#46 XMAS Special. Automation in 2022. Climate Change. Automation is the future!

Hallo and welcome back to another episode of the Process and Automation Podcast with the Automation Guys. Today is indeed again a very special episode for us. Arno, nearly 12 months ago we had that idea to come together weekly and talk about process and automation topics. And, uh, yeah, so we started, um, I believe first on Clubhouse, um, where we had these weekly sessions, uh, initially. And then shortly after that, we followed, um, with this podcast.

Yeah, it's been incredible 12 months, like you said. Um, I think between ourselves, we've got so much experience to, to share with people. And, you know, it's, it's really been a privilege this year to, to touch on a variety of topics to do with all of the pillars of automation. You know, we talked a lot about chatbots, we talked about artificial intelligence, we talked a lot about low-code RPA, we talked about many things in the space. And I think, you know, our audience has been incredible to, you know, give us a lot of feedback. So we thank them for that. I think we've managed to do sort of close to 50 episodes this year. So yeah, wow, we really want to build on top of this first-year achievement for next year and try and give a lot back. I guess, you know, we at the sort of the front of this automation journey, we do a lot of projects, you know, we touch a lot of sort of automation sort of requirements. And, you know, this is our platform to share with our audience our experiences. Our sort of tips and techniques, and also just allow everybody to, um, to reach out to us and, and, and ask a question. You know, I think, um, there's so much, um, we, we can provide in terms of thought leadership, um, and, you know, what we do day to day. And I think that that's what makes this podcast quite exciting. Um, it's always hard to choose topics, but I think, you know, what we want to do today is kind of just look back at 20 2021, it has been a very interesting year. It's been very busy. There's obviously been a lot of changes people have to make, and I think automation played a very pivotal role and a pivotal sort of, I guess, in terms of how people work. It was quite fundamental to bring that conversation in. And to understand how can automation make us work better with the environment we are in.

Yeah, and you just mentioned conversations. Yeah, so when we look back, we had that mix of the episodes, isn't it? It was all the experience we have and all the processes we were able to talk about lots of use cases. So very popular episodes we had. We looked into the market news roundups. We did a couple of episodes, also became quite popular. So we definitely keep them coming 2022. And yeah, and of course we had these amazing conversations with our podcast guests from, from, for example, Netcall, Jyx, Nintex, Blue Prism, Together People, and a few more over the year. And yeah, very thankful for, for their input. And, and going even further, where we see from where we come from, so they are sharing even other topics, other use cases, other challenges, and and other achievements through automation. So very exciting, very thankful that we had them on here. And yeah, and all these, these great episodes, yeah, we have them all on our website, right? So all the transcripts, everything is for you to digest them maybe between Christmas and New Year.

Yes, we have of course got them on the automationguides.net website. Like you said, Sascha, we've covered, well, we've tried to cover as broad range of topics as possible that's been suggested by our audience. I think the majority of people are interested in use cases for automation, but of course, you know, what we try to do is also in these podcasts try to explain to people, you know, the different sort of technologies out there, the different ways that these technologies can be applied And, you know, we, we, you know, there's never enough time in a podcast to actually explain to people exactly what the benefits are and how we sort of live our day-to-day life in sort of implementing automation projects. So I think there's a lot more to come in 2022. You know, there's a lot more ideas that we want to share with our audience. And, you know, like you said, It's an ever-evolving sort of topic, and, you know, with tremendous support from, you know, our listeners out there, we always try and tailor the podcast to appeal to everybody. Again, you know, if there's questions on the previous episodes, you know, we encourage you guys to get in touch with us, and then, you know, that will help us in 2022 to targets, you know, some of the specific things that people want to talk about and people want to discuss. And so I think it's an exciting year ahead for us for 2022. I'm just looking and scrolling through our sort of episode summary. There's a lot we spoke about covering robotic process automation. Like I said, chatbots, low-code. We specifically focus a lot on low-code, process mining. So there's a lot in here. And I think, you know, it kind of gives us a bit of a platform for next year to elaborate further on these topics and, you know, just to explore these more. I think the automation market as we see it, the projects we get involved with, is expanding. I would almost call it kind of explosive at the minute because of course we're still at the tail end of the pandemic. In a lot of changes how people work. And, you know, it would be really interesting to see how automation in 2022 will, I guess, shape the, the world we live in. I think, you know, looking back at 2021, 2020, um, you know, it has been quite a few changes. Um, the pandemic has certainly been a catalyst for a lot of automation initiatives we've seen. We've, we've certainly seen an urge for process automation within businesses as a result of the pandemic. We talked a lot about investment within site automation, a lot of venture capitalists looking at automation and also investing in the space. So I think it's quite a privilege to be in this space. We see a lot of things, we witness a lot of investment in the space. So, you know, it's surely exciting times. And I think for our listeners, that listen to our podcast. It's certainly a sort of an interesting thing for 2022 to see, you know, how automation will, you know, go forward and so, you know, be adopted by a lot of companies, you know, and, you know, how it will change people's lives, you know, work-wise now that people are sort of in this hybrid mode of working. You know, remotely at the office. And yeah, it's very interesting times.

Yeah, I think that, that all was redefined last year indeed, and that, that's pretty much sort of across almost industry, all industries. Yeah, I think it's sort of an underlying thing was also sort of paper-based administrative processes in most industries and businesses, isn't it? So, so that, that had to be replaced with everyone working working from home suddenly. So yeah, with all that, suddenly everyone sort of discovered process automation and everything which sort of is around it and looking at streamlining things and digitizing just overall. So, and it happened all so quickly that, yeah, usually those things will take a couple of years, but everyone was forced to make this their priority one, isn't it? And yeah, yeah, so that, that really means, um, uh, it will be, will be a very interesting 12 months, um, uh, ahead for us, I guess, when we look at 2022. Uh, Arno, and what automation trends, um, uh, do you think will come up?

Well, I think, you know, there's a lot to be said about what COVID-19 brought forward. And I think for most organizations, if you look at manual paper-based in-person processes, it made it very difficult or even impossible for a remote workforce to function. And I think, you know, in what 2020, 2021 proven to us is that that was suddenly disrupted. And, you know, people that did invest in process automation technology prior to that had an easier sort of transition into kind of like the new world we work in. And, you know, for the people that caught up, you know, with the advent of the pandemic, it's probably a bit harder. But, you know, I think the pandemic sort of proved to us it was a catalyst for people to transform. I think if you look at 2022 and you know, with people being used to this sort of digital way of working. I think what we looking at now is sort of more artificial intelligence-led entries into this sort of market where, you know, we were sort of forced into this digital way of working. We are all of a sudden eradicated all of this paper-based in-person processes. Now we've captured the data so we can actually start to leverage more AI to drive automation even further. And, you know, I think this is probably a point where you can almost see this automation revolution starting. And, you know, I think it will be very interesting. So if you, if you've kind of, again, if you look at the trends that happened in, you know, 2021, you know, a lot of people accelerated towards new technologies in the workplace. And again, COVID-19 has sped this up. And, you know, they call it the so-called digital revolution, according to, you know, McKinsey. And, you know, I think if you look at it, a sort of a rapid shift has been towards customer service because organizations have been forced to focus on how do we interact with customers with digital channels, with this kind of remote workforce. You know, we look at retailers, you know, with their kind of customer landscape that's been disrupted, how do they change? And, you know, there's obviously been a lot of sort of movement towards online commerce and all of these things that, because, you know, people are from home, you know, that has increased, you know, this element of of sort of business. So there has been this drive to modernize and streamline delivery processes and, you know, upgrading e-commerce capabilities. And, you know, I think in 2022 that, you know, the utilization of AI would really further be adopted to streamline this sort of supply chain. And, you know, because we're capturing all of this data, people are sort of in the zone where digitalization is there. We had to do it. You know, it's just going to continue.

Yeah, maybe let's jump maybe to what then we got. Yeah, we had that obviously all this stuff over the last 12 months, isn't that so? All this big change. But Maybe, maybe when we jump into the automation trends for 2022, what will that specifically look like? What do you think?

Well, I think that obviously there will be new players in the market. I think that if you look at 2020 specifically and 2021, robotic process automation grew roughly by about 40%. And I think if you look at digital process automation, it's roughly the sort of same percentage. And what we are seeing is that more building on top of that, more sophisticated automation solutions will emerge, but built on top of AI, which is artificial intelligence-led sort of initiatives. And I think that there's a lot of new startups that's in this space. Of course, we've got the sort of, like I say, the robotic process automation and low-code automation, which is more the digital process automation initiatives coming up.

And the no-code automation tools now as well, isn't it?

Yeah, exactly. And I think that, you know, AI will just sort of go from strength to strength, you know, in 2022, for example. Another thing that I think will happen is that, you know, there might be a lot of consolidations in some of the vendors and the offerings they, they, they provide. Um, you know, so I think that, you know, there will be some consolidation in the market as well for some of the technologies. Um, you know, perhaps a lot of the automation vendors will, um, you know, look perhaps at some of the startup companies that will probably look at some of the new technologies and then incorporate that into their platforms.

Yeah, we have seen that a lot already in 2021, isn't it? And when we looked at the market, so yeah, Appian, uh, is buying process mining and RPA technology, suddenly making their platform just, just a wider— or they basically have a wider offering. Same as with, with other vendors, isn't it? Like Mintex and Salesforce. Yeah, yeah, everyone is sort of buying sort of complementary kind of products to have a full end-to-end automation platform, isn't it?

So yeah, exactly. So I think a lot of the vendors will either look at acquiring sort of technology vendors that they don't already have on their platform, and, or there will just be consolidation of vendors across the landscape. There's a lot of investment going into automation at the minute, and like I said, a lot of private equity going in. And I think that the, the private equity firms realize that automation especially in the world we currently see, is a, is a very, very, very big opportunity. Um, because of course, you know, we have— we do live in a world pre-pandemic where there has been a lot of inefficiencies. And I think automation is just one of those things that actually, um, provides the opportunity for investors to get a very good return if they invest in the correct platforms and the correct, you know, correct technologies at the right time. So I think we'll probably see, you know, again, in, in terms of convergence and consolidation, we'll probably see, see a lot more movement in, in 2022, 2023. Um, and then there's also this talk about actually bringing in physical robot workers. You know, we've seen that at home already.

Yeah, Uber.

Yes, you know, there's, there's, there's a company in Japan, it's a restaurant company called Dawn Avatar Robot Cafe, and you know, they, they are actually, um, using robots to allowing disabled people to work from home and control these robots to you know, do specific things via the use of a microphone and the camera to allow them to speak via, you know, kind of like a controller. So I think that perhaps that the software automation and the hardware automation world will also come a bit more closer together. I think, you know, this is probably just a kind of a first step towards that, um, to prove that automation can actually benefit humans. In this instance, we talk about people that's disabled, which can actually be involved in doing things like controlling a remote robot and using their human skills to control it. So it's a very, very interesting— Yeah, it's a very interesting kind of concept. And we think about sort of food preparation, food delivery, all of these sort of things. Surveillance, for example.

Yeah, it's not yet like the sort of the, um, sort of the, the doomy and gloomy picture, um, from, from some movies or so. I think they will all be introduced, um, so you've seen them now as well in, in some Asian big cities where, where you have the surveillance or just the cleaning bots, um, going through the streets, and they still look very friendly. So it's not like this, this sort of aggressive bots are coming and taking over. Um, I think this is what lots of people, um often associate when real robots suddenly come into the picture, or RoboCop, that kind of stuff. But technically, we are not really far away from all that, isn't it? So when we see what happens with Boston Dynamics, with all the little robot dog, so as well going through, which is already used with the army and with some police forces globally.

And SpaceX as well. SpaceX use RoboDog as well if there's, you know, sort of inspections that have to be held with a rocket. And, you know, I think it's kind of more to do with, you know, that specific worker does something quite unique that they're good at, and they design for that. And I think the information they gather can then be used by other people to make really good decisions. So I think it's not kind of this, this vision where people are replaced.

No, not at all.

This thing makes decisions. And I think, you know, a lot of, again, a lot of the projects we do, the robotic process automation projects, which obviously is projects where we mimic human behavior. I think that what we want to do is take the boring stuff out of a human's day job because it is so busy. Everybody is very busy and, you know, everybody is always looking at ways to add a lot of benefit to the things they do, to the customers they serve, and to reduce, you know, administration and administrative burden from, from their lives. And I think this is where we see robotic software, um, works well. And, you know, even if you look at physical robots, the, the administrative burden to actually do a site visit to inspect a rocket site where a rocket has exploded— a human doesn't have to do that because all this robot is doing is gathering and taking information. The analysis of it is, is where where humans are still in the loop. And it's kind of what we call human in the loop. The same thing is true for what we do for companies where we deploy software bots is it is still human in the loop. What we want to do is that the robot does heavy lifting. The robot does do that fact finding, information gathering. And the robot is the thing that actually can do that very quickly, but present that back to the human for sort of final analysis. So again, like I said, Sascha, I think in 2022, the AI element of that to make perhaps that analysis piece easier for humans to comprehend will probably be a bit stronger. It's easier to get, you know, commoditized AI these days. And, you know, I think a lot of the sort of automation vendors are investing heavily on artificial intelligence to make their platforms better for intelligent decision-making and all of these sort of things. So I think that in all, you know, it's going to be a better offering for clients out there that want to automate and want to implement automations across their business specifically to their needs. So very, very excited.

I think that will help definitely for lots of other topics which are very important in the world. I think one of the biggest topics we in the society have at the moment is to tackle climate change, isn't it? And we, with technology, everyone who has sort of technology mindset now tries to think about how can that technology help us or help the process really, isn't it? How we can support businesses by bringing AI and automation to maybe tackle that, that the climate, climate topic within their companies. So, so yeah, that's becoming a, that's becoming a big topic for most businesses, not just enterprises, small and medium business. Every business now has that sort of on their agenda to become sort of more carbon, carbon neutral. Yeah, definitely more, more effective. And, um, yeah, obviously, um, that you can reduce it in so many areas. It's not just flying less or so. So there are so many aspects of your business. You have to look at basically every aspect of your business. How are your processes running? Are you actually producing the carbon by inefficient processes? So if you look at processes, if we, if we take all these steps out here and make it more efficient, can we already reduce carbon consumption in general? So I think process automation and using the data within the business and feeding that to an AI and machine learning will immediately unlock all that information. It will find out what suppliers are maybe not— when you look at the sort of the supply chain, what suppliers are maybe even not the right supplier really. So maybe they are effectively harming your carbon goals. So all these kind of things are possible with automation and with the power of AI coming into that picture. So we currently, with my team, so we're looking at currently at a project called C0.AI, and there as well we're actually putting all these technologies together to give that so that technology to small, medium businesses in a nice, easy-to-use sort of dashboard, real-time dashboard and AI capability. So everyone can then track their carbon consumption, plan their roadmap to net zero. So all these things are so important. And if that can actually get us there, I'm all for it. So I'm very passionate then about these technologies, AI, automation, So there's this— yeah, no reason not to do it.

Yeah, I think from an ethical perspective and, you know, looking at tackling climate change, of course, you know, industry is, is quite a big contributor towards carbon emissions. And I think that, um, you know, there is a balance that we need to reach, um, to, to, to get to, to carbon zero. And I think I always say, if we can't measure it, we can't improve.

Absolutely. Yeah.

And if we have paper-based systems, manual systems, it is very hard to measure what that looks like in order to reach that goal. And obviously, recently we had the Glasgow meeting on climate change and there's is, you know, the 2050 goal to reach carbon neutral for all countries. And I think that if we can measure where we are, I think we can understand where we'll be in the future.

What we need to do, isn't it? What kind of action we need to take now. Yeah, exactly.

So I think, you know, this is a mutually beneficial thing for a lot of disciplines inside the business. So, you know, ethically, from a tackling climate change and being carbon neutral. I think that if you can have an understanding that how your processes perform and how you deliver your services and what impact that's got on the environment, and also if you've got businesses that you deal with and they can be transparent with that sort of stats with you, I think that's kind of like where process automation provides you that almost that audit trail of how it looks like. And I think that a lot of businesses in the future will probably be subjected to some compliancy around, you know, the carbon footprint and providing evidence that, you know, they are within the boundaries of, you know, what is allowed you know, legislation, legislatively. So I, you know, I think it's, it's, it's, it's automation is a sort of a key part of that because again, if we can measure how we as a business do things, we can measure how we as a business actually impact the environment because there's certain things that we do and also the people we trade with, for for example, if we can measure that and then also legislation on top of that, if we can prove that we are doing things in a sustainable way, that can only be a good thing. And I think that that's a very taxing process if you don't have automation with inside your business.

Yeah, indeed.

So it all, you know, it all kind of adds to this, I guess, this sort of idea that Automation is not just the thing we do to streamline our business, but it is a thing we do to make ourselves better and also to free ourselves from things that we don't like doing because we can automate that and focus on things we do want to do, but also to optimize the way we do things so that we do that in the best possible way without wasting resources. And of course, you know, from a business perspective, it is about prosperity. And I think that we, you know, we do want to look at a business and want it to have prosperity. And, you know, it is a big part of that as well, business growth, you know.

Yeah, not even— not just for businesses. If you look at— we had just this society topic, isn't it, climate change. But I think in general, I guess we could sort of probably say prosperity as a society as well. If that, I think we can use these technologies, automation process, AI and all that stuff to that, to the best, then I guess not just businesses, everyone I think will benefit from it and we improve outcomes in general. So which is really rewarding for me as well to be in that in that field and making those things happen every day.

Yeah, and you know, there's simple examples out there, like how does that look like practically? And I think that I always say that if, you know, we look at a very simple example where somebody, um, let's say it needs to book a vaccination or blood test, if we can provide a very streamlined low-code automated version of that process where a human is out the loop. The only thing the human does is actually the blood test or the vaccination. Everything prior to that is all handled digitally. That means that we've got zero input from people actually having to, you know, pick up a phone and taking somebody's vaccination a sort of diary or the sort of when they want to come for the vaccination. It's all taken care of that, and those people that you save from handling those phone calls, you know, they, they could be freed up to do other things. So it's almost like this, this way that people want to interact with the world, if we can sort of digitize that and At the back of that, where people actually have to do the work that makes sense, not the administrative work, but actually do the thing that they're supposed to do, like administering the blood test, the vaccination, you know, those are the things that optimize us as a society, if you know what I mean. Because I think it's fruitless for us to have a lot of people manning a sort of a call center to take appointments for blood tests, for example. That could all be done online. That could all be automated using low-code technology.

Yeah, exactly. It should be as frictionless as possible.

Exactly.

When you think about friction, so it's energy is waste, isn't it? So it's correct again. So it's, if you have massive call centers, yeah, it can't be, can't be climate efficient either. So we just talked about it, isn't it? So I guess all these things.

So rather use that call center for a person that's got a genuine problem, that's to speak to somebody to diagnose.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Diagnose services, what we have, isn't it? Remotely. Yeah, exactly.

So, so it's, it's, it's these kind of changes I think we'll see, Sascha, where people, um, you know, it's not just a question of you know, let's streamline our processes, let's be more efficient so there's a better bottom line for us as a business. I think it's from a, you know, if we look at sort of public sector services and things we engage with, I think it's really to help those guys out to, you know, to do more with what they have. And that's why I think, you know, automation is a key element of that.

Yeah, I think so. I think, yeah, we talked about this a lot now, what kind of technologies are maybe needed, but I think sort of a summarizing point of it nowadays, when we say automation and AI and process, some companies and some businesses think, oh, this is, this is complex, I need developers and there needs to be proper coding and that kind of stuff. But I think we talked Yeah, we talked about this here a lot as well on the podcast. The key here is to be very clever about it and bring in very powerful low-code platforms into that implementation. So we can get out these, get these ideas out as fast as possible, get the solutions in as fast as possible with the power of low-code. We can, yeah, so you can get this done by employees, citizen developers within companies, isn't it? Instead of looking into the market, which is in huge demand anyway, you wouldn't find the right developers for your projects anyway. So the answer which comes up in 2022 even more will be low-code, will be more no-code to get all these implementations done. In a matter of days and maximum weeks. When we, when we talk about project delivery in terms of months with a customer, I think in 2022 that, that will be sort of not the right way forward anymore. Yeah, low-code solutions, that, that is what, what businesses need in 2022.

Yeah, and I think, you know, if there's still confusion about what low-code solutions is, I think that You know, in terms of automation, it is just almost like a shortcut to automation. That's what low-code provides you. I think that if you look at automation, um, it generally traditionally involves people looking at a specific problem and then implementing an automated solution by actually going out and writing very sophisticated IT code. What we're saying is that there is a, there is an alternative to that. What we want to do is almost streamline and make the automation journey easy by using something that's called no-code or low-code, which is like a paradigm where you configure software without writing code. And that software actually provides you with automation capabilities without the sort of burden of IT coding, because you get things like security for free, you get things like user interface design for free, and you can really just focus on how you want to implement the automation, how you want to make the problem go away. So again, if I look at this scenario where you've got a hospital that wants to allow patients to book appointments. Um, you can go out to a traditional IT department and ask them for appointment booking system, which they can code from scratch, or you can use a low-code solution where you can visually design and visually create that software up to 10 times quicker to do exactly the same thing. So we, we are almost looking at optimizing our own our own industry as well. I think that, that's kind of like the message that, Sascha, we want to, I guess, convey in our podcast is that, you know, we're not necessarily talking about eradicating IT. What we're talking about is that we want to expedite the way systems are developed, and these systems are the systems of the future that makes things better and make our world a better place and make our world a more optimized place. So we've got more time to do the things we like rather than the administrative stuff we have to do to manage things. And, you know, if we look at the kind of automation landscape and low-code, that's where we sort of kind of overlay things like the robotic process automation which is software that can do stuff like humans do it, and chatbots that could mimic human behavior, like answering questions from customers and potentially answering questions from patients, doing triage, triage-type activities. So it's, it's more, you know, what we want to do is we, we want to accelerate the way we provide these kind of automation initiatives to, to, to companies by using the technologies we use. And I think that's kind of like a, a bottom line thing. That, that's the, that's the reason for existence, you know, and the reason for the existence of this podcast is to explain to people that, you know, that this, this is the sort of thing we want to do. We want to get involved with automation, but we want to get involved with automation in a way where it's as quick as possible so we can provide it to the people that need it very quickly. And also in that same sense, once we provide it, to understand, you know, what's the additional things those people need to make it even better. And I think that's kind of like where all this low-code comes into place because it's, it's this ability to you know, take things that would normally take 50 days to turn it into things that takes 5 days. And, you know, buying yourself 45 days so that you could, um, A, cut down on cost, but B, also, um, go to market quicker so you can understand what I— if what I've delivered, is that the best thing I can do, or can I do better? And, you know, I think that's That, that again, that, that's what I think is sort of the key to our existence because that's what we strive to do. You know, we want to expedite the way that we provide these automation solutions and also use the time we save to even make it better. So on a long enough timescale compared to usual IT development, if we spent the same amount of time and effort, we just have an exponentially better capability that we can provide a business with traditional IT. So I think that's an important message. And I think going into 2022 with all the AI things we talk about, it's just another tool we can use that's in our toolbox to speed up that process even further, right?

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, the automation industry and the automation topic and the desire to automate, all that is not slowing down in 2022. That's, that's a fact. I think it will probably go even steeper than the last years. So when we think the pandemic has accelerated it already massively, now with generally what's coming up in the world and what we want to achieve going forward. And it will, it will just be even, even faster. So yeah, automation will, will maybe move away from being sort of the necessity. And especially as you said, now with low-code, we can do things much faster. So it will move more also more into automation, into innovation. Rather. And, um, yeah, businesses are really benefiting from that instead of just reacting to the sort of the pandemic and doing a little sort of improvement because they have to, because of so remote working. But now, now they have these technologies potentially in place. Now they can really use them and fully use them for their competitive advantage, bring innovation for society. Yeah, it will be the future and it is the future and yeah, it will be busy, it will be exciting and we are here every week with a new episode on process and automation topics. And yeah, with that, I would like to finish this year of podcasting. A big thank you again to all our loyal listeners. Thank you for the tons of feedback we have received over the year. There is still a huge list of topics we have from those feedback, from those questions and the feedback to address in the podcast. We probably have lots more Q&A sessions coming up as well as part of the podcast. So Q&A podcast, that was actually a very good popular episode as well. I know, I'm looking forward to that again. Yeah, and Arno and I would like to wish you and your families a great holiday season and a very happy New Year 2022. So we look forward to, to many more episodes in 2022 and looking forward to seeing you all next year. And until then, take care and let's automate it. Unfortunately, that's it again with this episode of the Process in 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!