Robotisation is part of digitalisation strategy – breakfast seminar 2.11.2016

Welcome to #RPAbreakfast2016! We are looking forward to a great event.

8.21 am

Breakfast is served!

9.05 am

Co-founder Jukka Virkkunen welcomes the crowd!

Thank you everyone for making it here today despite the cold weather!

Today’s question: “How does robotisation link to business strategy?”

9.08 am

Co-founder Heikki Länsisyrjä takes the stage.

Introducing Digital Workforce Nordic

9.15 am

Professor Leslie Willcocks from London School of Economics steps up!

“RPA has been around since 2005 (initiated by BluePrism).

The technology will be embedded in all of our organisations over the upcoming 5 years!”

“Studies on RPA are often flawed in their HYPE & FEAR”

“There are more complex & realistic views to take on automation than these two extremes.”

“RPA is today’s technology, in my opinion CA (cognitive automation) is not yet mature enough. With CA we are at the proof of concept stage.”

“What is RPA then? It takes over routine “knowledge” work done on the computer. The technology automates these repetitive tasks very effectively.”

“The main force of RPA is taking the robot out of the human!”

“Funnily enough in many organisations employees have developed positive personal relationships with digital workers – giving them names and treating them as enthusiastic trainees.”

“RPA improves the customer experience by letting the organisation focus on their core competences.”

“You can apply the technology to many situations and scale it very quickly. The organisations can massively decrease the baggage of regulatory processes. In one case: 3 months of work and 35 new hires vs. 6 weeks to train already existing robots on the job.”

“One of the  biggest flaws: Focusing on people being replaced, when we know there has been over 50% increase of data handling and great increase in regulation. People have much more work than before. This fact has not been incorporated well in the future of work studies. RPA is a way to cope with the ever increasing amount of work.”

“How is success achieved? Its not just about cost cuts! That will happen, but if you won’t look further you will miss a lot.”

“Studies find 30-40% increased efficiency.”

“You don’t always have to automate the whole process, but automating sub-processes may be very beneficial.”

“Stabilise the process before automation.”

“People hate unclarity. Communicate clearly to your employees the benefits and implications of implementing RPA.”

“Based on studies, 6 RPA myths are NOT true: 1. RPA is used to replace humans. 2. Staff feels threatened by RPA. 3. RPA brings jobs back offshore. 4. RPA is only driven by cost savings. 5. RPA replaces a full person’s job. 6. Whole processes need to be automated to get a good business case.”

10.17 am

Thank you professor Willcocks!

10.38 am

Jukka Virkkunen: Introducing Alastair Bathgate, CEO, Blue Prism

10.39 am 

Intelligent Automation – Virtual workforce by Alastair Bathgate

“Manufacturing industry worries about creating standardise processes, decreasing errors and efficiency. Service business has fallen back in this development.”

“Blue Prism the leader in RPA technology. Floated in AIM in March 2016.”

“BPO needs to compete with other selling points than decreasing cost as cost-efficient RPA is made available everywhere and anywhere in the world.”

“To work with RPA is to begin a new relationship – in addition to the software, there needs to be a working partnership between the service provider & the customer to best leverage the benefits of the technology.”

“Customers being treated fairly = consistent processes”

“Many organisations use multiple “legacy” systems. In one case I remember talking to a bank manager who stated they used over 2000 different systems. Who is going to bridge the gap between the different systems? This is where RPA can help.”

“When you are starting with RPA, first think about what you want to achieve. If you want to scale RPA organisation wide – communication is key. In the case of RPA the barriers to entry are more cultural than technical. I would recommend to assign a person to lead the change.”

11.10 am

Thank you Alastair!

11.11 am

Jukka Virkkunen gives a sneak peek to DWN’s next stage of service development: “Digital Workforce is currently developing a new mobile application to enable users to follow and manage their digital workers.”

11.15 am

Digitalist Ville Tolvanen takes the stage!

“We need to critically think about our business processes and consider if they are stuck in the past. Why don’t we start playing the music of the decade of when they were created? That makes it more concrete! But when you stop to think about it, its clear our business process are relics of the past.”

“What does it mean for something to be strategic? It needs to be broadly integrated in what we do on a daily basis.”

“Processes need to change. The slow, energy consuming, current processes eat away our ideas and ability to serve our customers well.”

“Digitalisation presses together the whole value chain. Content and delivery become one.”

“Today we have talked about robotics, it too starts with the processes. Understanding what is done and trying to see, if the process as it is makes sense. How can we best support value creation?”

“Strategy without a roadmap is cripple.”

“Via digitalisation B2B becomes H2H.”

11.53 am

Thank you Ville!

11.54 am

Jukka Virkkunen: closing words.

Thank you to all our guests!

Interested? Contact Digital Workforce’s consultants to learn about RPA and follow our blog for more details from the event!