Deconstructing The Rapidly Maturing RPA Conversation

The discussions around RPA are rapidly advancing, reflecting an increased market maturity as concepts quickly evolve into actual solutions. While it has taken many years to change the cloud narrative from the overly simplistic Capex – Opex argument to a focus around business transformation referenced by arguments around agility and workload specific approaches, the discourse on RPA is advancing at a significantly faster clip.

The emphasis (similar to cloud) is shifting from the argument of replacing FTEs with robots to stressing process (and thus business) transformation. When we sat down for lunch with the team at Symphony Ventures, an emerging RPA consultancy, to learn about their progress, we were impressed by their traction in the market. More importantly, we were excited by their take on the direction of how process automation might evolve. Unlike their peers at GenFour, VirtualOperations or thoughtonomy, Symphony is referencing the broader implications of process automation over the innovations subsumed under the moniker RPA can provide.

The discussion around their experience with IBM’s Watson was one of those triggers. Most of the Artificial Intelligence technologies are not yet mature enough to be deployed on an industrial scale. Thus, the art is around identifying the right use cases while understanding the impact on the business case. With that in mind, there is not one technology to focus on rather the challenge is to understand and evaluate a plethora of providers.

This pretty much encapsulates HfS’s standpoint at the moment. We have long list of providers that we aim to evaluate and we are also encouraging start-ups to get in touch with us to exchange views. However, it is not only a long list of providers. We are segmenting all the approaches and we’re not limited to artificial intelligence; we are looking at process automation at large. So stay tuned as we are working hard to progress such a segmentation.

The other major trigger was a discussion on target operating models. If the argument on business transformation has merit, what is the impact on models like GBS, SIAM—or, in fact, any strategy—to finally achieving the business alignment of IT? The key is to broaden the narrative from suggestions of RPA being quasi-turnkey solutions to outlining the transformational implications. These implications, however, require more than a PowerPoint deck, namely, you have to acquire and build out the right capabilities. That is exactly the path Symphony is on. IPsoft’s acquisition of ab1Group is on the same path.

Enough topics to keep your faithful HfS analysts busy for the rest of the year.