How to avoid RPA vendor lock-in

The exponential rate at which the technology is evolving, with new features and components being developed and released daily it’s very import that we have an open, scalable and agile architecture. However this is an ideal state and to tarnish the ideal state one of the biggest challenges today is vendor lock-in.

Often organisations don’t even realized they are locked in until the time they try and innovate with new components and try to open the existing architecture on a system, platform, tool or service.

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Hyperautomation: More hype than hyper

The first and foremost question which comes to mind is: What is hyperautomation?

According to industry analyst firm Gartner:

“Hyperautomation is a business-driven, disciplined approach that organizations use to rapidly identify, vet and automate as many business and IT processes as possible. Hyperautomation involves the orchestrated use of multiple technologies, tools or platforms, including: artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, event-driven software architecture, robotic process automation (RPA), business process management (BPM) and intelligent business process management suites (iBPMS), integration platform as a service (iPaaS), low-code/no-code tools, packaged software, and other types of decision, process and task automation tools.”

Now from the above definition from Gartner is very clear but at the same time it’s complex, it’s integrated, interdependent but mutually exclusive and independent at the same time. Which adds to more confusions, queries, fears, complex terminologies and eventually results in procrastination, lack of confidence and finally failures.

If there is any organisation which comes forward and say that we have attained hyperautomation or we are a hyperautomation organisation, I would humbly say either they are not sure or not aware what they are doing or they are definitely on the wrong path.

In my view, hyperautomation is not a state or a milestone or a title. It’s a journey. A journey that continues as we mature, as new technologies arrive and also when Gartner’s definition of hyperautomation changes, as it will in the foreseeable future.

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Selecting the right process mining vendor

Process Mining is a growing to become an established discipline in the IT landscape of large and complex organisations.

IT analysts are also increasingly paying attention to both the innovation happening in the space and the vendors. Still, it can be a confusing market to look at and as usual, if you want to reap the benefits, you need to do your homework.

In brief: Process mining is a scientific tool with capabilities of process blueprinting, process optimization and data visualization with the help of machine learning engines. Typically, a process mining tool visualizes data in much more details then conventional visualization tools. The information captured is used to build a storyline highlighting the journey of a transaction on a process and time flow.

In this article, I’ll share my take on process mining in 2023 based on my experience, which started with a decade of RPA work and now with 5+ years focusing on processes at Danish insurance firm Tryg.

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Lean RPA the what, why and how

Lean has been the need of the hour as more and more organisations are adopting robotics process automation (RPA) and maturing in their respective space.

By Lean RPA we mean, optimal utilization of all available resources whether they are licenses or VDI/VM or application maintenance teams or monitoring resources and visualization tools. Eventually the expectations is less of operating cost, resilient setup, lower response time, transparency and governance.

While many organisations have historically spent quite some time developing internal resources which can help them attaining Lean RPA for long some major players in the market have gone ahead and provided COTS (Commercial Of The Shelf) solutions which can be easily adopted and deployed for enhancing operations and helping in driving efficient and effective Lean Operations.

The next question comes is what does these tools have to offer in general, now some have them out of the box and some are in the process of enhancing these tools in their current and future version upgrades and roadmaps.

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