#44 The Future of Intelligent Automation with Brad Hairston at Blue Prism

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Process and Automation Podcast with the Automation Guys. As you know, we like to mix it up here on the podcast, and after a couple of news roundups, chatbot, and low-code episodes, today we have another interview episode. And yeah, it seems like interview episodes are one of the most popular episodes. One of our most popular ones. Usually you hear Arno and myself talking about all things process and automation, and in this episode we are speaking to very interesting people who share the same passion for process and automation as we do. And yeah, this was great pleasure to welcome today's interview guest. We welcome Brad Hurston, Advisory Alliance Director at Blue Prism, to the podcast. Hello, Brad. Thank you for joining us.

Thank you, Sascha. Really glad to be here, and thanks to you too, Arno.

Thanks, Brad.

Yeah, so Brad, please, please tell us a bit more about yourself and what you are responsible for at Blue Prism.

Absolutely, happy to do that. So I spent about 30 years as a consultant across 4 different firms, a Big Four, a boutique firm, and a couple of firms in between those. And I moved over to Blue Prism about 3 years ago. I had what I like to call a healthy midlife crisis. I really, I really wanted to, you know, have a career change. I wanted to be part of something that was transformational, that was disruptive. And everywhere I looked, that screamed out Intelligent Automation. I just was really captivated by it. And so I joined the company. And, you know, in a lot of ways, Blue Prism operates like a startup company, which is really nice. My role is to establish and cultivate relationships with the top advisory firms in the market. I'm talking about the management consulting firms who don't implement technology, and nor do they advocate for technology. So it's, uh, it's challenging, but it's also very interesting and engaging and And, you know, I think our interest in them is easy to understand. They are involved in driving transformational change. And so I spend my time collaborating with them and doing the best I can to help them understand how intelligent automation can be a powerful lever to help them achieve a number of different business outcomes. And in, in turn, they learn something new. They, they add to their playbook, you might say, and That's when I call it a success. So, and then like you gentlemen, also involved in podcasting. I co-host Blue Prism's podcast. We started back in February of 2020 and we've done about 110 episodes and we have listeners in about 85 countries. So it's been a lot of fun.

Oh, fantastic. And there's so much new stuff coming up, isn't it, on a weekly basis?

Oh yeah, yeah.

Between Arno and myself, we are working with approximately like 15 vendors to support companies all over Europe with all things process and automation. Where do you see the sweet spot for Blue Prism in the market?

Yeah, we, we pioneered the space of robotic process automation a little over 20 years ago, and we believed then as we believe now, that our sweet spot is enterprise intelligent automation. So we are built to support automation across all functional areas, all business units of the enterprise. If you are— if a company is looking to just automate a handful of processes or enable citizen developers to automate individual tasks on their desktops, we're probably not your RPA platform. But if you can envision a day when maybe a third of your company consists of digital workers, then we probably are your RPA platform. That's the way we think of it. So the ability to scale easily is in the fabric of our platform. In addition, it's— I think it's important to point out, and we do say this quite a bit, we are not just another tool in the IT toolbox. We essentially provide a new labor source for companies, but a very unique one. Our digital workers are much cheaper than even offshore labor. Plus they work 24/7. They don't make mistakes. They can tap into AI capabilities to handle complex processes. And as companies utilize more and more intelligent automation, it's enabling them to free up their human workers to do work that's higher value added and more in line with their innate human capabilities.

Yeah, that's very insightful. Thank you. And I think just talking on the subject of digital workforce, a lot of our listeners are always interested in what type of use cases can be solved using RPA. And, you know, we like to talk about that in the podcast. So Brad, looking sort of back at the last 12 months, period or so. What do you think was the most exciting or impactful use cases delivered with the Blue Prism Intelligent Automation Platform?

Absolutely. I mean, Arno, obviously, you know, we're at a maturity point where there are virtually no functional areas that have escaped some form of automation. The fact that we're now combining digital workers with advanced skills like AI and ML and NLP, the sky is the limit. In terms of what can be automated. And we keep adding more and more skills. That's not gonna stop. All that being said, companies still begin in finance and accounting. That's typically where the low-hanging fruit opportunities like invoice processing and collections and FP&A, all those things are typically the beginning point. But I think 3 use cases that go beyond that, that have definitely been top of mind The first one I would bring up is a, you know, a purpose-built intelligent automation solution that's focused on a specific process at scale. And that's, that's kind of a mouthful, but let me, let me give you an example. We recently had a partner in South Africa, an SI partner named Cogent. They built an intelligent automation solution on Blue Prism that automates the replenishment process that, that hinders retailers in particular. And so their client had 1,600 retail stores across Africa, and replenishment was their biggest pain point. So Cogent automated that, they enabled each store to remove, I think, something like 12 hours a day of manual effort. And the impact to their bottom line has been significant so far. So I really like that. I'm seeing a lot more of that going on with our partners where they're attacking a process, they're building something specifically around that process, and then as, as in this case with Cogent, they're also supporting it, managing it as a managed service. So I think we're going to see a lot more of that going forward.

Sure, and obviously, you know, from our side, we've seen a lot of innovation happening, especially with, with the pandemic, and you know, A lot of companies needing sort of extra scalability. And, you know, we've seen quite a few use cases in that space as well, where, you know, there was this need to obviously plug in these digital workers to plug the gaps, so to speak.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. So a second one that I would highlight is predictive maintenance. Which is big in industrial operations, utilities, energy, telco, where companies are using digital workers to collect data from sensors that are in pipelines or electrical substations or Wi-Fi towers, whatever it might be. And they're feeding that data into AI algorithms that can potentially identify outages, you know, before they happen. I mean, that's really compelling when you think about how this mitigates risk, how it even death in some cases, how it protects the environment, how it protects revenue. Really, really powerful and very natural for digital workers to play a role in that type of scenario. And then a third that has just really become prominent in the last year, especially for us at Blue Prism, is around contact center Intelligent automation. And in here, what Blue Prism has done, the approach we've taken, is we have created a solution that essentially gives a pool of shared digital workers to the agents in the contact center that can automate work before, during, and after a customer interaction, regardless of how that interaction comes in, whether it's a phone call, it's a, it's an email, it's you know, through a chatbot, whatever it is, these digital workers are working from the very beginning and they're making the workload on the agent much less. They're making their experience better. They're making the customer experience better. And, you know, reducing that average call time is, is significant. I mean, it just, it gives you the ability to reduce your workforce where you need to. But, you know, the customer, the customer benefit is significant when you have to— you can spend less time on a phone call with an agent, for example. I mean, we all want that. So this area is just ripe for automation in both large and small companies that utilize contact centers. And so we have a lot of customers that are, that are going, you know, full bore in this direction with intelligent automation. And we have a lot of other companies that have every platform in the world, but they're not using the power of digital workers in the front office, in the contact center. And that's, that's a huge, very important use case, I think, going forward. Wow.

Yeah, that sounds, sounds fantastic. But yeah, there are definitely plenty of use cases. And yeah, automation seems to widen as well. I see not just the large enterprises where we used to work a lot. So now more and more trickles down sort of to the small and medium-sized businesses, and they have some really exciting use cases as well. And yeah, I'm excited to see where that goes over the next 12 months.

Absolutely.

So yeah, intelligent automation, buzzwords, hyperautomation. So all these terms coming up and looking a bit into the future, where do you see things developing for companies in these areas?

Well, the future is pretty exciting, Sascha, and it's taking shape rather quickly. We're going to continue to expand and enhance our platform, but at the same time, continue to add best-of-breed technology partners. We are, I think we're up to 125 Technology Alliance partners. And I mean, that is, that is critical to our strategy. With each new partnership, we're giving customers the ability to access new advanced skills, so they can automate, you know, more and more and more. So that's going to continue for sure. And as you know, we are squarely in the era of intelligent automation, the combination of RPA and AI. But we're moving rapidly toward the next phase, which we at Blue Prism like to call autonomous automation. This involves several new key capabilities for the digital workforce, the first of which is process intelligence. And as you both know, we made an announcement last week where we have added process and task mining capabilities to the Blue Prism platform through an OEM relationship with ABBYY Timeline, one of the leaders in this space in the market. We've now brought that into our platform and integrated with it, and the future of the automation cycle now begins with automation. So process intelligence is going to provide a fact-based view of how work gets done at both a departmental and an individual level. And then we're fast pathing this information into Blue Prism so the automation cycle can begin more quickly and more seamlessly. From there, we're giving the digital workers the ability to develop automations by themself with very limited, if any, human intervention. And we call that self-programming. So we're going to have self-programming digital workers And then we're giving the digital workers the ability to recognize when a user interface that has been used in an automation workflow, when it changes in any way, the digital worker is going to recognize that and be able to make the fixes automatically to keep the process working. So self-healing is another capability that's coming. And then finally, self-orchestration. So we know to scale and to automate as much across an enterprise as possible. We have to give the digital workers the ability to manage themselves more effectively, to optimize the capacity of each digital worker, and make sure that work is getting executed according to, you know, the priorities that the company has established. So self-orchestration is another big piece of that. It's a lot of cool stuff that's in the works. It's key to our strategy, and as we make it easier and faster to automate across the enterprise, intelligent automation truly becomes a core competency for organizations. It's going to enable them to compete and thrive in the digital world.

That sounds very exciting.

Yeah, fantastic. So, Brad, with all of these innovative technologies available currently, We often get a question from our listeners and the question to you: What's your advice for companies getting started with process and automation projects?

It's a great question. I, I, the way I like to position intelligent automation is like this: The most important asset in any company, bar none, is its people. So Every company, I think, at the very beginning should step back and ask the question, how do I get the most value from those assets, from those human assets? What activities do I want them to be doing day in and day out? Virtually everything else, with a few exceptions, of course, but almost everything else should be automated or should be on the, on the, in the queue for automation. Now, that can be pretty overwhelming to most companies. Because the number of processes that are ripe for automation is significant. But there are many tools and consulting partners like Conveyto who can help you sort all that out and identify not just the potential for automation, but the right processes to begin with. From there, I would— I typically would suggest a few guiding principles. The first one is find an automation champion or sponsor at the business operations executive level. That's important. It can't be a low-level, department-level, you know, business sponsor. It needs to be someone that has some clout, has some decision-making ability, has some budget to really support and drive this. And I always think that should be at the business operations level. But you need to pair that person up with a very collaborative partner in IT. And I say partner because I, while I don't think automation initiatives should be driven by IT, IT is a critical partner in the process and they need to be involved from the very beginning. So I like that duo of business sponsor champion with a, with a collaborative partner in IT. And then I like to say, and this goes back to the automation, just, just how much potential. It's important to think big but start small, so choose some processes. With less complexity right out of the gate, because you want to build momentum quickly. But you do that while having an eye toward the rest of the company. So think enterprise, don't think point solution. As I said before, if you're thinking point solution, don't even— Blue Prism shouldn't be in the equation. Think bigger than that, and then think, how do I automate finance and accounting? Don't think, how do I automate accounts payable? Although AP may be the best place to start, but you want to, you want to be thinking bigger from the very beginning. It's very important. And then finally, finally, I would say just move quickly. I mean, your competitors, no matter what industry you're in, your competitors are already headed down this road. And your new competitors, when you think about fintech and greentech and all the other techs that are out there, they are using intelligent automation to build their companies from the ground up. So they're going to have the ability to compete with you in a way that, that you haven't seen. So there's not time to overanalyze, overthink, overpilot, over-POC this type of capability. If you're not moving, you're dying. Wow, that sounds kind of bleak. Sorry about that. But, but I do, I do think it's important to have a bit of a rah-rah there for any company that maybe has moved slowly, or they're still just not fully embracing this capability. It can be transformational if you allow it to be transformational, and our biggest and best customers, that's the approach they've taken. They've said this is not just a new technical gadget, this is the future of work, and this is the way we're going to do it going forward. And when everybody gets on board with that, it can really, really transform the company.

Yeah, and I guess it's a valid point if this comes from the top. Then most people will follow that leadership. And I think strategically, if that message is very clear that we're in the business to outsource finance or outsource HR so that we can be in the business of doing our business better, it should almost be that sort of thinking that, you know, we don't want to deal with the boring stuff that happens in accounts. And, you know, no disrespect to our colleagues in finance, they play a very important role, But it's sort of that almost that thinking, if we can outsource this to a digital worker, you know, why should we not do that? And like you rightly said, I think that the kind of strategic buy-in from this is so important and to really think big. We see that quick wins is very important as well because that builds faith in the digital workforce and takes all the scaremongering away. You know, we see a lot of people coming to us and actually thanking us because they don't have to crunch this Excel spreadsheet every day. They can get on with other things and, you know, you give them their most precious commodity back and that's time. So yeah, I really like that. I think that that's quite a sort of a bold vision in terms of strategy. And, you know, I think if it can be automated, why shouldn't it be automated?

Yeah, absolutely. And you're right, so it might be bleak, but I think it should be a bit more of a wake-up call to many businesses these days. And this is why we're doing the podcast as well. We want them to get started because over the next 10 years, the rise for skills in the market, it will be crazy. It's what everyone says, what all the experts say. So there is no time actually to lose to get the business ready to automate as much as possible of these activities because there will not be enough workforce, human workforce available to get the work done.

Exactly.

And then businesses are— it sounds really bleak, but then they are not competitive anymore. So then they are being— they will be absorbed somewhere.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think one other, one other point to make here, I recently interviewed an expert on AI, uh, in one of, in one of the Blue Prism podcasts, and he made a really strong point that, that, you know, AI is pervasive. It's everywhere. There's like, there's like a new AI company that's taking shape every month in, in Silicon Valley. Just for— just as one example. And so companies, it's not that companies are not doing stuff with AI, they're just not doing it at scale. They haven't— it hasn't been integrated into the fabric of their company. And to me, that is another huge way that intelligent automation can change the status quo. Because you can— when you attach digital workers to these advanced capabilities, even the brand new ones that have come out in the last 3 to 4 years, you're, you're conquering that. You're basically allowing that to be used at scale and to do things that humans just can't do. Even, even with, you know, a department of data scientists sitting in your building that are analyzing data and using all these tools, I mean, they're limited. They don't have the capacity to do what digital workers can do when they're using those same advanced capabilities. So, so I think, I think it's a, it's an incredible way to create competitive advantage and to really, you know, address these new competitors that have entered the market, these fintechs and such. I think they're going to be really hard to compete with at some point because they're, they're, they're taking that digital-first perspective right from the beginning. And for these old legacy companies that are not thinking that way, they're gonna be a threat going forward.

All right, now moving over from the bleakness of that into something more light. So we and our listeners like to get to know our interview guests a bit more than sort of the technical side and the business side. So that's why we have prepared a few questions and Yeah, so they're a bit different. Um, um, maybe I kick off one and then we can see how it goes.

Oh, sure. Different is good. I'm ready.

Who is your idol and why?

Ooh.

Uh, you know, I have a, there's a lot of people I, I significantly admire. I think my dad is probably the primary idol or, uh, role model in my life. I mean, he's, he's just been a, incredible, loving father, loving husband to my mother. They've been married 56 years. So I try to follow his example in a lot of ways. He was very successful in business as well. I didn't choose his profession. I could have followed behind that, but he gave me the, the freedom to kind of do what I wanted to do and go where my heart took me in terms of my career. And he's just been so supportive and So, uh, so I would say my dad.

That's great. Um, so I've got another one for you, Brad. So imagine all the contents and knowledge of a book instantly. Which book would you choose?

I, I would say the Bible. I just— sorry to go spiritual on you there, but, uh, that— I can't think of any other book. Um, and I'm reading through it this year. That's one of my goals for 2021. So that's been, uh That's been really fantastic. I've never read through it in its entirety in one year. So yeah, that would be my answer.

Cool.

Yeah. What's the best advice you have ever received?

The best advice.

Wow.

I've received a lot of advice. I've needed a lot of advice. Let me put it that way. Many years ago, I think What comes to mind is, is many years ago I learned about a research paper that was done by a Polish lady, Alicia— I think her last name's Owanska. She was an anthropologist in the 20th century, and she researched how humans categorize people that they encounter. And her research concluded that In general, we tend to view other humans as either scenery, you know, they just kind of blend in the background, or they're machinery, meaning they're just here to service, you know, give us our coffee, whatever, or they're people. And that third category obviously are the ones that we, you know, we invest in, we care about, we spend the most energy on. And that really stuck with me, and I've just made it my goal to view everybody in that third category and people. I mean, people, people who matter, people who have value, people who are worth respect and attention. No one should be overlooked. And so that, that paper, that research paper from that very interesting lady has really just stuck with me over the years. So that's what I would say about best advice.

Yeah, that's great. And talking about people, and I'm going to shift this slightly to a sports question.

Okay.

Um, and I'll bring the Olympics into this. So if you could be a world-class Olympic athlete, um, what sport would you choose? And if you, if you're not any good at sport, who would you want to be?

Well, I, I, I I'm definitely, and my, my two, uh, 20-something-year-old boys would support this. I'm not, I'm not terribly athletic. I'm, I'm, you know, constantly mediocre at everything, but the, probably the thing I am the best at is skiing. So I would say alpine skiing. Uh, I just love that sport. I love skiing in general, although the last time I did ski, it was about 3 years ago and I wiped out and separated my shoulder.

Oh no.

Um, so I haven't skied since then, uh, but I need to get out there and do it. Um, so I think if I, if I could be an athlete, if I was good enough, I would do that. I just, it just amazes me how fast those folks go down the mountain and, and, uh, you know, just with, with no fear whatsoever, or maybe they do have fear. They just don't show it. Um, but if I had to pick a second one, it would be curling. I think curling, curling is fascinating and We actually have a place in the Dallas area where I live where you can do a, like, a team outing and you can go. It's like an ice rink and they have a curling that you can do as a team. I think that I haven't done it yet, but I've heard about it. I've heard it's a lot of fun, so I'm going to have to go give that a shot, see how good I am at it.

Yeah, sounds great. Yeah, it's one of those sports that's, um, it's always fascinated me how I can watch it And sort of, it's a bit addictive, isn't it?

Yeah.

If you look at it and you think this is the most boring thing, I'm sat here for another 2 hours watching because it's just incredible skill.

But when you do it— so I did it once and, uh, yeah, it's, it's incredible, um, uh, what kind of competitiveness there is, um, so to be more precise than the other. And it looks, looks much easier than it really is. It is, uh, I'm sure that's the case.

Yeah, yeah, I'm sure it is a lot harder than it looks on TV, but Yeah, I think it's fascinating. So have to give it a shot.

A lot less risk of breaking a shoulder or dislocating a shoulder.

That's right.

That's skiing.

Although I would find a way to separate my shoulder by slipping on the ice. So I wouldn't rule that out. Yeah.

That's great. Fantastic. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Brad, for taking the time to be on the podcast. So this I think that was our last question to you. Oh no, maybe we have one more question. What would be the best way for our listeners to get in touch with you?

That's a— let's see. I think I would invite them to maybe go to my LinkedIn profile and they can send me a message there. I welcome any reach-outs there. And my email is also another simple way. That's brad.hairston@blueprism.com. Also welcome that. So yeah, appreciate the opportunity to put that out there, but I welcome questions or ideas or feedback.

Fantastic. Yeah, we'll put this into the show notes and then our listeners can have easy access to that. And it will be when we post out the podcast as well. So everyone then can reach out. Um, yeah, it was a real pleasure to, to have you here on the podcast and to discuss these topics with us. And, um, yeah, it would be fantastic to have you back on the show in the future. And, uh, yeah, thank you very much.

Sounds great. Thank you, Sascha and Arno. I— it's been a great pleasure, so appreciate the opportunity to be on with you. Be well.

Thank you. Unfortunately, that's it again with this episode of the Process and Automation Podcast. If you like this episode, please give us a 5-star rating and don't forget to subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss any upcoming episode. We hope you will tune in next time, and until then, let's automate it!

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