No matter the career path we choose, each one of us has had to answer a question more than once in their professional lives – Where do you see yourself in five years? It’s a question designed to question one’s outlook and the state of mind around the things to come. This ability to introspect our past experiences and gauge our expectations from the future is what makes us tick. That is what makes human beings evolve as a race. The world began the year 2020 with a rude awakening in the form of COVID-19 – a disease that spread at a terrifying speed and reached pandemic status – raising a question mark over the readiness of several systems that we considered state-of-the-art. Apart from its direct impact on the hospital systems, several other sectors such as essential services, critical businesses also had to go through a rigorous pressure test. There is a new question on the horizon as things start to go back to ‘normal’. Where do you see yourself post-COVID years?
Remote Work works like never before!in
The IT Systems were put to similar rigorous tests in order to get as many employees remotely connected as possible. We saw a very rare implementation of BCP – or Business Continuity Plan – that a majority of us only read about in the Software Engineering curriculum or probably participated in drills. And it all worked! A majority of businesses survived the toughest of times, working through lockdown, social distancing and individual isolation!
While the loss of lives remains a colossal reminder of this terrible event – and in no way do I intend to make light of it – the world will inevitably return to work as things start to improve. As we all make our journey from Sustenance to Reparation, and to finally resume Development mode so we can continue to make our systems future-proof, let us all also remember that the world will still be a changed place.
When things go back to ‘normal’, the definition of BAU – Business As Usual – will start to change over time. I am a part of this change, and I have been fortunate enough to see the transition first-hand!
Software Bots and The New Normal
A desirable side effect of being a Robotic Process Automation developer is that I get to witness the journey of digital transformation that several businesses go through. During these challenging times, more businesses have realised the potential that software bots or digital workers as they are often identified.
RPA experts worldwide have automated a lot of routine, mundane tasks performed by employees across various teams and departments. This enables them to support more distressed customers. Organisations of all sizes have similar stories to tell, across industries, domain and across the world. We will increasingly have fewer tasks to do while robots take them over, freeing us more time for quality work.
How do you plan to use this to your advantage?
Here’s an idea…
While the Software Bots continue to do the grunt work, many of their ‘commanders’ (or ‘process owners’ which a more accurate albeit unexciting term) are still unaware or unsure of what the robot can or cannot do for them. Quite often I find myself answering similar questions whether an RPA bot would be able to follow a certain logic or execute an intricate sequence of steps in a process.
A little knowledge of RPA technology makes it very easy for process owners to find these answers by themselves! This obviously puts them in better control of their digital assistant (there’s another word for a robot!). But there aren’t many available resources for someone from a process background, making this self-explanatory pursuit difficult.
I intend to close this gap between extremely technical or extremely financial discussions in the world of RPA. We need something that makes the RPA skill easy and accessible to anyone who wants to learn – whether they have programming skills or not!
RPA For Everyone is an initiative to bring the business users and robots at the same level, enabling humans to understand their assistants well enough to command them on their own. RPA tools are available to everyone through free community editions, but often the lack of basic building blocks of programming logic becomes a roadblock for non-programmers.
This roadblock can easily be cleared using simple, relatable language that we use daily, rather than the tech jargon. Explore the website for short and simple introductory articles about how robots think and what one should focus on to easily learn RPA Programming! Please take a moment to share your RPA story using the survey form below. This will help me create and deliver better training content for you in future.
Thank you!
