BOT....why should we care about it?

Whenever someone start talking about robotics process automation. The first thing that comes to our mind is what is BOT? When you look back in the past 5 to 6 years, you will find that around late 2014 & early 2015 Robotic Process Automation (RPA), have roared onto the business world. Today almost every business / organization has deployed or somewhere in the middle of deploying it to drive efficiency and have better ROI from the business process. Robotics process automation and its older smarter cousin Artificial Intelligence has taken the world by storm, promising cheap, fast & good processes in place leading to quick / high ROI. But the question that came to our mind in beginning while the RPA conversation started remaining un-answered......what is BOT or what is RPA? The simplest explanation that comes to my mind is that BOT is a software that runs the software.  RPA is software that simulates the actions that humans make in operating other software. In this way they are virtual humans, copying our actions without tiredness, diversion, or deviation. RPA BOT’s represent the simpler, lower end of the so-called Intelligent Automation (IA) gamut. This starts with rule-based task automation at the simple end, through machine learning, specific artificial intelligence, and then general artificial intelligence at the complex end. It represents the first step towards leveraging this IA workforce in our world.

You will be surprised to know that nearly all the notions, mathematics and methodologies used in IA were created years ago. But what is now changing the nature of automation is a combination of computer processing capacity, Quantities of data, universal connectivity of human & device via social media, mobility or IOT. 

Which now allows the algorithms and concepts of the mid-20th century to come to fruition. Ironically, for this new wave of “intelligent automation” to realize its full potential, we need to fully retire the old wave of automation, and the business processes they enabled.

RPA have been hyper-focused on cutting costs, eliminating waste, increasing efficiency, and doing the same old things they’ve always done, just a tiny bit better. RPA will be many organizations’ first real experience with their cybernetic (joint human-machine) future. And if they can be successful with RPA, then they have a chance of also being successful with Artificial Intelligence and the massive impacts that technology holds for our future.

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