which pioneered unattended back office RPA - and Automation Anywhere, which shot on the scene in 2014 with the industry's first RPA Maturity Model.  RDA (robotic desktop automation) suppliers such as OpenSpan (acquired by Pega in 2016) were also present in the automation narrative as the worlds of traditional outsourcing, shared services and operations executives got shaken to their very core by the fact that people conducting repetitive work could be replaced/augmented by macros and bots. However, while these firms stole the headlines, one dude in Romania quietly went about building an RPA product that would leap from $10m-$150m in just the last couple of years, while its competitors could only watch on in awe. This founding CEO, Daniel Dines, engendered trust with executives and demonstrated an uncanny skill of being a technologist who quickly grasped how to communicate effectively with business line leaders. He also hired some excellent sales people, including the much-liked Guy Kirkwood, who's social media skills should not be understated as a key reason for growing a firm so quickly. 2018 was definitely Daniel's disruptor year.  Now the firm is heavily backed and poised to battle it out for supremacy in 2019.

The "Resurrection award", Nitin Rakesh, CEO Mphasis

It's not often you see a company that had almost disappeared from the world, make such a credible and impactful return to the corporate spotlight.  But this is exactly what happened in 2018 as Nitin Rakesh drove his new firm past $1bn in revenues and is likely to post double-digit growth.  How can a company that was acquired by EDS in 2006 (at the time being touted as "EDS' Bangalore Call center"), then being merged into the HP entity in 2008, before selling off its BPO assets to HGS in 2015, manage to retain its core IT talent and identity to find itself back in play as a standalone IT services business - in its own right - in 2018, as Blackstone bought out the HP shares?  Not only that, the firm has positioned itself excellently as a core transformational IT services firm, with deep expertise in financial services, with many loyal clients always willing to share their experiences. While great Indian-heritage IT services firms, such as Patni and Syntel, have been subsumed into larger Western entities, Mphasis is back swinging punches and poised to give some of the leading IT services firms a run for their money in 2019.  

The "Making Cyber actually cool Award", Nicole Eagen, CEO Darktrace

While the whole industry seemingly got lost in a stupor of automation and AI, the one core area that will increasingly dominate the narrative in 2019 - and beyond - is cyber security.  And not too many cyber firms have effectively brought together genuine ML and AI algorithms to create an "enterprise immune system for cyber defense".  Draktrace's focal point is that enterprises should not require a previous experience ("pre-defined") of a threat or pattern of activity, in order to understand what it is potentially threatening. It works automatically, without prior knowledge or signatures, "detecting and fighting back against subtle, stealthy attacks inside the network — in real time".  It sounds great, but this solution actually works, the firm is now valued at close to $2bn with $400m in revenue.  My favorite line from Nicole: “Cyber security was all about keeping the bad guys out. But a lot of time the threat is from an insider, such as an employee, or someone who had managed to get inside the system.” Hiring founding partners from GCHQ and MI5 certainly helps bring the cyber conversation to the boardroom.

The "Approaching Digital the way it was supposed to be, and not confusing everyone Award", Brian Whipple, CEO Accenture Interactive

The lovely term "Digital" has been distorted by so many people, 2019 will render the term practically meaningless.  The firm which originally oriented the term for the IT and business services industry was Accenture, launching Accenture Digital back in December 2013, where the focus was firmly on helping enterprises "create new sources of value from marketing, mobility and analytics".  Since that time, the firm has amassed 36 digital agency acquisitions across the world to essentially become the market leader for digital advertising.  While every other IT and BPO services firm under the sun boasts "digital" prowess, only Cognizant has reached double figures with 10 acquisitions and the rest are barely at a handful.  So everyone is really helping companies enable the digital strategies they have already designed. When you look at the evolution of Digital, the core area has been leveraging interactive and social tech to drive new revenue channels and customer experiences, which has been the sole focus of Brian Whipple and his Accenture Interactive group, which has tucked in these numerous digital agency acquisitions over the years, pushed hard to retain their identities and cultures (something Accenture learned the hard way where most of its competitors are still failing).  Brian's declaration that Accenture is not "looking for Don Drapers" and, rather, is focusing on acquiring talent that focuses much more deeply on the entire customer sphere (than merely crafting ad campaigns) just edges himself into a well-deserved mention for banging the digital drum the loudest for 5 years, while his IT services competitors have failed to get even close.

The "Doing RPA differently Award", Asheesh Mehra, CEO AntWorks

While we've been deluged with (pretty much) the same "bots are everything" monolog from the RPA industry for several years now, it's been refreshing to see a firm get fully-focused on driving the data ingestion piece that RPA and intelligent automation can support.  And today's emerging auto/AI firms are becoming styled very much on their founder personalities... so you just can't avoid the effervescent and colorful AntWorks honcho Asheesh Mehra, who has managed to pop up in every corner of the operations/services/AI space in 2018.  With some funding in the bag, and some really excellent hires joining, expect AntWorks to make one helluva lot of noise in 2019 as they round out their platform and become an increasingly important part of the industry's intelligent automation conversation. We need more AntWorks to keep shaking it up...

The 'Doing services with a product mindset Award' - CVK, CEO, HCL

While most of the IT services industry has resorted to following each others' strategies of being technology agnostic, having poorly-defined digital strategies and a bunch of platform-things that noone really understands, HCL has quietly forged its own path and focused heavily on embracing its engineering and product development DNA.  Several interesting engineering acquisitions, such as Geometric, Butler Aerospace and H&A set the firm's stall out as a company which really likes to make and develop things.  It's eye-opening $1.8bn pick-up of all the IBM workplace software products, including, IBM (Lotus) Notes, Domino and Appscan, while not appealing to the media as relatively "sexy", will end up creating a masterstoke $10bn new business for the firm, provided it can develop the customer base and improve on products that need a bit of work. The man with the plan is the humble, softly spoken and incredibly smart "CVK" (C Vijayakumar) who has persistently resisted the marketing glitz and the drum-beating to focus his firm on where he sees its differentiation. I anticipate more to come from HCL in 2019 as it rounds out its ability to build products that enterprises are actually using.

The 'Hail Mary Award', Ginni Rometty, CEO, IBM

While poor old Ginni has had to hold the fort as IBM went through 23 consecutive quarters of revenue decline, tried persistently to keep the dialog flowing around cognitive and Watson, you have to give her some serious credit for betting the entire bank on the RedHat acquisition this year, setting the firm back a cool $34bn, despite revenues of barely $3bn.  The stark reality is that IBM really wants to out-opensource Microsoft, add some cloud mojo - and also add some serious RedHat management talent to its ranks.  If you forced me to give you my opinion, I'd say that IBM has taken a decided pivot away from poster-boy IA giant Watson, to go back to its enterprise IT core and solve real challenges for real people.  And you can't beat a $34bn Hail Mary... so Ginni makes the 2018 cut..

The "Superhero CEO who can close a humungous deal Award", Abid Neemuchwala, CEO, Wipro

Abid took on Wipro at a difficult time, when the company needed to raise its value proposition with enterprise clients, had not been performing particularly well in the market and - to cap it off - have one of its biggest clients, Carillion, go belly-up.  It had many of us wondering why Abid would leave his BPO leadership role at TCS, where he had pretty much created a billion-dollar business, to take up a Wipro hotseat that could drive him even more crazy.  But anyone who knows Abid, knows he's a workaholic who loves a challenge, and - to cap it off - is one of the most gentle, sincere and nice guys you will ever meet.  Which may explain how he convinced Alight Solutions to drop $1.6bn on a 10 year mammoth IT/BPO engagement that is one of the largest ever known to mankind.  And right at a time when his company needed it.  A terrific win to steer a company in a new direction.  2019 will not be without its challenges for Wipro and its close competitors, but having someone like Abid at the helm is a much-needed advantage.

The "Multi-billion dollar startup Award", Chris Caldwell, President, Concentrix

Before its merger with IBM's call center business in 2013, Concentrix was a little-known contact center tech business, which its parent firm, Synnex, put under Chris Caldwell's charge to grow.  Hence Chris had to take his experience managing a much, much smaller firm and figure out how to play in a fast-commoditizing and consolidating market.  And grow it he has achieved, adding the likes of Minacs and Tiger Spike before surprising the whole industry with the bargain uptake of the Rolls Royce call center business itself, Convergys, pitting the firm just behind Teleperformance at the head of the market.  While his competitors have been scrambling, looking at curious pickups like Intelenet for a billion,  snapping up a heritage global call center firm with flagship enterprise clients, some great technology and people delivery culture for just $2.8 billion, places the firm in a very aggressive position to kick on in 2019 and push hard for overall market leadership.  Chris will need to figure out how to adopt automation at scale, really embrace emerging cognitive solutions, but with the last few years' track record to bet on, who will bet against Concentrix now?

The "Veni, Vidi, Vici Award", David Poole, CEO/Co-Founder, Symphony

It's not often you get to tip your hat to someone you've known for a long time and witness them achieve, literally, exactly what they set out to... but David Poole did exactly that. Not many people can boast to launch a consulting firm exactly four years ago and achieve a $69m acquisition to a global provider such as SYKES.  When you compare this with the $74m ISG paid for Alsbridge and the (rumored) $85m KPMG paid for Equaterra, you have to hand it to David and his founding friends David Brain, Ian Barkin and Pascal Baker for catching a wave and finding their desired exit in less than half the time - and a lot more value placed on future potential earnings than merely existing revenues. When David came to visit me to tell me he was "going full on into RPA" in the summer of 2014, I have to confess I was skeptical as I knew the area needed a massive personal commitment, and people prepared to work unpaid for a very long time to get it off the ground. But that is exactly what he and his founders achieved. You may enjoy this blog with David in 2015... where everything he said pretty much came true.  Now am sure Chuck Sykes is hoping for David's vision to stay as consistent in 2019!

Posted in: Digital OneOffice

Each year we promise no more predictions but it's a habit we just can't kick.  So have 19 of them from the HFS research team...

“OneOffice” becomes reality. Organizational silos around front, middle and back-office will continue to erode in 2019 to create a boundary-less organization where there is only one office that matters – and that is the office that caters to the customer. The triple-A trifecta of automation, artificial intelligence, and smart analytics is helping ambitious organizations reach their OneOffice goals at a much faster pace. 

The Hyperconnected enterprise beyond OneOffice will emerge. As organizational silos converge, ecosystems will start to develop and a “Hyper-Connected Enterprise” will emerge. These B2B networks will be driven by collaboration across multiple organizations with common objectives around driving completely new source(s) of value. The emergence of blockchain and Internet of Things (IoT) is starting to make this vision of a shared economy with distributed and trustworthy information a reality.

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The term “Digital” becomes so diluted, it is rendered meaningless as "Integrated Automation" drives the narrative. In the race to call everything “digital”, digital will start to mean nothing. Integrated automation across the HFS Triple-A Trifecta of Automation, AI, and Smart Analytics will drive the industry conversation in 2019.

The misplaced faith in “retraining” will fade. We will continue to see uncertainty and confusion on changing job roles due to the impact of automation and AI. This is clearly a much longer conversation than just 2019. But as more enterprises get their hands dirty with various technologies, reality will set in and we will at least retire the misplaced faith in "retraining" as the panacea to all talent management challenges. We will also see an increased focus from ambitious talent putting themselves through nanodegrees (such as Udacity) and other discrete training opportunities as the pressure builds to stay relevant in the face of emerging tech.

2019 will be the year of ‘how’. The why (customer experience, revenue impact, internal alignment) and what (emerging technologies) for transformation are now fairly clear after intense debate for the last couple of years. But “how” to go about executing on the aspirations

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Posted in: Cloud and Business Platforms,  Intelligent Automation,  Blockchain

Remember when Amazon, Apple and Microsoft were racing to become the first $1 trillion valued firms?  In just a few weeks they all languish in the $600m-$700 range.  That’s a market decompression from a high never quite seen before, and it seems that the floodgates are now fully open, as political uncertainty (driven by colossal political egos and selfish self-interest in both US and UK), combined with a sentiment of “surely it’s time for a long overdue recession”.  In short, the markets are having a correction and our economic outlook is being clouded by political uncertainty.  Noone is better than talking themselves into a recession than the human race.

We should have just let the robots take over and go with the flow

In the past, when we arrived at a market correction, we’ve quickly shrugged off the over-exuberance that engulfed our lives and focused ourselves quickly on the realities of keeping our jobs and conserving our cash.  This time I am not so confident society is ready for a cold turkey experience of, heaven help up, reality. 

This time, all those lovely pictures of robots and repetitive marketing messages that all seemed to have emanated from one festering camembert-infused Shutterstock site, have combined to send too many of us in a fantasy maze of artificial nonsense, from where many of us will fail to find a way out. 

 So why couldn’t we have all just stayed there, inhaling this pungent odor of future fantasy, until our tech stocks exploded in that sea of $millions, where we could just retire and let that next generation worry about fixing the stagnant world we left behind?  Why have we become the ones who have to learn from our own mistakes and try and fix them? 

Why does anyone have to be held accountable for anything anymore?  Isn’t that the new mantra of the workplace?  I thought the future of work was “no work”?

Don’t worry – you can (somehow) bring yourself back from your digitally-transformed, robotically-automated and ML-infused unreality – all made possible by that blockchain fantasy, where, if all else fails, magic will, ultimately, provide the answer.  You can do it, it’s hard, but you can lock yourself in a padded cell and let the digital delirium slowly subside into a silly dream.  “Remember that time we all thought robots were taking over” will be a good old topic down at the bingo hall as you reflectively look back at the AI careers that never quite materialized with your old cohorts who also dragged themselves back from digi-blivion.

The Bottom-line: Accept it was fun while it lasted, but it’s time to peel back the layers of bullshit and find those core attributes that used to make you successful.  

It’s time to be honest with yourself – you never even bothered to actually define what digital transformation really was, beyond positioning yourself as someone with disruptive DNA.  And you never really knew more about RPA beyond the endless posts and blogs about those stages of “maturity” you need to go through (even though you’ve never actually met anyone who knows much about RPA than those really smart software salesmen).  Did you even bother to put yourself through the basic training of writing a script – or was that all a bit beneath someone of your undoubted prowess? 

And you’ve probably started to bleat on about Machine Learning and AI as if this was somehow your true calling in life, ever since daddy bought you your first train-set and you demanded he return it to fund your python course instead. 

Yes, folks, those heady days where you had already made it without barely even bothering to fake it are over.

So dig deep and remember what made you great in the first place… and sure you can identify with at least one of these five attributes:

1. You may have been an amazing communicator… so learn how to articulate your firm’s true differentiation in plain English. What is it you bring to the table that your competitors cannot?  How can you siphon through the buzz-talk to articulate real value, not fake value, because in the new reality, the focus will be on the real, not the fantasy.
2. You may have been awesome at numbers… then learn to create metrics that matter to your business to prove the value of doing things. Demonstrate how man-hours saved equates to impact on top/bottom line.  Quantify the impact on customers when you fix a process chain that includes fulfilling a customer need.  Quantify the impact on growing a business by speeding up the cash flow cycle, such as people and tech investments to get ahead of customers.
3. You may have been awesome at selling… the get back to selling solutions people will actually buy, as opposed to solutions you want your next prospective employer thinks you can sell. Being great at sales will be even more in demand as the need to actually close business quickly supplants the need to promise future deals that most people realize are unlikely ever to happen.
4. You may have been terrific at relationships… so get back to getting to know your clients better, as opposed to trying to impress them with fancy stuff they don’t really understand (and neither do you, but you know some bigger words to use). However smart and amazing we all may have become, it’s the trusting, deep relationships with your peers, colleagues, and customers which will make you successful.
5. You may have been a terrific bullshitter… so find those remaining viable AI and blockchain firms still functioning and blowing their seed capital, and get a sales or marketing job fast!

Posted in: Robotic Process Automation,  Intelligent Automation,  Blockchain

I was reminiscing about the first ever report we wrote to industry on the emergence of "robotic automation" and was amused at how little has changed in six years.  So I popped it onto LinkedIn earlier this week and 160,000 people clicked on it.  Wow.

Click here to download your free copy of “Robotic Automation Emerges as a Threat to Traditional Low-Cost Outsourcing”

Posted in: Robotic Process Automation

What I love about RPA is it most often has the highest impact where there is a serious amount of IT failure, disorganization and overworked staff. Yes, that's a lot of organizations to consider, and it's one of the reasons why its hard to find this technology sexy - it's built to fix the murky, dysfunctional stuff that has been squirreled away for decades, buried deep beneath failing ERP projects and conveniently ignored by senior executives who have few political points to score by acknowledging they should actually focus on fixing their broken underbellies.

This has been the failure of operations leaders for decades - simply focusing on layering more garbage over the top, when the real way to fix their inherent problems of dysfunction is to dig deep beneath their navels and address their broken process chains, and - heaven forbid - actually start to do something differently.

And there is no ground more fertile than the hallowed turf of the British National Health Service (NHS), the world's sixth-largest employer with 1.7m staff, where decades of hollow political rhetoric, obscene wastage on 'big-bang IT transformations" and big-ticket consultants on the gravy train, bravely held together by a woefully understaffed administration that end up spending on contract agencies just to keep the wheels turning. Let's face facts: the UK National Health Service makes the basket-case that is Obama Care resemble a slick, well-oiled machine.

Enter RPA: a tool that is reducing GP referral processing time by 75%

But there is renewed hope - and this hope can quite easily become reality if you entertain the idea of using RPA to unify document submissions, scrape data from legacy desktops to speed up GP referral times.  And the real value to be gained here is if the NHS can adopt a common enterprise-wide strategy to deploy a common RPA as-a-service toolset and methodology across its 207 individual trusts.  It's so simple, I describe in on the back of an envelope:

Even in these tough times for the institution, many of its leaders are looking optimistically at the opportunities new technologies that can be customized provide, which can solve business inefficiencies and don't involve the massive complexities of entire system upheavals. One particular example provides insights into how one NHS trust is actively addressing some of these issues, both in terms of saving the NHS money directly, easing pressure on administrative staff and providing a better more consistent service for patients being referred to hospitals. All of these endeavors are in line with the broader objective of ensuring that the NHS meets some overriding objectives to digitize services.

The starting point for this work began at the East Suffolk and North Essex Foundation Trust (ESNEFT). The organization faced many of the same pressures discussed above and like all healthcare services within the UK, they were directed to enable all GP referrals to be processed via the Electronic Referral Service (eRS) by October 2018. However, the existing system for processing electronic referrals was based on manual processes and was slow—a common challenge.

Essentially, once the GP had made a referral to the Trust, the support staff have to find information such as scans, blood tests, and other results which need to be manually downloaded and appended to the file. In a process which may seem bizarre to many enterprises, this often meant admin staff were required to print off material and then scan it back into the same computer (using the same printer and scanner) to create a PDF file to navigate bottlenecks between unintegrated systems. The PDF document is then uploaded to the administration system. Approximately, this process took around 20 minutes for each referral and created, what the trust described as an avalanche of admin, distracting medical secretaries from their primary task of supporting patients and consultants.

ESNEFT had already started a pilot scheme looking to automate some accounts payable processes with the RPA provider Thoughtonomy, which was showing a great deal of promise. So, the Trust decided to use the system to automate the referral process across five clinical specialties, using “Virtual Workers” (BluePrism bots), which actively monitor incoming referrals from GP patient appointments in real-time, 24 hours a day. Once triggered, the Virtual Worker extracts the reason for referral, referral data, and supporting clinical information and merges the information into a single PDF document. This combined document is then uploaded into the Trust’s administrative systems. The RPA system uses virtual smart card technology for authentication providing the same level of data security assurance as the old manual process. Overall, the complete task now takes less than five minutes. The Virtual Workforce is able to update all systems, instantaneously and extract critical information, which it passes on to the lead consultant for review and grading.

One of the most important aspects of this technology is its ability to work within the current system, regardless of how chaotic and unstructured that may be. It is technology that adapts to the real world and the way people actually behave and work rather than expecting people to miraculously change current tropes and behaviours. This is perhaps the single most important reason RPA works: it provides whatever shaped peg is required, no matter the hole.

RPA negates the need to spend vast amounts on many complex technology integration projects

This first stage has significant cost savings—estimated to be $275,000 in the first year—without removing staff. Crucially, the $275K saving achieved is made up of agency staff and sundry costs such as printing. ESNEFT believe that 500 hours of time was saved thanks to the solution. Plus it increased the job satisfaction of the admin staff, who could concentrate on more important aspects of their role.

For us, although the top line cost saving number is important, it’s the fact that a technology solution proof of concept has been deployed successfully (and relatively painlessly) within the NHS. To deliver the outcome required, there was no need to drive an enormous transformation project to align and integrate systems. Which, given the lack of appetite for big bang projects in the NHS is an achievement in itself. Simply put, the way the technology is used can be fitted into the existing chaos—it’s technology for the real world. It can provide a bottom-up solution to productivity improvements,  which is a project that replaces part of existing work flows and automates manual and repetitive tasks. It accomplishes these things with the double whammy of removing tasks which is disliked, genuinely improving outcomes to patients, whilst helping to drive efficiency.

Bottom line: The NHS is not alone in facing an unforgivingly complex estate, but with technologies that fit into the chaos of the modern organization, this is only the start 

If we look more broadly at the impact RPA technology could have on the NHS, we can use a simple calculation to estimate the ramifications this technology can have. We know that savings of $275K have been made on 2,000 GP referrals per week. But the figure for NHS England as a whole, puts GP referrals at 3.5m from April 2018 to June 2018. So, if this were scaled up, we could see savings across NHS England purely for GP referrals at a staggering $38m, this included all hospital referrals the figure rises to almost $63m, or around $1.3m per week. To put this in context, this would equate to almost 850 nurses for the GP referrals or almost 1,400 for all referrals in England (using the average cost of $45,000 per annum for a mid-tier nurse, source: Nuffield trust).

This is the tip of the iceberg, considering that more than 520M working hours are currently spent on admin and approximately $3.3 billion is spent on agency staff across the NHS as a whole during 2016. There is a great deal of savings to be had. Even if only a quarter of the agency spend is non-medical, that could be $820M per year that could be freed up with only positive impacts on patient outcomes. 

Posted in: Healthcare and Outsourcing,  Robotic Process Automation

I am not normally one for big grandiose predictions - I'm actually pretty dull when it comes to big hyperbole (I hope). 

Honestly, I'd love to declare that AI will destroy a third of the workforce, and then magically perform a 360-degree flip and start creating jobs.  I'd also love to declare that RPA vendors will magically infuse Machine Learning into their apps to produce AI magic.  Because AI is magic, didn't you know? I'd love to declare that software is eating the world... and then declare that it actually won't, because a lot of it is actually pretty crap.  I'd also love to declare that Blockchain will radically impact the entire business ecosystem to such an extent I can prognosticate all these business cases with so many holes in them, I might as well start lauding the transformational capabilities of emmental. 

However, there is one big bold prediction I am prepared to make:  Brexit will be dead in the water in a few weeks. 

I am an analyst, I explore every permutation of almost anything that impacts economies, business, societies until I drive myself mad.  I also work with other half-crazy analysts who do the same.  Just take a gander at our recent analysis of the hazardous implications of Brexit on the UK economy. 

So why is Brexit headed for the scrap heap?

It was always an "all in" or "all out".  We did neither.  Seriously, we should have just drawn the guillotine on the EU right after the 2016 referendum, arranged a sensible withdrawal that could be governed effectively and transparently. We should have taken the pain then, and we'd probably be OK right now.  Hell, we'd probably be part of NAFTA introducing delicious microwaved fish and chip pub luncheons to the Mexis and some actual real beer to the Canadians.  And we may even finally get decent burritos introduced to the streets of London and poutine finally replacing soggy chips n' curry sauce. Instead, we dithered, argued, bored ourselves silly arguing until no-one could quite remember what we were doing in the first place.  Instead, we got to see close hand how indecisive, and stupid so many politicians are, how most of these people only care about their self-interests than any actual deep-driven mission or purpose.  We also had many chances to think "Why are we doing this again?  None of our businesses are happy, the Irish are freaking out, the Scots are ready to bolt, so we'll only be left with, er, Wales (and even they are making noises)".  And Mr Trump even thinks it was a bad deal... and he was great in the apprentice, so it must really suck.  

Brexit is a massive Catch-22. You can't just compromise on an issue like this, even though 48% rejected it.  There just isn't any point in doing half-measures with Brexit - both scenarios suck.  The diluted mess Theresa May has served up basically ensures we only get half-screwed by the experience.  We are still tied to the EU, the Irish are still freaking out, we will close our borders in any case, but noone will want to come here anyway, because our economy will stink. In fact, most of the EU immigrant workers will probably flock to Dublin to work in the call centers after the banks have shifted over there... There really isn't a compromise when the issues are this black and white.

The only current scenario is 'no-deal disaster' or 'go back to the people to make a decision'.  Let's get to the point - the "deal" on the table is a plethora of half-measures with little upside for anyone.  So that leaves only one Brexit option:  no-deal and an economic calamity. There is no way 52% of the British folks care that much about putting a middle finger up at Brussels to destroy their livelihoods. When May's deal fails next week, she will really only have one choice - to go back to the people to decide.  And we only need a 3% swing from that heady warm June 2016 evening to fix this calamity.  I occasionally like a bet, and this is one I'd throw a few pounds at...

The Bottom-Line: Parliament will throw this out and the British public will reject a no-deal Brexit... So Auf Wiedersehen Brexit

Firstly, there is no way MPs will vote for the current "soft-Brexit" deal on the table next week.  May must know this too - and will simply go straight to the people to finalize this issue once and for all.  There is no renegotiation with Brussels - that is clear, and there isn't enough time, in any case, with the deadline being 29th March 2019.  Secondly, Calling a general election with Brexit looming so close would be madness. There are now only two real options:

1) A "Hard no-deal Brexit"

2) No Brexit

So there will be a second referendum and it will swing for option 2.  That won't be the end of the matter, as a groveling "take us back" negotiation will take place, but the EU leaders all know they need Britain back to keep the EU strong - and this will drive Putin mad (who would love nothing more than a weakened EU).  Trump liked Brexit for similar economic reasons of weakening Brussels' power, but the US relies on a strong Britain as its gateway to Europe, and may now prefer an EU including the UK than one without.

There will also be considerable public fall-out as half the country did vote "leave" and they will feel betrayed by shambolic politicians.  However, a "deal" was never going to be done and a transition organized in two short years - May was always on a hiding-to-nothing, and the only real takeaway is that referendums on complex issues never work.  You know who loved referendums? One A Hitler... when information was easily controlled and the public easily brainwashed.  In today's age of hyper-connected everything, you simply can't control anything!

Posted in: Policy and Regulations

It's been more six years since we broadcast the concept of RPA to the industry and now we have finally unveiled the first comprehensive analysts of service providers and advisors in the space.  Yes - it really does take that long for a discrete software market to build an ecosystem to install, develop, manage and scale.  As my blogging pal Vijay Vijayasankar, one of the world most prominent enterprise software gurus, tweeted yesterday:

And what better than the new HFS Top Ten format where feisty analysts Elena Christopher and Maria Terekhova pull together the hygiene factors of execution and innovation with the "voice of the customer" as the makeweight factor to tell these suppliers apart:

Click on charts to enlarge

Key elements of this research

• Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has emerged as a powerful change agent, with enterprises around the globe embracing it as a means to automate manual processes and create a bridge to a digital future. Despite signs of vibrant growth such as the latest billion+ valuations of the most prominent RPA software firms, RPA is still a nascent

Read More »

Posted in: Robotic Process Automation,  Intelligent Automation

Well... it’s been quite a 2018 in the fantasy world of RPA (RPA plus RDA), where some of the fantasy dollars have magically become real, as the market hit $1.7bn – an increase of $250m from our forecast last year.  So when the more conservative of forecasters (HFS) undershoots the market by 17%, you know RPA has been sneaking down the growth hormones of late.

So why is RPA growing above initial analyst estimates?

• RPA vendors, in particularly UiPath and Automation Anywhere (AA), have been able to recognize more revenues than expected. Bots licenses are being sold and deployed faster than we envisaged, due to effective training programs and aggressive support from third-party services firms;
• The slowdown in new business process outsourcing engagements is driving more focus from enterprises in discrete strategies to drive efficiencies and digitize processes (and encourage more bots plus humans engagements);
• The shift in the focus of RPA from job elimination to augmenting talent, digitizing processes and extending the life of legacy IT systems has increased the appetite of operations executives to fast-track RPA training programs and invest in broader intelligent automation strategies – even though most enterprises are still in the “tinkering phase”;
• The initial adoption of "attended RPA", which makes up the majority of RPA and RDA engagements currently in play will eventually drive more "unattended RPA" where the increased value will be created and genuine alignment between RPA models proving to be a gateway to broader AI engagements;
• The ramp up from service providers and consultants to support enterprise adoption has continued unabated, especially with the flattening of outsourcing investments and the waning interest in Global Business Services models. This reliance on third parties has proven to be a key dynamic behind the growth in RPA as solution providers prefer to sell through the services channel for larger enterprise deals and accelerate client training and development. The strong focus from the likes of Accenture, Capgemini, Deloitte, EY and KPMG has given the RPA market immense credibility;
• Rapid funding of RPA vendors (in addition to rapid revenue growth) has encouraged these longer-term investments of many enterprises previously skeptical of investing in very small software boutiques. Largest examples have been AA and UiPath, attaining capital investment rounds as high as $250/$300m, but also some lesser-known niche RPA tools firms, such as Softomotive, which recently had a $25m investment round announced;
• Increased focus from major ERP / orchestration software vendors with Pega’s acquisition of Openspan and SAP’s first foray into RPA adding Contextor.

Click on each chart to enlarge

RPA Definition: 

Example use-case: automating invoice processing across multiple business applications handling rule-based exceptions. RPA is different from traditional automation software as it is inherently capable of recognizing and adapting to deviations in data or exceptions when confronted by large volumes of data. In effect, it can be intelligently trained to analyze large amounts of data from software processes and translate them to triggers for new actions, responses, and communication with other systems. RPA describes a software development toolkit that allows non-engineers to quickly create software robots (known commonly as "bots") to automate rules-driven business processes. At the core, an RPA system imitates human interventions that interact with internal IT systems. It is a non-invasive application that requires minimum integration with the existing IT setup; delivering productivity by replacing human effort to complete the task. Any company which has labor-intensive processes, where people are performing high-volume, highly transactional process functions, will boost their capabilities and save money and time with robotic process automation.  Much for RPA is self-triggered (bots pass tasks to humans), but requires human intervention for judgment-intensive tasks and robust human governance and to make changes / improvements.

Similarly, RPA offers enough advantage to companies which operate with very few people or shortage of labor. Both situations offer a welcome opportunity to save on cost as well as streamline the resource allocation by deploying automation. The direct services market includes implementation and consulting services focused on building RPA capabilities within an organization. It does not include wider operational services like BPO, which may include RPA becoming increasingly embedded in its delivery.

RDA Definition:

In addition to RPA, the other software toolset which comprises the emergence of enterprise robotics software is termed RDA (Robotic Desktop Automation).  Together with RPA, RDA will help drive the market for enterprise robotic software towards $2.3bn in software and services expenditure in 2019 (with close to three-quarters tied to the services element of strategy, design, transformation and implementation of enterprise robotics).  HfS' new estimates are for the total enterprise robotics software and services market to surpass $4.3 billion by 2022 as a compound growth rate of 40%.

Example use-case: automating transfer of data from one system to another. RDA is essentially surface automation, where desktop screens (whether desktop-based, web-based, cloud-based) are "scraped", scripted and re-programmed to create the automation of data across systems.  A well-designed RDA solution can automate workflows on several levels, specifically: application layer; storage layer; OS layer and network layer. Workflow automation on these layers requires equally specific technologies but provides advantages of efficiency, reliability, performance and responsiveness. Much of this automation needs to be attended by humans as the automation is triggered by humans(humans pass tasks to bots), as data inputs are not always predictable or uniform, but adaptation of smart Machine Learning techniques can reduce the amount of human attendance over time and improve the intelligence of these automated processes.    Similarly to RPA, RDA requires human intervention for judgment-intensive tasks and robust human governance and to make changes / improvements.

The Bottom-Line: Automation and AI have a significant part to play in engineering a touchless and intelligent OneOffice

However which way we spin "digital", the name of the game is about enterprises responding to customer needs as and when they occur, and these customers are increasingly wanting to interact with companies without physical interaction.  Moreover, the onus is moving to the most successful digital enterprises being able to anticipate the needs of their customers even before they occur, by accessing data outside of the enterprise across the supply chain, or economic and market data that can help predict changes in the market, or emerging offering that customers will want to purchase.

This means manual interventions must be eliminated, data sets converged and process chains broadened and digitized to cater for the customer.  Hence, entire supply chains need to be designed to meet these outcomes and engage with all the stakeholders to service customers seamlessly and effectively.  There is no silver bullet to achieve this, but there is emerging technology available to design processes faster, cheaper and smarter with desired outcomes in mind.  The concept was pretty much the same with business process reengineering two+ decades ago, but the difference today is we have emerging tech available to do the real data engineering that is necessary: However, if these firms rest on their laurels, this market dominance will be short lived.  Once the digital baseline is created, enterprises need to create more intelligent bots to perform more sophisticated tasks than repetitive data and process loops. Basic digital is about responding to clients as those needs occur, while true OneOffice is where enterprises need to anticipate customer needs before they happen (see below).  This means having unattended and attended interactions with data sources both inside and outside of the enterprise, such as macroeconomic data, compliance issues, competitive intel, geopolitcal issues, supply chain issues etc.  

Click to Enlarge

In short, every siloed dataset restricts the analytical insight that makes process owners strategic contributors to the business. You can’t create value - or transform a business operation - without converged, real-time data. Digitally-driven organizations must create a Digital Underbelly to support the front office by automating manual processes, digitizing manual documents to create converged datasets, and embracing the cloud in a way that enables genuine scalability and security for a digital organization. Organizations simply cannot be effective with a digital strategy without automating processes intelligently - forget all the hype around robotics and jobs going away, this is about making processes run digitally so smart organizations can grow their digital businesses and create new work and opportunities. This is where RPA and RDA adds most value today... however, as more processes become digitized, the more value we can glean from cognitive applications that feed off data patterns to help orchestrate more intelligent, broader process chains that link the front to the back office.  In our view, as these solutions mature, we'll see a real convergence of analytics, RPA and cognitive solutions as intelligent data orchestration becomes the true lifeblood - and currency - for organizations. 

Do take some time to read the HfS Trifecta to understand the real enmeshing of automation, analytics and AI.

Posted in: Digital OneOffice,  Robotic Process Automation,  Intelligent Automation