Friday, March 18, 2016

When is a Robot, not a Robot?

I live and breath Robotic Automation every day for my enterprise customers so I thought I'd wrap up this week on something for you all to ponder on!

A few weeks back I brought an Amazon Echo. It's a lot of fun, and if your into tech, you just gotta get one yourself.

However, would you consider the Amazon Echo as being a "Robot". Perhaps not literally but let me explain why she (Alexa) very much might be!

Take one simple chore in our lives... going grocery shopping. "Do we need milk" isn't a difficult question/chore a but in reality we have to maintain some kind of shopping list back home. When we realize we need something, we need to find some paper or existing list, a pen (or phone), open up the app/paper and write on it. Then we need to remember to take the list (if paper) with us. Repeat throughout the week and we all get to eat!

This shopping list task is no different to an enterprise worker, opening up an application, looking for information, taking notes and/or remembering to pass information onto a customer.

Either way, we waste billions of hours globally, doing stuff we could simply "automate" to Robotic Automation.

So, is the Amazon Echo a Robot? You tell me because now I use it to fully automate my shopping list gathering process. Whenever I realize I need something, all I have to say is "Alexa, can you add milk to the shopping list please" (Please is optional by the way but my Mum brought me up to be polite). That's it. Alexa (the amazon echo) automatically adds that to your "cloud" list and when you go to the shops, you pull up the amazon shopping list and hey presto. Also, anyone at home can ask Alexa to add items to any kind of list. She's not fuzzy who speaks to her.

Most of these "micro" tasks, at home and, more importantly, in the enterprise, are readily auto-matable with technology. The benefits in cost savings to the enterprise are massive once you know the technology exists. And now you do... Robotic Automation



Friday, March 11, 2016

Robots prefer Intelligence !

I've had fun over the last 2 weeks with my new found friend of the most "intelligent" photo album application I have ever used - Google photos. That gave me an idea for a blog - I hope you like it.

If you are embarking on any Transformation program, for Robotic Automation (RPA, RDA), BPM and/or re-engineering program, check out why I believe the games changed on how you figure out where to start. No more guess work on  where the opportunities for improvement are ripe... Robots will be deliver significantly more value if you base their work on real intelligence of the workers work first!