Four Takeaways From the Largest RPA Summit in the World
Anyone who follows the RPA industry should not have missed last week’s epic FORWARD III event hosted by our Triple Partner Uipath in the famous Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. With over 3.000 guests it was the largest gathering of RPA practitioners ever – and an event you should want to hear about!
As both a sponsor of the event and one of Uipath’s first partners, we were thrilled to participate in this historical moment and to share our unique point of view on RPA with the audience.
Here are four comprised, insightful reflections we would like to pass on to you from the event:
1. RPA Awareness is spreading like wild fire among the C-Suite
The most prestigious RPA event of this year was not only attractive for developers, but for executives as well. Executive attendance was extraordinarily high at over 50%. In comparison to previous RPA events, this fact depicts the evolution of RPA into a new and more mature phase in which increasingly more CXOs fame the technology for its ability to impact the business case. The high presence of the C-suite on stage underscored the up-swinging buy-in from decisionmakers in renowned companies, such as Morgan Stanley, Amazon or Uber whose representatives openly raved about the great potential of RPA.
2. RPA is becoming more democratic
RPA should be open and accessible to all – this has always been one of our favorite values about RPA, and we are excited that our partner Uipath has taken bold steps to accelerate the democratization of RPA, ensuring that everyone can benefit from the gift of automation. A big step in this direction is the announcement of Studio X, a second generation of Uipath’s drag-and-drop design tool for low code automation. Bobby Patrick, CMO of Uipath explained:
“We now sit at a point where not just developers, but also citizen developers and subject matter experts are going to be able to not only use but also develop automation… and this is at the point where automation itself becomes an application in its own right.”
At Roboyo, we are eager to see RPA become an application all business users, citizen developers and even students will use as naturally as spreadsheets. We believe in the vision of “one robot for every person” – do you?
3. “Tech for good“ is being realized through RPA
Besides sharing company updates and looking into the future of new technological advancements, this FORWARD III was also a time to celebrate the success stories of past and the present. Once a company has tasted the revolutionary impact on the quality of work, employee satisfaction or customer service, it seems like they cannot stay silent about it and want to share their enthusiasm with the world. This was clearly the case for many business leaders present.
One executive shared that one department in her company automated several mundane and repetitive tasks. As soon as the robots were in place the people could even celebrate with a video of them dancing as the robot completed the boring task.
RPA is not only boosting productivity or cost savings, but even more it is saving humans and improving lives. Health care services by the UN were able to treat 3.000 additional refugees through RPA which would have been impossible without RPA due to its limited budget. A New York charity, focused on infant’s welfare, needed each of its 850 clinicians to spend 4 hours a week moving contact data associated with child diseases from spreadsheet to spreadsheet and from system to system. Using RPA they are now saving 200,000 hours annually and can spend those 4 hours every week with children. At the end of the day, RPA is not just about the numbers, it’s about touching people’s lives, changing the world for good and strengthening our mission as a company. Global leaders (like the chief of the UN) trust that RPA is the right tool at the right time to solve our problems even beyond our business figures.
4. The time to scale RPA has come
No company in the world so far (except maybe the RPA vendors themselves) has automated more than 1% of its business processes. So, what we’ve seen is just the surface of the massive potential RPA holds. One of FORWARD III’s hottest topics was how the automation fabric can be implemented across the whole organization. The trend shows that companies are shifting towards an organization wide adoption, fully embracing the Automation First mindset and empowering their employees through extensive upskilling initiatives.
What advice should be given to companies wishing to scale RPA? To say it in the words of the Coca-Cola İçecek’s CIO: “Don’t wait. Don’t overanalyze. Just go and execute. If I waited, I would have lost the productivity gain.”
Do you want to kickstart your automation journey and are looking for the right partner to help you implement RPA? Please reach out to us here. We would be more than happy to support you on this journey.
