Robots , the term that sounded too scientific till few years ago have started making inroads to our everyday business but of course , not the “Terminator” way. They are here as virtual workers without a physical presence. The process that guides these Robots are loosely known as Robotic Process Automation or RPA.
There has been varied interpretation of the Robotic process Automation in terms of a process, tools , technology and adaption. However, all aspects of this process leads to the sole objective of automation or getting some/all part of a job done by a robot.
The low hanging , Simple process Automation
This is where the most marketable presence of Robotic process Automation (RPA) is being realized and at times confused as the only capability that Robotic process Automation (RPA) has to offer. If you assumed RPA is all about tools such as UIPath, Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism or Work Fusion etc…You are not completely wrong either. These handy tools do a great job of automating your regular simple processes. The processes that does not require human thinking power .
Some quick examples :
• Transfer Data between multiple web based systems, even though some systems are available remotely
• Reading through various Excel files of fixed formats to create a consolidated report
• Send out a mail every time a new file comes in to a specific folder
• Update database from scanned paper invoices
• Post content to social media profiles from various data sources based on fixed rules
Robots with their own limited Brains
The RPA tools are taking big strides to include artificial intelligence (AI) and sure to exponentially grow their capabilities in days to come. UIPath has already gone ahead with inclusion of cognitive services from Google, Microsoft and IBM Watson. This empowers the tools to add more intelligence to the existing simple processes they could easily accomplish. This is all about the “power to think” for the robots and their usage everyday business might be endless. Sentiment analysis is no more a job of a core group of data scientists or a set of core techies.
Some quick examples :
• Analyze social media posting to report positive and negative reviews
• Analyze Chat conversion to connect to specific representative
Robots Brains and Still learning
Learning is a continuous process and that holds true for Robots too. Machine Learning is a programmatic way to make Robot learn based on patterns or actions from the past. Unknown actions against situations are analyzed for input to the Robots to learn. More the number of situations, better the chances the Robot make near to human decisions based on the past learnings. This space of machine learning is buzzing with tools and technology offerings. Some as an isolated machine learning whereas others as part of the “ready to integrate” offering for Robotic Process Automation (RPA) tools.