By Adrian Ewer, VP, financial services, EMEA, Blue Prism
Along with ‘you’re on mute’ one of the most used terms throughout the pandemic is digital
acceleration. For the majority, it has been anything but business-as-usual, with operations
transferring to work remotely and processes that relied on the exchange of paper documents
replaced by more efficient, automated approaches.
So, while the pandemic could have been an existential threat, it has also presented unique
opportunities for forward thinkers to transform customer experience and emerge from the
downturn stronger, sharper, and better equipped than ever.
There’s now a golden opportunity to do away with cultural and organizational inertia to transform
its offering for its customers. But this involves fighting any indecision that’s inevitably permeated
across companies’ thinking and means making greater investments, not just financial ones, but in
extra effort and courageous thinking too.
Take Bold Action with Intelligent Automation
It may be difficult in the coming years to secure large-scale funding for IT investment, especially
when liquidity is king, and cash is being carefully conserved by every bank. But building a business
case can be helped along its way by asking a simple question: what happens if we fail to make the
decision to invest in a platform that will help us accelerate our digital programmes of change?
This brings us to the implementation of intelligent automation, which is the easiest and most
effective way to help deliver work much faster, smarter, more efficiently and almost without limits –
and with less human intervention.
Many institutions are already using digital workers to automate business processes to generate
hundreds of thousands of transformative use cases and seize new opportunities – on a massive scale
and at the pace the market requires. They are achieving in months what it would take IT
departments and vast teams of people years to complete – and even then, would achieve less
impact.
They are not only seeking multi-currency savings, new levels of operational agility and efficiencies,
but also improving business performance, delivering more strategic roles, saving and re-utilizing
billions of hours to enable an even greater customer experience offering. We are seeing transformed
service delivery and quality, faster expansion of new services, effortless coping with COVID-19 lock-
down via remote working, and most of all speed and scalability.
This is truly a collaborative, large-scale, work revolution. The sophistication, breadth and maturity of
these outcomes are years ahead of what’s actually being achieved with any desktop robot or bot –
and without introducing the risk of wide-scale digital chaos too.
Why Digital Workers Work Better
A digital workforce is at the heart of any intelligent automation project. A digital workforce is an AI-
enabled, ever-evolving, super resource that’s business-ready, IT approved and that can be trained to
deliver all process work much faster, smarter, more securely, successfully and in a more scalable way than any other. They perform ever more complex work, not just across the front, middle and back office, but across the entire enterprise. They operate with total integrity and up to 650 times faster than people, with zero errors, 24×7.
Digital workers work proactively by interweaving AI capabilities to interoperate effortlessly across
ever-changing digital environments. They can read different screens, layouts or fonts, application
versions, system settings, permissions, and languages. They ingest and sort semi-structured and
unstructured data from any source, across all IT systems, while providing quality checks, detecting
errors and passing exceptions to people to action.
So, What About Your Best Assets, Your People?
They’re freed from being the soul-destroying ‘middleware’ that really drags them down, free to work
better and deliver more value. We’re talking about not only managing digital workers’ exceptions,
but making critical judgements, applying newly gained insights from automated process data to
continually improve work, spending more time with customers, serving them faster, enhancing their
experiences, thinking, problem solving and innovating to drive growth.
To perform work, digital workers uniquely access and read the user interface of any current and
even future technology without requiring coding. It’s this universal interoperability capability that
enables any new technology, to be easily business-consumed, safely tested and swiftly drag-and-
dropped into enterprise process flows.
To compound even more value, all automated work is being hugely multiplied by organizations
across their businesses. People can not only centrally design, draw and ‘publish’ processes that
digital workers automate, but share, improve and re-use these automated assets anytime, anywhere
– with zero coding required.
Everything is done securely, compliantly, and transparently, as there’s a centralized irrefutable audit
trail of all process automations, including all digital worker actions and training history. This, coupled
with digital workers never impacting the back-end IT estate, prevents technical debt and digital
chaos, which also wins the IT department’s approval.
Best Practice for Intelligent Automation: A Blend of Human Talent and Digital Workers
To gain optimal results with digital workers, having the best methodologies and human talent is key
to success. Once an operating model is defined upfront, including an ambitious, inspiring vision of
desired outcomes backed by senior stakeholders, you can start delivering and widely communicating
achievements. This allows the digital workforce to really thrive as it scales across the business.
Streamlining, accelerating, and digitally automating work, means it will be digital workers that drive
organizational adaptation and resilience in the future. They’ll drive an engine for sustainable growth,
helping to deliver strategic goals that make the global enterprise and its people smarter, more agile
and more efficient in our brave new world.
Wanda Rich has been the Editor-in-Chief of Global Banking & Finance Review since 2011, playing a pivotal role in shaping the publication’s content and direction. Under her leadership, the magazine has expanded its global reach and established itself as a trusted source of information and analysis across various financial sectors. She is known for conducting exclusive interviews with industry leaders and oversees the Global Banking & Finance Awards, which recognize innovation and leadership in finance. In addition to Global Banking & Finance Review, Wanda also serves as editor for numerous other platforms, including Asset Digest, Biz Dispatch, Blockchain Tribune, Business Express, Brands Journal, Companies Digest, Economy Standard, Entrepreneur Tribune, Finance Digest, Fintech Herald, Global Islamic Finance Magazine, International Releases, Online World News, Luxury Adviser, Palmbay Herald, Startup Observer, Technology Dispatch, Trading Herald, and Wealth Tribune.