Although still challenging, as with 2020, the past year has been one of real positivity. The pandemic has changed the outlook that companies and people have and how they want to work.
Part of that has been about taking the boring jobs away from remote workers – to keep their spirits high and to give them work where they really add value.
This is all in a day’s work for automation. But what will next year look like? We’re not making any promises but we’ve got a few ideas.
Machine Will Get Smarter
Starting with an easy one, we’re confident that the software needed to develop AI and ML will improve. That’s not much of a prediction – more of an inevitability – but it is worth noting. Packages like Citizen AI are only going to get more powerful. Right now, you need a data scientist just to churn through a lot of the groundwork and they are in short supply. That means that people are going to push software which will do more of the work for us.
I’m Sorry Dave
Alright, a less obvious one now: an increase in quality awareness of automation. Each year that passes the general public thinks of robots less like the Terminator and more like HAL 9000 (only less evil). In 2022 people will see more robots supporting them – not just doing work for them. In call centres. bots can guide and back up human operators to make the two of them more than the sum of their parts. That’s true integration.
Read Me
Back to AI and it’s clear that its application in RPA, as well as pretty much everything else, is going to grow. We can already see signs that next year will yield big pushes using AI in IDP (Intelligent Document Processing). This will be a breakout year for companies like Hyperscience who have their own unique approach to IDP. Their work on reinforcement learning is going to help accelerate RPA uptake for businesses.
The Smart Search
One thing we’re really excited about is the surge in process and task mining. 2021 has already seen growth in this area, but we predict a massive jump in 2022.
Imagine AI that can understand the processes of your business, mapping out each step. Or task mining where the most common tasks of your teams are noted and ordered – so that automation can be easily built to support them. We’re not embarrassed to say this really gets us excited. Using AI to understand when and how to automate: that’s genius.
A lot of our customers use RPA. but the number which have actual bots deployed is a lot lower. Technology that can scale is something every company wants as they look to invest in things which keep pace with them – to avoid bottlenecks. Part of what we call our Automation Factory focuses on continuous improvement. You might recognise that idea from SixSigma, but we use it to help projects scale and work for our customers as they grow. This is a big part of what we’re dedicating ourselves to next year. Not so much a New Year’s Resolution as a New Year’s Automation.
Got any plans for next year? We’d love to hear your ideas. So contact PAteam today.
