Enterprise digital initiatives transitioning from pilot to program: 57% of the enterprises’ demand is firmly around digital technologies in the next 12-18 months. Most enterprises now perceive digital to be indispensable for the firm’s long-term growth and are trying to position themselves as “digital-first” enterprises
Service delivery automation, analytics, cognitive and machine learning, cloud computing, mobility
Enterprise perception of innovation in AS methodologies
Driven by significant product innovation over recent years, RPA has evolved from tactical to strategic
Maps enterprises’ technology investment priorities along two axes: priority and impact timing
In the midst of increasing RPA adoption in global services, WorkFusion, a technology vendor that focuses on delivering smart automation solutions, has taken a bold move to offer RPA for FREE. While trial or community editions of RPA tools are available for free from RPA technology vendors such as UiPath, WorkFusion’s RPA Express is the first ever scalable and enterprise-grade RPA product to be made available for free and for all.
The adoption of RPA has been increasing rapidly, but it has been skewed toward a few industries and large-sized buyers. WorkFusion’s disruptive move of offering RPA for free will make the business case for it extremely favorable, and will significantly accelerate the adoption of RPA across all industries and buyer sizes. It makes RPA accessible to many, and accelerates trials and proofs of concepts by those that have not yet adopted it.
As organizations realize the benefits of RPA, they are likely to turn to cognitive technologies as the next natural step in their enterprise automation maturity. Availability of free RPA will consequently speed up organizations’ journeys to adoption of cognitive automation. WorkFusion is clearly looking to accelerate those journeys, and transition clients from its free RPA to its integrated RPA and cognitive automation platform, while putting commercial pressure on competitors who do not have a fully-fledged cognitive option to offer.
We believe this to be a very smart move. We think the message here is pretty clear that RPA is becoming table stakes, and the real deal is cognitive automation technologies. Also, it’s worth noting that this seems to be happening much faster than many of us would have predicted, and is a clear example of the “law of accelerated returns” and the exponential evolution of technology we talked about earlier this year in our blog: “Artificial Intelligence: How far or how close?”.
It will be exciting to see how WorkFusion RPA Express compares with the leading RPA technologies that are available in the market on a paid basis. Interestingly, we have conducted an in-depth analysis of WorkFusion’s full RPA capabilities, and overall, they stood up very well to relative assessment against better known RPA technology vendors. The technologies assessed included Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism, Kofax Kapow, Kryon Systems, NICE, Redwood, Softomotive, Thoughtonomy, and UiPath.
To read our complete assessment and analysis, please see our newly published report, “Robotic Process Automation (RPA) – Technology Vendor Landscape with FIT Matrix Assessment – Technologies for Building a Virtual Workforce.”
Digital services deals by segment, 2016
I had the privilege of being at IBM and seeing first hand Watson working on powerful use cases. I must say, even now after a few days of reflecting on it, I think I’m even more impressed with its power and capability than when I was at IBM and saw Watson in use. If, like me, you spend two hours with Watson, you will get a glimpse at our future. It’s highly likely that within five to 10 years all of us will use some kind of cognitive computing to assist us in our daily lives. But I believe there is a major challenge.
Just a quick refresh: Watson is cognitive computing, a form of artificial intelligence. Previously I did not understand the way it will be deployed; it will augment human decision making, not replace people. That’s not to say that an individual assisted by Watson won’t be able to do the work of many more individuals. At least at this stage of development cognitive computing makes humans more capable and smarter.
For example, I saw Watson working as a companion to an oncology doctor, helping him perform more thorough diagnostics. In the situation I observed, the oncologist was able to cut the diagnosis and testing process from six days down to two hours. That doctor was far more effective because Watson can explore many more options and present hypotheses and data to the doctor and medical team than they could have explored on their own (plus it would have taken far more time for them to do it). In addition, it’s not hard to believe that the team would be more likely to do a better diagnostic with Watson as companion than they could achieve through traditional techniques.
With all that being said, I think Big Blue faces a major challenge with Watson at the moment: Watson is a solution looking for a problem.
As I understand it, IBM invested over a billion dollars in Watson’s development. On TV we saw Watson defeat a chess Grandmaster and then win on “Jeopardy.” However, now Watson needs to make the journey to operate in the real world of business problems.
These use cases and applications are still undefined and will emerge over time. It is, in fact, the challenge of problem definition and incremental adoption that stands in the way of progress. It’s easy to imagine that there are limitless applications for Watson; but for Watson to take off quickly, we need to identify big issues with large payoffs. Without these game-changing applications we will wait for several years for cogitative computing to make the contribution that it is clearly capable of.
To recover its billion-dollar investment and create a market for cognitive computing, IBM has every incentive to hasten the adoption. However, it has yet to identify the break-through problems that will drive rapid adoption. It is all very well to believe that the power of the technology will inevitably drive adoption; but if cognitive computing is like other disruptive technologies, it will come slowly and in spurts.
To hasten adoption, my best – and unsolicited – advice to IBM is to identify big business problems where Watson can make a structural change and drive massive benefits. Clearly, working as a companion to oncologists is such an area. And given that healthcare is 20 percent of the U.S. GDP that alone may be worth the journey.
But for enterprises beyond healthcare, I feel challenged as to what other big structural changes Watson and cognitive computing could provide.
I strongly suggest that you find a way to experience Watson’s power. It’s is so powerful that I, like IBM, am struggling with where we should take it.
As I’ve pondered its possibilities, I think underwriting and the claims process in the insurance sector holds tremendous opportunities. And within IT, I think the service desk and problem solving that IT departments contend with could be dramatically enhanced with this technology. With a cognitive computing tool as their companion, they could deliver a higher quality of service and greatly improve productivity. Clearly the area of security would benefit substantially as we find ways to keep the black hats out of our data.
I’m very interested in other points of view as to where we can put cognitive computing to work, so please add your comment below.
Photo credit: Wikipedia
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