#57 The sweet spot for RPA...Hyper Automation...and more. Interview with Rob Crisp at UiPath

Hallo and welcome back to another episode of the Process and Automation Podcast with the Automation Guys. Today's episode is again one of our most liked episodes. Today we have another interview special, and usually you hear just Arno and me talking about all things process and automation. But today we have another great guest here with us on the show, someone who is as passionate about process and automation as we are. It is with great pleasure to welcome Rob Crisp. Rob is account executive at UiPath and wants more and more businesses to get the great benefits from automation. Hello Rob, thank you for joining us today. Great to have you on the show.

Thanks Sascha, yeah, thanks for having me. Great to be here.

Great. So yeah, Rob, please tell us a bit more about you and what you're doing at UiPath.

Sure, sure. So I'm relatively new to the company. I joined in January this year as an account executive for UK and Ireland. I've worked in SAS for the last 4 or 5 years. And basically my job is to be a kind of project manager of sorts to help clients uncover automation potential in their company. Connect them to the right people, and help them guide through their digital transformation. My main objective is demonstrating how robotic process automation can assist them with whatever priorities they may have at their company, often surrounding efficiency drives, freeing up more time for their employees, improving customer experience, and ultimately, ultimately maximizing growth and profit.

Wow, that sounds really good. So yeah, that's exactly what Arno and I want to do as well for our customers. So the two of us are working with various intelligent automation vendors to support companies with pretty much all things process and automation. And yeah, where do you see the sweet spot for UiPath in the market?

Yeah, great question. Well, you know, firstly, let me start by saying that I'm in a very fortunate position of working for the recognized market leader in robotic process automation. Now, UiPath has been a leader in every Gartner Magic Quadrant, Forrester Wave, and Everest Peak Matrix for RPA. Number one in all major independent user reviews sites for RPA, including Gartner Peer Insights, GSCrowd, TrustRadius, and Capterra as well, to name a few. So, you know, what makes UiPath so beloved by its users? Well, I think traditionally automation is expected to work on its own from start to finish. Now that excludes a huge number of business processes that need human input. So UiPath allows you to interact and collaborate with a digital workforce, massively opening up the automation potential in a cost-effective manner through attended automation. That's one of the reasons. Another one of our major competitive edges is our unmatched AI. If you take document understanding, for example, which combines RPA with our AI to allow for end-to-end document processing, you know, whether it's AP invoices, employee applications, whatever, it can handle both structured and unstructured documents, recognizing objects like tables and signatures, checkboxes, and even handwriting as well. So it's a massively useful tool. We also offer out-of-the-box drag-and-drop machine learning models that can be consumed by all organizations, large and small, at a fraction of the usual cost. Setting up these models can take a matter of days or weeks compared to months or years that a traditional kind of in-house development might take. Now, the vastness of our interconnectivity as well is huge. Essentially, we have integrations with almost all major enterprise products who, by the way, some of whom have even built their own integrations that you as a customer can download from a catalog, massively speeding up your implementation. Not to mention we have an open API and the ability to invoke code as well.

Wow, that sounds very good.

Yeah. So that sounds like quite an extreme competitive advantage. That sounds very, very comprehensive. And you know, between Sascha and myself, of course, Rob, we, we talk a lot about actual use cases here on the podcast. And my question to you is, you know, what do you think are the most exciting or impactful use cases that can be delivered using the UiPath platform?

Yeah, that's a really interesting question. I think it, of course, it depends on a use-by-use basis. It varies a fair amount with each company in each department. But if we're talking about the most, you know, impactful use case, for me it's anything that is super repetitive, you know, super time-consuming and super mind-numbing. Usually companies immediately think of one or two use cases on the spot when you, you know, based on that criteria. Yeah. But some of the kind of common use cases that I've come across, they often revolve around invoice processing, onboarding, offboarding staff, anti-money laundering.

Yeah.

But fundamentally, it's whatever use case is gonna have the biggest kind of return on investment for your company. At least that's what we recommend. Go for the low-hanging fruit to start with.

Yeah, I suppose there's sort of common, let's get started quickly use cases that you can deploy UiPath with. And then by the sounds of it, any potential problem in the business really that can benefit from automation using a software bot, That sounds like a potential use case, right?

Exactly, exactly. Yeah, right. There's a whole plethora of use cases that it just tends to be, uh, you know, what is it that your company's doing that's taking up a lot of time? And, you know, just focus your attention in those areas. Get— if a robot can do it, why not let it do it, you know? Yeah. Then it frees you up for more high-value, uh, like, work that you want to be doing.

Indeed, yeah. So intelligent automation, hyper automation. So these were sort of the buzzwords in the recent years. Looking a bit into the future, where do you see things developing for companies when it comes to automation and process and automation?

Yeah, no, I think UiPath is in a— we're on the front line of hyper automation. You know, our whole company has one focus and it's automation, like, hello, you guys. So we want to be the company and the tool that customers think of for all things automation. We don't aim to replace like any kind of tech stacks that you're already using, you know, far from it. We just want to be a layer that combines that tech stack, you know, intertwines with it, intertwines throughout the enterprise itself, allowing the company to kind of transform their business and see massive returns. So You know, in terms of like next step, where is this kind of like where the trend's going? Well, recently I've heard the term semantic automation mentioned quite a lot. Now I think this could be a really interesting area in terms of development in the automation space. We already know a lot about machine learning and AI, but essentially semantic automation allows the robot itself to identify and improve the processes within an organization. You know, so a good analogy would be to imagine an intern starts at a restaurant, you know, gets taught by the executive chef for all of the relevant tasks that they need to become a great chef. And then a year later, after becoming really good, gets promoted to sous chef. And then as a sous chef can create his own dishes and, you know, with minimal instructions and be an incredible, like be a valuable asset for the chef. So semantic automation is just like that. You know, it's the next frontier of automation in my opinion. And you can imagine these robots like the intern at the restaurant spending their time developing their own skills to master their craft, like automation. So, you know, I believe we're at a very exciting moment for intelligent automation, both in general and at UiPath. And I'm super, super excited to see how it develops, you know, over the next few years. I feel very lucky. I think we're all very lucky to basically have a front row seat to watch it unfold.

Yeah, it is great. We do see a lot of these automation technologies coming through, and that sounds very, very interesting, semantic automation. So Rob, with all these innovative technologies available, we very often get a question from our listeners, you know, what is your advice for companies getting started with digital transformation projects?

Yeah, great question. This is a simple one, you know, come and talk to me. In all seriousness, I believe RPA should be at the center of any company's digital transformation project, you know. So I always recommend customers to do 3 things. Number 1, identify and select suitable use cases. This is key. Speak to your team, you know, your employees. Where are people having bottlenecks? UiPath also has a number of products that can help you during this discovery stage as well. We've got processes, We've got software called Process Mining, Task Mining, Automation Hub. These are all great tools for discovering automation potential. Step 2, I would say, shortlist some suitable vendors that you get a good vibe from. Read some reviews, speak to people and companies that you trust, and research your vendors to see if you're going to be happy working with them long term. And then number 3, I would say, test drive those vendors. See who fits the company best. Think of ease of use, think of Governance, think implementation, and think of scale as well. I think those are some key, key areas when you're talking about digital transformation.

Oh, that's very cool. Thank you. Yeah, so that's getting us nearly to our sort of final sections. So when we have guests on, our listeners are very keen to get to know more about our guests. So a bit more than the technical and the business side. So what's— no, no, we're not jumping straight into that question. So that's why we like to ask you a couple of quick questions, if that's okay.

Of course, yeah, happy to.

All right, so they are a bit on the, yeah, this is a different side. So who is your idol and why?

Okay, idol, you know, I think I've got I've got lots of idols, like in terms of professional idols and personal idols and whatnot, and people have been so influential in my life. But when I think of like, who's my idol, who have I got like a signed picture of in my, in my room that I look up to, I think I'd have to say Alan Shearer for that. Premier League all-time top scorer, Newcastle United legend. Yeah, I think You know, the loyalty as well that Shearer showed, uh, going to Newcastle instead of like a Man United or Real Madrid or any other giant club was super inspirational for me. You know, I think, uh, he taught me a lot about determination, about grit, and he was, he was just an unbelievable player to watch as well. So yeah, legend.

Yeah, great. Well, it's always good to have somebody like that and you always measure yourself against them.

So yeah, absolutely.

If I wake up in the morning, am I going to be the Alan Shearer? Am I going to be ending my day thinking, yep, I, I can stand in his footsteps? That's, uh, that's great. Um, another one for you, Rob, if I may. So imagine you can get all the contents and knowledge of the book instantly. Which book would you choose?

You're right. Okay. Yeah, so I think I reckon it would have to be Brewer's Dictionary of Phrases. Have you heard of this one before?

No.

No.

No.

It's basically this massive reference book, a bit like a cross between a dictionary and an encyclopedia. And I kind of, I used to read it all the time when I was younger, just to learn where a phrase came from or where the origins of a certain word might have, might have developed. Um, actually, uh, I checked out robot. I've got it in front of me here. I wrote it down, um, the term robot. Would you like to know where it came from?

Oh, of course, yes.

So I've got here, uh, robot: an automation with semi-human powers and intelligence. From this, the term is often extended to mean a person who works automatically without employing initiative. The name comes from the mechanical creatures in Karel Kapeč Play RUR, which stands for Rossum's Universal Robots, which was produced in London in 1923. So, wow, before the year 1923, no such thing as the word robot. Now it's all in our lives and running through, well, it's keeping us all employed.

Yeah, isn't it? A robot for every human, isn't that a UiPath slogan?

Yeah, that's one of our, uh, that's another one of our differentiators there as well. Yeah, competitive edges, it's a good one. Yeah, great.

Awesome. Yeah, so, um, the next one is, what's the best advice you have ever received?

Well, I've got a couple that stick with me. My dad always told me, uh, it's nice to be nice. That's a pretty straightforward one. Um, doing nice things for people just genuinely makes you feel good. Um, I'm a big believer in karma as well. I think that a lot of the good things that have happened in my life come from my good energy that I try to put out into the universe and try to help people, and it kind of ebbs and flows. So yeah, I also heard really good— another really good piece of advice recently, uh, which was to change your perspective every 6 months or so. Um, So if you've got strong feelings about a topic, you know, try and take a fresh look at it with different eyes. I heard this quite recently and I've started doing it and I think it allows you to create a bigger picture of something than what you had before, like a deeper understanding of a topic. I think it's quite a good thing to have, I think.

Yeah, brilliant.

And that was our very own CEO, Daniel Dines, who told me that at UiPath. So it was, Yeah, he did a presentation to our team and thought it was excellent.

Amazing. So I've got one more for you, Rob, if I may. If you can be an Olympic athlete, what sport will you choose?

Well, there's no chance of that happening anytime soon, but if I had to choose, I'd probably go for a maybe a combat sport. I think it's quite practical, maybe, you know, outside the Olympics, uh, should I need to defend myself. Uh, so I think maybe something like, uh, like judo or something like that. I also, I also did judo when I was a kid, actually, when I was like 10 years old. Uh, so I reckon I could pick it back up again pretty quickly, maybe go for gold in Paris '24 in 2 years' time.

Maybe we have some RPA Olympics at some point.

Yeah, that would be good.

Maybe we have a chance there.

Yeah, against the robot.

Amazing. So yeah, thanks a lot for your time, Rob. So we came to the end of our questions. So our listeners, I'm very sure would be very keen to know how to reach out to you. What would be the best way to get in touch with you?

I'm always responding to people on LinkedIn, so you can find me at linkedin.com/rob_crisp. You can also send me an email to robert.crisp@uipath.com and more than happy to have a conversation, have a discussion around automation, or if even if someone just wants to learn more more about UiPath or some of the products, more than happy to help.

Fantastic. Yeah, we will put all these things in the show notes. Yeah, it was a real pleasure to have you on the show. Yeah, and if you want, yeah, let us know and then we bring you back for another part 2 episode.

Awesome. Thanks for having me, guys. I really appreciate it. And now keep up the good work. I'm a big fan of the podcast.

Thanks, Rob. Appreciate it.

Of course. 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 automated.