Tuesday 26 March 2019 saw SSF UK hosting a fantastic first Digital Network meeting of the year in the contemporary surroundings of the Salford Innovation Forum. Enthusiastically facilitated by Network Co-Chairs, Simon Appleyard and Lisa Hooley, and with engaging and knowledgeable guest speaker, Paresh Mistry from Rolabotic, the varied agenda was designed to appeal to all, be they Digital Ninja or Novice! Indeed, the meeting attracted members with varying degrees of experience in the realms of automation, which made for stimulating and insightful debate.
There is a lot of noise in the industry about robotic process automation (RPA) and future developments in artificial intelligence revolutionising the way we do business, but what Is the reality? How far have our members adopted these new digital processes? What have the challenges been? Attendees at the meeting provided a candid assessment of the current picture. From costly upfront investments driving the need to persist with RPAs - even if they are not working - to whether Shared Services are recipients or drivers of RPA, the debate was wide ranging. We discussed the need to focus on your master data, before you can automate; on the importance of joined-up thinking in order to maximise the utility of each robot and justify the initial cost; the hidden costs in evaluating changes and the hard and soft benefits of automation; the three leading tools in the industry, Blue Prism, Automation Anywhere and UI path and their various strengths; exploring existing tools and knowing that these have been maximised before looking for solutions elsewhere; the future of work and the ‘geek revolution’; developments in integrated AI and RPA solutions and much more besides!
Quotes of the Day:
“This is why I like this forum, there’s a lot more honesty”;
“This was definitely worth a day out of the office”.
Simon Appleyard has compiled a very useful list of the ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’ of RPA in Shared Services as generated by members attending the meeting. This can be found on the Network Resources page of the SSF UK website and we hope it will be an interactive, growing document. This location is intended to be an initial ‘holding place’ for the documents whilst we work on the best way to share the documents collaboratively and keep them alive going forwards – watch this space!
During the course of the meeting it became clear that acronyms, technical terms and jargon abound in the digital sphere. Lisa Hooley has shared an invaluable list of ‘digital definitions’, which can also be found in the Network Resources section of the website.
The next Digital Network meetings will be held on June 6th at Yorkshire Water and September 10th (location TBD). Come and join us!
