When rpa started?
RPA as I see it is a continuation of Computer-based process automation that has evolved over the ages.
We have gone through multiple waves of process automation since the advent of the Information age.
In this early phase of the Information revolution, we saw the computerization of lines of businesses in many organizations. This was lead by Management Information Systems or MIS groups within each organization. This phase of process improvement included Quality management (TQM) and continuous process improvement methods. As organizations embraced process-centric approaches to improve business results, they looked to re-engineer and manage the business processes better.
Business Process Management (BPM) uses multiple methods to optimize end-to-end business processes. As the Tech companies of the nineties (including IBM, Oracle) came on board this bandwagon, they brought in multiple automation technologies. This technology enabled the automation of business processes and was called Business Process Automation (BPA). BPM continues to be a driving force today and RPA is considered an emerging field within BPA.
RPA emerged in the 2000s – Blue prism released their first product in 2003, UiPath and Automation anywhere released their automation libraries around the same time (all companies were founded a bit earlier).
As per Alastair Bathgate, CEO of Blue prism: “We started focusing on the BPO space as a route to market.. .”. UiPath also started seeing traction for their product with an Indian BPO company. So RPA started off as a way to reduce costs in Business Process Outsourcing and moved to Shared Services, IT Outsourcing, and other Business areas.
Outsourcing reduces expenses by moving lower-level manual tasks and processes to cheaper labor. They were looking at different levers to continue to deliver annual cost savings to their customers. In an effort to continue to reduce costs, RPA started out improving the repetitive processes carried out by these Outsourcing providers.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has resulted from the use of multiple technologies to solve business problems. It started by using the humble legacy technologies like screen scraping combined with the Automation workflow software. With the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI), the cognitive aspects also have started showing up in RPA tools.
Different RPA providers have taken different paths technologically and have evolved into AI unicorns that we see today. All companies have worked with early customers to improve their Digital workforce or bot offerings.
Blue Prism started off to create an “outsourced workforce” for BPOs.
They claim to have coined the term “robotic process automation”. As per Bathgate, “We were doing robotic process automation before it was called robotic process automation..”
Blue Prism was focused on creating a Digital workforce from the beginning – they were thinking towards solving the problem of doing things an outsourced robot would do including doing the work and scheduling them.
Blue Prism is therefore built around that. They have a Microsoft Visio-like interface to configure the tasks to be performed by the Bot. These Bots can then be deployed and scheduled using an admin console.
Blue Prism is morphing into a technology platform. They have been calling it “Connected RPA”. The aim of the platform is to provide access and foundation for intelligent automation – across multiple industries, companies of all sizes, and across every geography.
Tech Tip: Blue Prism is built on the Microsoft .NET Framework. Blue Prism robot relies on business objects to interact with applications. A business object acts as an adapter to the user interface of specific applications. Blue Prism is one of the few Object-based RPA tools and therefore does not have a recorder.
UiPath(then DeskOver) started off by building automation libraries and software development kits. These automation libraries were quite popular and used by companies such as IBM, Google, and Microsoft. These libraries are still embedded in some of their products.
It appears that UiPath then set out to productize these libraries. Initially, their product was not finding much traction. An Indian chapter of a large BPO company that was doing a pilot project to find the best provider of RPA technology choose them. Through this opportunity, they discovered the BPO world and the repetitive work that can be solved through their product – a product-market fit was finally realized.
Around 2012, UiPath (DeskOver) launched the first UiPath Desktop Automation product line that specifically targeted the RPA market. They had just realized the market fit with RPA and started putting its resources into building a platform for training and orchestrating software robots.
Their Platform – the UiPath Enterprise RPA Platform – thus has UiPath Robots which are designed in a UiPath Studio and can be centrally managed from UiPath Orchestrator.
Tech Tip: Uipath is based on Microsoft Workflow Foundation which is again a Microsoft .NET technology meant to create applications that execute an ordered business process. This is a bit of concern as this is probably not on Microsoft’s Azure roadmap.
Automation Anywhere started off as Tethys Solutions and was founded in 2003. The name “Tethys” comes from the Greek goddess of water. Their vision was to make business process automation be as ubiquitous as water. Quite a great vision and they seem to be succeeding to a good extent on that.
Mihir and the team were aiming to replace the scripting applications that were manually done within organizations. Their product, Automation Anywhere allowed for the creation of business process automation designed by the user. They focussed on supporting all aspects of end-to-end business processes.
As per Mihir, they created the product (Automation Anywhere), launched it, and went out for a coffee break. When they came back they were surprised to find that someone from Australia had already bought it!
Automation Anywhere still looks quite like the product they released around 2009! The vision is remarkable. They documented the process and also had a built-in ROI calculator! (edit 2020: The A2019 version has a completely new and revamped look)
Automation Anywhere has also started calling it a platform – “Automation Anywhere Enterprise – The RPA platform for the future of business process automation”. Their core product works like other RPA with a studio to configure workflows and a “Control Center” to deploy and manage the bots. They also have a product called IQ Bot – which is RPA plus AI.
Tech Tip: Automation Anywhere is also built on the Windows .NET framework. You can see that all the top RPA tools are built on Microsoft technologies. This works well because many Enterprises use Windows desktops to do their day-to-day work. RPA works through these Windows interfaces.
RPA is in what Everest is calling a virtuous circle – Real value is leading to more capital which is invested in the tools giving more and more value.
With significant capital being infused, we can see that RPA tools will get better and add more features quickly. Here are a few trends that I see:
As I said in the beginning, awareness of RPA has increased multi-fold. More and more enterprises are adopting and implementing RPA. There are challenges to scale through which we shall discuss later.
RPA is evolving to include AI. What we can expect to see in the near future from RPA tools include Unstructured data processing, Predictive & Prescriptive Analytics, and simple judgment-based automation.
One of the challenges of implementing RPA is that you need to discover, shortlist and prioritize the processes that are ripe for automation. Vendors have been adding this feature and more could follow suit.
Since the advent of the Information Age, multiple waves of process automation have gone through such as the Computerized Automation (happened between the 70s and 90s), the Business Process Management (BPM) in the 90s, and RPA in the 2000s. To be able to appreciate the current state of RPA, we will need to understand what came before it, beginning primarily with improvements after the 1990s.
BPM is simply a combination of multiple methods so that the business processes can work more efficiently. In the 90s, many tech companies including IBM and Oracle introduced different automation technologies in order to optimize the business process, which was later called business process automation. After that, the digital transformation movement has prompted the development of RPA.
Dated back to the early 2000s, RPA was a growing technology. However, it depended on artificial intelligence, screen scraping, and workflow automation. Despite the distinction of its forefathers, RPA has since elevated to a higher level and advanced their capabilities in certain manners.
Screen Scraping software was the first technology that created a bridge between newer systems and incompatible legacy systems. Recently, it has been used to extract data from the web on the presentation layer. Despite the advantages of using screen scraping in comparison to manual labor, this technology is limited by its compatibility with existing systems. Therefore, several firms have sought more adaptable and versatile technologies.
The term “Workflow Automation and Management Tools” was first introduced in 1920 and later became more popular in the 1990s. Thanks to the ability in processing based on certain fields of interest, this kind of software remove the need for manual data entry as well as increases speed, efficiency and accuracy for the business.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) in general refers to the capability of computer systems to perform tasks that would normally require human intervention and intellect. While AI is great in terms of precision and the replacement of manual labor, it can be quite expensive for the business.
RPA started as a combination of several technologies dealing with business problems. Nowadays, with the arrival of AI, RPA is developed with integrated cognitive ability. As a result, many RPA providers have created different software to enhance their digital force and bot offerings.
Sources:
The actual term RPA was coined in 2012 by Phil Fersht, founder and lead analyst at HFS Research. The technology plodded along until about 2018 when it exploded in popularity as companies undertook digital transformation and RPA platform capabilities improved.
Everyone has this question. Did RPA already exist from long ago under traditional automation? When did it diverge and evolve as a discrete technology? Let's dive deep into the history of RPA to find out the answers. Though the term "Robotic Process Automation" emerged in the early 2000's it had its primary developments after the 1990s.
The history of RPA tells that it had three to four key predecessors which were Screen Scraping software, Desktop Macros, Workflow automation & management tools, and Artificial Intelligence. RPA still relies on these technologies but uplifts the precision in the process and significantly improves their ability to increase the quality of deliverables to the users.
RPA's growth had been at a rapid pace over the past few years. And its impacts are higher than you could possibly imagine. When organizations and industries were looking for ways to increase their workflow efficiency, RPA slid in as the answer. To acquire huge profits and to stay strong with the highly competitive market, organizations started implementing RPA in their workflow across different areas.
Since RPA applied automation to the workflow using drag and drop feature without depending on the code, the proliferation of RPA was remarkably easy. And the best part is people can adopt and start using RPA without having programming knowledge.
RPA has grown to a potential where the software robots can work round the clock without human intervention. IT automation had the fastest adaption to RPA and penetrated widely into the market. The results amazed many organizations including SME (Small and Medium Enterprises).
In Finance and Accounting, the automation of the notion "craftsman" work has fetched unmatched level of productivity and accuracy compared with the traditional method. The indifference that happens with human work is removed and made consistently efficient using RPA.
RPA has started replacing the data entry and the data rekeying jobs with its automated software robots and techniques. It is anticipated that in future no data entry, rekeying and other repetitive mind-numbing tasks will be manual. Almost all of the rule-driven, protocol-driven tasks can be automated efficiently using RPA
McKinsey report has estimated that by 2025, RPA will have a major economic impact of nearly $6.7 trillion. Putting together various appraisals and statistics, it is obvious that RPA is going to be one of the leading technology platforms with an estimation that it will become a standard for positive business outcomes. It is also estimated that RPA will put down human jobs with its widespread in automation.
Market Research Future (MRFR) predicts with the precision that many industries will reap the benefits of RPA and it is estimated that there will be a confirm rise for the RPA market with a CAGR of 29% between 2017-2023.
In the future, when the advancements of RPA gets fully evolved all those operations that a human does today will be automated by RPA.
These platforms are able to deal with unforeseen errors and exceptions in a business process, learning from and adapting based on previous actions and experiences. Unlike traditional automation, they are able to apply judgment and creativity to their work, which will essentially allow companies to automate enhanced visibility, transparency, communication, and collaboration across their value chain.
The history of RPA dates back to early 2000 as a growing technology. However, it depended on artificial intelligence, screen scraping, and workflow automation.
Screen Scraping software was the first technology that created a bridge between newer systems and incompatible legacy systems. Recently, it has been used to extract data from the web on the presentation layer. Despite the advantages of using screen scraping in comparison to manual labor, this technology is limited by its compatibility with existing systems. Therefore, businesses have sought more adaptable and versatile technologies.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has resulted from the use of multiple technologies to solve business problems. It started by using legacy technologies like screen scraping combined with the automation workflow software.
It is important to note that RPA has literally changed the game in the software industry when compared to cost, time, results and rapid return on investment.
Robotic Process Automation is used across most business sectors including manufacturing, distribution, retail, finance, telecommunications and in areas ranging from IT departments to human resources and accounting. The bots perform tasks ranging from transferring information to disparate databases to compiling reports.
RPA is non-intrusive in nature and leverages a company’s existing infrastructure without causing disruption to underlying systems, which is usually difficult and costly to replace. With RPA, cost efficiency and compliance are no longer an operating cost but a byproduct of the automation.
How is RPA different from other enterprise automation tools? In contrast to other, traditional IT solutions, RPA allows organizations to automate at a fraction of the cost and time previously encountered.
The proper implementation of a software system is the key to success. Adaptive Growth’s experience implementing software spans 30+ years and over 600 successful implementations. And that success depended on having described and defined user requirements and their expectations within a work flow properly. How many times have you heard during a software implementation, especially an ERP system, a comment like, “that’s not the way we do our work”?
