Recently, Gartner released a survey data showing that the global hyper-automation market will reach US$720 billion by 2023. Part of this spend will be on low-code development technologies, including LCAP, iPaaS, RPA, CADP and MXDP, to support process automation, integration, decision analytics and intelligence use cases.
As the development of the digital economy enters the deep water zone, coupled with the continued impact of the epidemic, more and more organizations are accelerating the pace of automation and trying to build a fully automated value chain. Automation has gradually become a new way of operating and innovating enterprises, and has been widely recognized by the capital market and industry users. Recently, UiPath, an enterprise automation software company, held a media meeting to share its research results on key trends in the automation industry, and also provided a key interpretation of its latest version of the business automation platform.
Although the RPA industry started late in China, it has developed to a certain extent so far. During this period, with the innovation of automation technology and the upgrade of user needs, UiPath gradually became aware of opportunities for change and development.
Zou Zuoji, Vice President and Managing Director of UiPath North Asia, mentioned: “Five years ago, everyone’s ideas were relatively simple. Many customers felt that RPA was a tool that could effectively reduce manpower pressure and reduce costs. The purpose of increasing efficiency. At this point, the in-depth application of RPA in the financial department has been confirmed... But now we are more hoping to build the entire enterprise automation platform and blaze a new path in this field. From tools to platforms, That’s what has changed in the past five years.”
Zou Zuoji, Vice President and Managing Director of UiPath North Asia
Combined UiPath’s own customer observations and industry practices, Zou Zuoji talked about the development status of the entire automation industry. The core insights can be summarized as follows:
1. Automation is changing from a tool to a way of doing business and innovation
2. Customer outcomes have shifted from tactical to transformational
3. The business automation platform provides automation-empowered transformation
4. No longer a “dispensable project”, automation rises to the strategic level
Zou Zuoji further explained this:
First of all, when enterprises are undergoing digital transformation, they will not simply consider which work links can be replaced by robots. Instead, they will focus more on how the entire operation can be changed and innovated.
Furthermore, in the past, companies may have made many scattered tools based on process mining, which had a certain effect, but these tools were not connected, and there are doubts about whether they can continue to develop. To build a cross-system, holistic enterprise automation platform, you must go through a transformation from tactics to change.
Also, it is very important to integrate data and apply artificial intelligence to the platform so that it can exert its capabilities in the development process of automation.
“We cannot focus entirely on the present. What we need now is to take a step back, understand the different platforms and business connection points within the enterprise, and then observe where there are opportunities for optimization and innovation. . And through process mining, task mining, and communication mining, these methods can help us realize creative capture and management."
Regarding the main direction of attack now and in the future, Zou Zuoji emphasized: "Compared to a specific tool, We hope more to develop the entire enterprise business automation platform in order to empower enterprises on the road to digital transformation."
For the development trend of the entire automation industry , UiPath has its own unique insights. Chen Lei, pre-sales director of UiPath China, gave a brief introduction to this.
UiPath China Pre-Sales Director Chen Lei
First, process mining and automated testing have become “essential tools” to promote best-in-class enterprise-wide automation. Almost every process these days can be improved through automation, but that means we have to identify and test all of them, and automation can play a role in both areas.
Second, low-code has become a top priority for more people to master automation and artificial intelligence. UiPath hopes that even non-IT professionals can gain access to some of the automation capabilities. Low-code allows users to quickly build automated processes using a simple visual drag-and-drop interface.
Third, innovation powered by artificial intelligence can further expand the scope of automation. Artificial intelligence and automation are a powerful combination, from communication mining to NLP to document processing, which can unlock more and more functions and continuously release new value for business automation.
It is based on the judgment of these trends that UiPath will focus on building a business automation platform. Chen Lei said that looking back on the development history of automation, from the earliest RPA, to the hyper-automation platform proposed by Gartner, from IPA, to the end-to-end comprehensive automation platform, to today's business automation platform, UiPath serves as a witness and practice of these concepts. The reader has a glimpse of the evolution of this path and its internal driving force.
“We believe that the main change is that any technology that is conducive to the digital transformation of enterprises should be put into the business automation platform, thereby reducing costs, improving human efficiency, and bringing more profit margins for enterprises. ."
To implement this concept, UiPath recently launched a new version of the business automation platform UiPath 2022.10. This version provides more enhanced functions while further expanding the application scope of enterprise automation, allowing enterprises to take advantage of automation in more business processes.
Chen Lei explained: “Overall, UiPath’s business automation platform is not only in the RPA field, but also test automation, low-code platform, and intelligent document processing all play extremely important roles in their respective fields. Function. It can be said that the business automation platform created by UiPath can provide a wealth of tools in various fields. As long as you can use it in the digital transformation process, we can provide it under a unified technical architecture. This is the advantage of UiPath . (From the perspective of enterprise selection) If you choose the right platform, you will have no worries in the future."
According to Chen Lei, UiPath 2022.10 provides It has introduced more than 100 new platform functions and performed particularly well in the following four aspects.
First, quickly build next-generation business applications and automation. In addition to traditional automated process development, the low-code platform UiPath Apps also provides shortcuts for rapid construction.
Second, lay a new foundation for sustainable development. In addition to process mining and task mining, the introduction of communication mining functions provides an effective supplement for continuous discovery, helping customers understand the current status of processes and tasks, and achieve expected business results through continuous monitoring and improvement.
Third, the enhanced intelligent platform enables more use cases. Through technological improvements and functional infusion in artificial intelligence, customers can realize automation within a larger business scope.
Fourth, continue to meet the needs of business and IT. For example, the installation package of the automation suite actually incorporates unified architecture deployment into the same installation package, which overall reduces the dependence on computing resources and effectively improves the customer's input-output ratio.
Regarding the new version of the business automation platform itself, Chen Lei made specific highlights. It mainly includes six points:
1. Systematically discover areas of automation that can bring return on investment. "Currently, we have formed a complete system in the field of automated mining." For example, Automation Hub provides a return on investment comparison between expected benefits and actual results, helping users learn from success and apply it repeatedly.
2. Emphasize the seamless combination of multiple technologies: UI AI API. Integrate AI/ML models and APIs into your workflow with a simple drag and drop. UiPath itself has deep accumulation in UI, and API automation technology can assemble and combine the APIs of all packaged software. Coupled with AI technologies such as computer vision, the combination of the three provides a broader imagination for the realization of automation.
3. Communication mining tool – Re:infer. Through the acquisition of Re:infer, the new version adds communication mining functions to the platform to assist enterprises in collecting the massive communication data generated every day. UiPath bots can now understand the context and semantics of email, online chat, and voice conversations to extract actionable business data and new automation opportunities.
4. Strengthen the positive impact of artificial intelligence on business results. Intelligent data processing streamlines end-to-end processes, improves business results, and reduces manual work. "This year, our application market has added a large number of artificial intelligence models, and these models are not only used by technology enthusiasts for research and study, but have been actually applied to our work process."
5, Extend automation to workers everywhere. Employees at all levels build automated and empowered application systems through low-code platforms under the same architecture. "UiPath's low-code platform is naturally connected to robots. Through UiPath's chassis, elements on the page can be quickly mobilized and linked with the robots in the background, so that the built business application system can play an important role in a short period of time. The role of."
6. Outstanding test suite. "This kind of test suite can add a layer to your existing automation. It will notify you when any changes in the peripheral environment occur, so that the robots, processes, businesses, etc. in your production environment can predictably do things before changes occur. Some changes. This greatly reduces the risk of business interruption and enhances business continuity capabilities."
According to data from IDC, nearly 60% of enterprises in the Asia-Pacific region are still in the early stages of their intelligent automation journey. For enterprises, the true realization of automation and digitalization still requires a lot of exploration and practice. For corporate employees, there is also a vast space for thinking and imagination on how to understand automation and how to release creativity through "human-machine collaboration".
UiPath has been on this path of exploration for a long time. "In 2017, we created the RPA platform, and today we created the concept of a new enterprise automation platform and added a lot of new technologies and content to it. We hope to take the entire market, whether it is partners or customers, on the road to A new, more critical, and greater step in digital transformation." Zou Zuoji said when looking forward to UiPath's future vision.
The distance is not far away. The emergence of a new version of the business automation platform now provides a feasible path. Although it will take a long time, you will finally have the opportunity to see the free world of "human and machine dancing" after automation is truly popularized. .
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