What is your story? How did you get started in RPA?

It all started in 2017, when I was in India working for British Telecommunications as a Product Business Analyst. I was part of the Finance domain at BT where many of their teams had manual, rule-based business practices of generating reports, transforming data, and loading documents from one system to another. I always questioned whether these processes could be automated. I was fortunate enough to be at the company during the time BT launched their RPA program and built their own CoE. My manager was aware of my career goals, and he encouraged me to be a part of the CoE. BT chose UiPath as their technology partner and their pilot project started in finance. Already knowing the manual processes in the Finance Department in and out, I began doing the process discovery work and opportunity assessment with the business, determining the right candidates for automation, and doing the handoff to the development team.

What are some of the most exciting automation projects you have worked on?

During one of my past experiences, I worked with client’s business operations team that handled orders for office supplies for 50+ locations in Canada. They maintained an excel sheet to record bi-weekly orders and placed orders with their vendors through a web-based ordering application. We came up with the idea to deploy RPA and machine learning to cater this problem. Rather than a human resource taking care of the inventory and filling out the excel order sheet to submit in the system, we decided to utilize historical data to design a ML model that can create bi-weekly inventory, and deploy RPA that can place orders and trace them till delivery. The development of ML model was still in PoC stage, but it was exciting to see what RPA and machine learning could do.

If there is such a thing, can you describe a typical day for you?

It typically depends on what stage a project is in. Being a Consultant, my role begins with kicking off the engagement with right teams and stakeholders. And as things move forward, I accomplish various tasks in different phases of the project lifecycle. Requirement gathering, Documentation and maintaining the right communication with teams are few important tasks in my to-do list.

What are the most exciting applications you foresee in RPA?

I think the ‘cool’ stuff has already started, which is a blend of AI and RPA. Our technology partners have worked hard in building up this blend into their tools, and I’m curious to see some interesting use cases leveraging both RPA and AI.

Are there any common misconceptions about adopting automation in the workforce?

Many business owners think that If you deploy RPA, the automated solution will replace their current applications and systems. But RPA always works on top of the current systems they have. Also, the automated solution provides better efficiency, enhanced employee experience, and great return on investment to the business.

What advice would you give to someone looking into a career in Intelligent Automation?

I personally started off with self-studying. The content on the web is superb. Someone with an interest in automation should go through the RPA lifecycle and learn what it’s all about. UiPath has a very good community edition that is available for anyone who wants to learn, and they can practice creating small automations to have a hands-on. To begin with, I believe Google and YouTube are your best friends. Apart from that, networking with the right people in the industry will also help to learn a lot about enterprise RPA and will pave the way to define career goals in intelligent automation.

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