In automation, imagination is now the constraining factor
The debate over Robotic Process Automation continues.
Good morning.
One reason I love CEO Daily readers is because of their fervent commitment to keep me educated. My recent posts on Robotic Process Automation (RPA)—which involves computer “robots” that watch what people do on a computer screen and then automates it—have led to a not-entirely-solicited crash course on the topic. I’ve now met the CEOs of the three market leaders—Automation Anywhere, UiPath and Blueprism—and have learned a great deal along the way.
My interest stems from this: Numerous studies show that most Fortune 500 CEOs believe Artificial Intelligence is critical to their company’s future, and say they are investing in it. But if you ask what kind of A.I. they are investing in, most confess it is RPA. I will leave it to technologists to debate whether RPA should be considered A.I. at all. But the use of RPA among big companies is clearly exploding—which is why the aforementioned three CEOs all are riding galloping stallions. It’s “the fastest growing segment of the enterprise software market,” says Gartner. And it’s no surprise Microsoft plans to enter the market next month. Other enterprise software firms inevitably will follow.
Interestingly, the RPA CEOs agree with me that many companies use their tools simply to automate existing (and often bad) processes, rather than to transform their businesses. The result is reduced labor costs, but not necessarily new value for customers. Some “view it as a slightly-more sophisticated version of off-shoring,” acknowledges Jason Kingdon, chairman of Blueprism, who stopped by the Fortune offices yesterday.
But at its best, Kingdon insists, RPA empowers leaders to reinvent. Because the tools are so easy to use, they free executives from the constraints of the IT department, and let them innovate on their own. The best users of the tools “are really reinventing work,” Kingdon says. “Imagination is now the constraining factor.”
That should become a catch phrase for the new era: “Imagination is now the constraining factor.” Technology is making amazing things possible. But what we do with that technology is the domain of humans. The future doesn’t belong solely—or even primarily—to people who write code. It belongs to people who can imagine the future.
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Alan Murray
@alansmurray
alan.murray@fortune.com