Four questions with RPA leader Peter Camp

Four questions with RPA leader Peter Camp

We asked intelligent automation expert and founder of CampTek Software, Peter Camp, a few questions about his experience with attended automation. Here’s what we heard:

We’re seeing a shift in focus from unattended RPA toward attended RPA. What’s driving this trend, and how much potential do you see?

First off, there are only so many unattended use cases that can be automated. At the same time, companies are discovering a greater need for humans in the loop and intelligent decision making. A bot regardless of how well it’s coded can only make so many decisions without some type of intervention. The other driver towards attended automation is the need to increase the productivity of knowledge workers. I frequently quote that the average worker is only productive for 2 hours and 52 minutes and only 27% is performing skilled work.

PixieBrix with UiPath Bots provide a way in which we can increase that productivity quite quickly by taking an existing application a knowledge worker is using, and enhancing it to reduce the navigational overhead they would otherwise have to battle with. Essentially at the end of the day, it is a data and navigation problem that is driving this. I also like to say we need to make technology “work” for humans vs humans working for technology.

How do you think RPA needs to adapt to work with knowledge work vs. clerical work as the technology spreads into the front office?

More meaningful ways to engage the knowledge worker. I am a huge proponent of RPA Citizen Development. I refer to it as a gateway into automation. My peers in the industry may disagree because there has been such a focus on Unattended Automation. Those automation will always be there and will continue to grow as a supporting piece for the attended, front office solutions. I think one of the inhibitors to attended automation has been its delivery mechanism and reliability. That is no longer a factor. In addition, the need for low code and no-code solutions are only getting larger as organizations are forced to take the burden off IT to deliver and push it out to the business to step in and help. The tools were not there before, now they are.

I noticed CampTek offers many pre-built RPA solutions. How does an off-the-shelf approach help companies adopt RPA?

Yes, we believe in a solution approach to RPA and specifically automation. Some of our peers try to use RPA for everything or have the old school “Time and Materials” approach that was used to implement enterprise-level systems. That doesn’t work with this technology. A full life cycle approach in which analysis, development, testing, acceptance, and support is necessary. Companies are often left to support these bots and don’t possess the ability to do that effectively. Support has always been the forefront of our thinking.

Any final thoughts?

As the world begins to come out of this global crisis, we are at a watershed moment in human history. We are about to head or are at the beginning of the 4th Industrial Revolution and are on the brink of something momentous. The virtue of software automation and, specifically, Robotic Process Automation, AI and ML — will soon be realized.