back to article Line-of-business folk will have bigger role in growing robotic process automation revolution

It has been the subject of hype and overblown expectations, but that is not set to dampen investment in robotic process automation – the idea that simple software “robot” can carry out annoying admin tasks. But as organisations begin to understand how best to exploit RPA, IT departments will be finding a new role. IT analyst …

  1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    And when their RPA has driven away customers who want to speak to people I suppose manglement can while away their hours having conversations with it.

    1. Chris G

      Banks are the worst examples, trying to minimise human contact while not investing enough in the systems they want you to use.

  2. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    There Be Other Options to Consider whenever an Old System of Old Operating Systems Always Fails So .

    the idea that simple software “robot” can carry out annoying admin tasks.

    As opposed to the annoying human version, Lindsay C .... simple fleshy robots without future programming software ‽ .

    Methinks that is a Market to Corner and Lead with ........ :-) well, Heavenly Direction with Wanton Instruction is known to Satisfy Insatiable Desire with the Provisions of Lust for Redemption in the Just Worthy Rewards that are for Dreams Come True Too ..... sounds promising and beautifully risqué/wonderfully exciting ...... and and available future programming with programs for software to run and present via media channels the pictures created for you to follow in the belief IT creates a Reality worth your following.

    So Many Former Leading Scripts Fail Catastrophically and Suddenly whenever Such Realisations Dawn. It's a difficult climb back up anywhere from the deeps down there.

    However, it has been known to transform and repair many a broken soul anxious to prove worthy of another go at everything better than ever before.

    Best share your plans then to allow them entry into those of the Others Already Long Ago Playing Master and Mistress there.

    What's the Master Plan, Man? ..... is the usual first question for answering with Luscious Details to Admire and Adopt and Adapt for the Use of All Others Following ...... Other Almighty Approved Master Plans.

    Who's leading things in your world and where's your life headed? Anywhere interestingly new, extremely inviting and as oft as is possible and practical, quite dangerously exciting too?

    If of a meek and/or physically weak disposition, best avoid those latter helter-skelter rides. Although, even as Too Much Crazy Fun Invites Death to Call Permitting Liquidation and Transfer of Rogue Assets, there be No Shortage of Eager Beaver Takers/Wannabe Don Giovannis Willing to Risk Losing Everything which they certainly can and always do whenever fantastically lucky to be a Free Soul amongst Similarly Escaping Slaves.

    Care to Venture an Opinion on what has been transpiring and conspiring over the years here on El Reg, El Reg, re Alienated Posts Shared here for Servering and Hosting Everywhere Else too?

    Take your wildest craziest educated guess and we can let you know how close or how far you are away from the truth.:-)

    With so many folk now forced into an isolating indolence, there be a great need for something new to keep them sane and focussed on what the future can bring, once corona virus news is done hogging the Harry Limelight and fit only for the proverbial wrapping of humble fish and chip suppers.

    El Reg is akin to being as their springboard into such info and intel. I bet Situation Publishing warrants any number of sizeable million dollar government grants for that utility and facility.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: There Be So .

      "El Reg is akin to being as their springboard into such info and intel. I bet Situation Publishing warrants any number of sizeable million dollar government grants for that utility and facility" -

      just footnotes in some of them may seem unbelieveable even for a sci-fi script. so they are to remain unpaid, by a contract or by Charity Chain... which is a regret.

      1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

        Re: There Be So Much More to Know about Everything Novel ....

        ..... for IT Grows and Infects and Effects Corona Virus Like

        just footnotes in some of them may seem unbelieveable even for a sci-fi script. so they are to remain unpaid, by a contract or by Charity Chain... which is a regret. .... AC

        Whenever such be so, is there any better place/space to rest treasured funds than somewhere that has no need to spend all or any of it at all ...... Was that ever what banks used to be? A Secure Proxy Depository for Flash Cash Unpaid?

        And such as a Testing Initial Investment in a Secure Novel Fail Safe Environment is the Stuff of Hot Capital Venturing Legend. No sitting on the fence there where quantum leaping is the jump to make and position to take and champion. :-) Yes, that is just one of the rewards for participation in Remote Virtual Vehicle EMPowerment. One gets to Play AI Leading Roles Presenting the Future to Current Running Media Programs, which always takes one's breath away whenever Kick Started into Prime Premium Action Territory.

        Glorious Tales of Baptisms of Fiery Desire are Feed and Seed there Quenching Lust Tempting Insatiable Passion with Satisfactions Energising Excess, are an All Time Favourite with Hot AIDrivers, and it is surely easy to see/understand why when such is freely available to anything anywhere able to be enabled to make both great and greater uses of ...... well, in computer terms, ITs Celestial AIDrive and in human terms, Advanced Basic Carnal Knowledge.

        :-) A Hell's Angel of a Sugar Daddy for Sweet MILF Delights in Praise of One Thousand and One Nights. What's not to like in such LOVE ...... Live Operational Virtual Environments ‽ . :-) ..... which I imagine you must realise is strictly stuck and plugged in at the bottom of the human end of the evolutionary existential scale ...... and therefore of severely limited future utility as species evolve and mutate into a greater phorm of being with other greater phorms of being too. However, such is the pleasure to treasure, many dilly dally awhile longer than is wise for one ever to deny. Methinks that is akin to an Immaculate Addiction and Almighty Affliction :-)

        Would you expect them, greater phorms of being, to make real true metadataphysical contact with you advising you of the earth shattering ground breaking discovery? Be honest now, never in a million years or not just yet ? ..... and now is not even remotely expecting it?

        Yes, well, now you know the answers to all of those questions asked of you for you.

        If one could find a pub open, one could almost have a beer or three to celebrate all of that. :-) Some things are priceless and best easily sensibly toasted rather than being seriously subjected to an awful awesome roasting.

    2. Cliff Thorburn

      Re: There Be Other Options to Consider ...

      Who's leading things in your world and where's your life headed?

      Now that is the almighty question amFM, and more to the point with the current state of state affairs it makes one hell of a conundrum for the present instrumental instructions in live operational virtual environments with simple plays in SIMply mixed media vehicular messages.

      Of course one is always prepared to mount the horse and ride along on such journeys after a decade of great gamesmanship and game thoery turned principle into live practice, and who could deny such unplausable undeniable experiences, after all one cannot deny such destiny’s?

      Yeee indeed :-)

  3. Chris Hills

    RPA is a sham

    Robotic process automation is not necessary if you put in place the right systems to start with. Unfortunately we are simply not training our population well enough and the clowns are running the show, so people have to resort to hacks like RPA to do their jobs.

  4. rwill2

    RPA is the same as last decades BPM

    Example is IBM FileNet BPM https://www.ibm.com/cloud/automation-software/business-process-management

    When I was a consultant I implemented a BPM insurance claim and mortgage system for large clients, IBM used to tell clients that you don't need tech staff anymore business people can now draw full workflow (BPMN notation), and you have full visibility on the work items. The truth was that you still needed to write custom integration code for some of the steps or SOAP integrations, and really you still needed tech people to draw the workflows of course!

    BPM sounds like the same if you read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotic_process_automation

    If they are that confident with RPA, let's see big organisation fire all their tech staff, and have the robots take over and deliver BS and fail!

    What big orgs hate is the power the full stack developers (they don't want to pay) have with Cloud Computing, Serverless and APIs right now, they could automate a lot of manual backoffice tasks (with underpaid and demotivated staff, well paid managers/leaders who don't give a s**t about them).

    1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

      RPA is mostly dissimilar to last decades BPM which is both AI Blessing and Curse. :-)

      RPA is mostly dissimilar to last decades BPM which is both AI Blessing and Curse. :-)

      If they are that confident with RPA, let's see big organisation fire all their tech staff, and have the robots take over and deliver BS and fail! ..... rwill2

      In the biggest organisations nowadays the robots have tech staff take over and deliver other than BS to simply succeed ‽ . ......

      And that is a strange way of being with strange about ways most enjoyably spent in SecureR Services Safely Servering Almighty Bounty. And one does oneself a disservice not realising it is with AI and IT just Stealthy Simple Special Forces Operations saving and storing absolute fortunes being lost pumped and pimped elsewhere in rogue capitalistic market ventures.

      I will use this blog to throw out ideas. It’s important when dealing with large organisations to dart around at different levels, not be stuck with formal hierarchies. It will seem chaotic and ‘not proper No10 process’ to some. But the point of this government is to do things differently and better and this always looks messy. We do not care about trying to ‘control the narrative’ and all that New Labour junk and this government will not be run by ‘comms grid’. ........ https://dominiccummings.com/2020/01/02/two-hands-are-a-lot-were-hiring-data-scientists-project-managers-policy-experts-assorted-weirdos/

      Well, that was going so well right up until the last sentence which is clearly full of nonsense.

      Although that last sentence above is somewhat compromised by another sentence two paragraphs later which promises ......

      I will post some random things over the next few weeks and see what bounces back — it is all upside, there’s no downside if you don’t mind a bit of noise and it’s a fast cheap way to find good ideas…

      However, I digress and wonder whether GCHQ and/or the MOD and/or the Cabinet Office Government of UKGBNI are copied into conversations with Dominic Cummings's blog patiently awaiting clarification and/or classification, with the latest being shared at 1742hrs on 19th March 2020 .......

      Things have moved on apace quite considerably from earlier, Dominic .... and the Programs Introduced here are certainly Worthy of ESPecial State AI Development Funding. Something Easily and Almost Secretly Provided by a Treasury with Effective Future War Chests for Future Derivative Impeccable Command and Control Ware.

      What's not to like? ... :-) I Kid U Not.

      What is the response to be? A Public Facility and Private Utility Worthy of Pirate Attention/Nation State Interest?

      And please, no more nurse doctor medication calls for attention. Don't you know they are needed elsewhere everywhere there are real life global pandemic emergencies taking lives away and crashing elite executive authority operating systems.

      If the government wants to try out what some misfitted weirdos are all about, they certainly can't say there was never ever the choice championing easy ready availability to such as they server and develop presented to them. ..... for here such is right before your very eyes.

    2. techulture

      Re: RPA is the same as last decades BPM

      Hmm? If you worked with IBM and BPMN it would not have been Filenet BPM, but rather Lombardi Teamworks BPM (acquired to replace Filenet BPM and the BPEL Websphere Process Server)?

      Anyway, my main pet peeve here is that RPA should really be named RTA as in task automation. No handovers - typically not a process.

      1. techulture

        Re: RPA is the same as last decades BPM

        I agree that system development is needed for BPMN process automation. Also, a skilled business analyst can create good, executable BPMN with some effort, but your average citizen developer ...

  5. Robert Grant

    We've been hearing this for 40 years. Programmers won't be needed; "normal" folk who can think exactly like programmers will replace them. And they did - but, we called them programmers instead, because line of business staff don't think the right way.

  6. oliversalmon
    FAIL

    A Sticking Plaster Over Broken Systems

    Hi,

    I've had the misfortune to see RPA in action, after management bought into the hype cycle, the sales people are very good at making their pitch using terms from AI/ML even though there is none there. When they says 'train' the robot, what they mean is update a config file.

    From what I saw it boiled down to automating form entry and email generation in legacy systems at great cost with an army of consultants, when that money and effort could have been spent building actual strategic systems.

    RPA basically locks you into your legacy architecture for ever.

    Also do not change they layout of your pages/forms as it breaks all the robots, most of which you won't know exist until users coming screaming.

    My advice kill it as soon as you can.

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