Robotic Process Automation takes IT 20 years back

This all the turmoil and excitement around “RPA” reminds me a situation that I witnessed two decades ago. A company had a process of placing orders for products for resale that was completely manual - some people decided what kind of articles and quantity to order, others typed these orders into the computer system - line by line. They still work like that?

One of the guys who was doing this dull and stupid job decided to simplify his life. The list of items to be ordered was sent to him in an Excel file (someone else had previously done another dummy job). Then it had to be entered into the computer using a Unix terminal. Our hero came up with the idea of writing a macro in Visual Basic that would simulate his daily manual work - read the article number and its quantity from the file and then enter this data in the terminal. Sequence: 'copy', 'paste', 'enter', 'sendKeys' ... Thus, he launched the first "Robotic Automation" without even knowing it.

I have always believed that IT has the best marketing of all industries. Others – hold their beer! Tech companies has always been able to sell the greatest nonsense to rich organizations. We are in 2021 and the overlays for outdated software are sold as "robots".

But embellishing the naked truth will not change the fact that their systems will stay vintage and a delayed change will be necessary and even more costly in the future.

Companies are looking for an easy way to join digital transformation, but because Digital transformation is mainly about adoption of rapid transition of technology to change operational model, the Excel file will still remain a file even if opened by a "robot", the scanned paper invoice will still be just a document if even now "digital ". RPA will not transform business from patchwork quilt to controlled processes. These will be essentially the same processes being run by bots instead of humans. They just got faster.

However, I can imagine that there are situations when RPA might actually make sense. This can be a good way to make a spectacular call for help. Organizations that are interested in installing "robots" usually have deficiencies in the integrated architecture, optimized processes, access to the appropriate class of systems adapted to the scale of the business.

“Robotic Process Automation” should rather be a hasty fix for organization’s problems on inefficiencies and repetitive manual processes. Implementing RPA on a larger scale may waste resources (money, time, training) that could be devoted to making real progress with the systems.

Growth in every kind of company depends on a systematic and sequential adoption strategy in line with IT systems. Tech is everywhere - analytics, sensors, mobile computing, machine learning, applications, the Internet of Things (IoT), and billions of devices. It will just intensify.

Not having the right technology doesn't just mean inconvenience. Leaders grow revenue at more than twice the rate of Laggards. In 2018, Laggards had 15% in foregone annual revenue. If they don’t change, they could miss out on as much as 46% of their annual revenue by 2023 [Accenture study].

A "robot" clicking on an Excel file may have problems to provide the right technological platform to run the business in the future.