Robots can do more than just free up our time to focus on the more important things. They can help tear down the barriers that separate us all as people – either through the ways we interact with the world around us or by improving our ability to tackle tasks.

Robots shouldn’t just be seen as a way to strip all the boring work from people: but as helpers that make us better at everything we do.

The Next Step

We’re beyond the cusp of starting to use VR and AR to connect us more with the world around us. What started as gimmicky games and apps to demonstrate the technology has quickly evolved into new ways to experience deeper concepts like art and politics.

Google Glass was just a bit too early because the technology was available before people were really receptive to the idea. Now though we see car manufacturers offer HUDs (Heads Up Displays) on the inside of the driver’s windscreen that assist with road condition warnings and other environmental alerts.

It’s starting to sound like the stuff of 80s sci-fi – which we think is a step in the right direction.

Call Waiting

But away from the new fangled tech and press release headlines, we’re also seeing robots excel in more mundane, everyday business applications – such as customer service. Rather than just automated chat bots, we’re seeing companies pair robots with human operatives to improve customer experience.

These bots can summarise recent call notes, direct callers to exactly the right handler and even gauge customer mood to give operators the heads up if it might be a tricky call.

Within the office itself, robots are becoming a staple of advanced training programs. Their ability to detect patterns means they can quickly notify trainers if a student is struggling with particular content.

Calling on historical information, they can even suggest new training structures that a teacher can use to help the student.

Pair Up

In these examples we’re seeing robots improve how people are able to communicate with one another. Boosting not only the speed of connection but the quality as well.

The processing power of robots with the vision and creativity of people blends perfectly and offers us all better ways to problem solve. We’re at the top of the food chain because of our ability to adapt and use tools, robots are simply the next step in that augmentation.

Room for Improvement

That’s not to say that the AI in play at the moment is perfect. Recent examples such as the racist Facebook robot show how the limit of human technical ability limits a bots capability. The bots we create are only as good as what we can imagine and then generate as processes.

To get better though will only take time. But more and more, we will lean into the strengths of bots to help us build better ones.

Whatever the next few years look like, humans and robots are here to stay. Robots aren’t here to get rid of people, they are here to help us. We’re better together.

If you want to find out more about how RPA can help you then contact us today.

Businesses want work to be done well, to be done quickly, and to be done cheaply. We can all relate to these drivers from our own businesses as well as what we want to as consumers.

To be able to achieve that, we need people to understand, evaluate, and improve upon what we already do. To increase quality, get faster, and reduce cost you first need human intervention. Today we’re talking all about efficiency and how RPA supports people in getting there.

Don’t Get Stale

We’ve touched on it before and we can’t escape it in this blog either – people don’t like repetitive work. The way repetitive work is approached only ends in lower quality. Because people resent it, they often rush through it or don’t pay enough attention. Fundamentally it bores them. As humans we’re already prone to error and repetitive tasks just shine a light on that.

If people are bored they aren’t happy. This means the other work they do is going to be impacted by the negative feelings that spill over from the monotonous tasks. Also, they’ll take these negative feelings outside of work and think less positively about their job when they’re at home. This can lead to a drop in staff retention as staff get more frustrated by the day in day out labour intensive tasks.

Milk It

So where does efficiency come in? Well, let’s take a big side step and look at agriculture and how automation has helped that industry and given workers the chance to add more value. In dairy farming, cows have to be milked 3 or 4 times per day. Until machines were introduced this was all done by hand which took a huge amount of people and time and was extremely repetitive.

Now though, with machines in place, dairy farmers can oversee the work the machines do and look to find improvements in how they are operating. They are able to take their knowledge and experience and leverage the time savings from the machines to further optimise the milking process. Better, faster, cheaper.

All Aboard

A really interesting example of efficiency through understanding is how physicists from Fermilab Center for Particle Astrophysics found the most efficient way to board a plane. Now this is interesting from an efficiency standpoint, but what potentially is more valuable is that when you provide people with a system to be more efficient they feel like their time is being valued. Usually, finding the most efficient system at the expense of convenience is the wrong approach. It has to be usable and seen to be useful.

At PAteam looking for efficiency is exactly what we do. But we also know that no one likes the party planner with absolutely everything arranged to the exact minute. We combine the efficiency that we can find for your business with the convenience of flexible RPA which gives your team more time to give back more value.

Want more efficiency at your fingertips? Get in touch today.

OK, so it goes without saying that people don’t want to redo work. But apart from the knee jerk reaction of ‘No I don’t wanna’, have you ever really thought about the impact of not getting things right the first time?

We aren’t just talking about cost and revenue. Today we’re looking deeper into why developing automation software in particular needs to be done right first time and what can happen when it isn’t.

Two Sides to Every Story

To understand why we’re writing about this topic, we need to talk about the ways in which a lot of software development is outsourced. Very often the work that in-house developers don’t like will be outsourced to lower cost regions. Basically the repetitive tasks that take some knowledge but mostly a lot of time are pushed out to free up in-house developers for the more complex tasks.

There is nothing wrong with this in theory – and while it makes sense for developers to be giving as much value as they can during their day – all too often the outsourced developers don’t have the experience to produce the work correctly in the first place. Also, by its very nature, repetitive work really isn’t suited for people as human error is unavoidable – it doesn’t matter what they’re being paid.

This often turns into a blame game with in-house teams becoming frustrated with the mistakes of the outsourced team. At the same time the outsourced team does not want to keep fixing work that has already been quoted for. Also as developers they don’t want to feel like they keep making errors that, to an extent, are out of their control.

This Is Your Captain Speaking

Looking at a different industry, aviation, we can see how pilots mitigate against the risk. Pilots are highly trained, vetted, and well-paid individuals – so potentially the opposite to low cost developers.

However, because airlines recognise the part human error plays, pilots all carry out pre-flight checklists to ensure every system is working correctly and that nothing has been missed. More often than not, this is done with a co-pilot who further ensures that nothing is missed.

Can’t Carry On Like This

If we think about sustainability, companies more and more are finding themselves having to adjust. Some are still of the mindset that it is just a costly, box ticking exercise but that the market is forcing their hand.

Either way, there is no question that repeatedly carrying out a task to get it right is going to be more impactful to the environment than getting it right the first time. The power usage of the developer computers alone is going to skyrocket if a 4 hour job takes 10 hours.

What we’re trying to say is that quality can be easily compromised. Errors leave you frustrated, your employees frustrated, and your customers frustrated. Beyond that it just isn’t good sustainable practice to rehash your work. Working with the right developer to start with, means you can count on your automation being right the first time.

Want to get RPA right the first time? Contact us today.

Sometimes it can seem as though companies often look for solutions to their IT problems too quickly – being technology, rather than problem-led. Other times, those tasked with finding a solution to a business problem are not the right people.

However, the real problem most businesses have is that the systems, processes, and methodologies they have in place stop their people from adding value or giving customers the value they want.

That’s the bottom line – systems are getting in the way. Even though we’re a tech company, we always think about people first. Fix their problems and you’ll be way ahead of your competitors.

Back in My Day

Remember a time before mobile phones? Perhaps, if you’re of a certain age. Back in the day, if you needed to contact someone there were many steps that had to be taken, from finding a landline, remembering your friend’s number, getting past the gatekeeper (i.e. a parent), and then discovering they were out somewhere.

Now, you simply take your phone out of your pocket, make some hand gestures across its screen and voila, you’re in contact with the person – anytime, anywhere.

The thing to take away here is that the mobile phone makes our lives easier. We achieve the same thing but with far fewer steps – far less effort is required. The mobile phone was designed to give us what we needed without taking away something else – our time.

On The Go Slow

Taking that example, think about some of the ways you complete tasks in your job now. Chances are you interact with a CRM or ERP system and we’re pretty confident at least some of that interaction is laboured. By that we mean it’s more effort than it really should be.

Maybe your company bought an off-the-shelf product which doesn’t suit your business? Or perhaps it’s bespoke… but not enough thought was given to its users when designing it. Either way, the chances are there is an App in your life which slows you down.

In business, your staff want to be able to do their job without wrestling with their own systems and processes. So why do businesses adopt technology that doesn’t best serve their people and in turn their business?

One Size Doesn’t Fit All

If assumption is the mother of all F-ups, then presumption is its father. Businesses often presume that there is a technology that will solve all their problems. In 2021 we have already been inundated with requests from businesses for AI. Just that. Just “AI”. This shows that companies are leading with a solution they don’t necessarily understand – and not the problem that they want to solve.

Like we said at the beginning, the problem businesses have is that they often close themselves off from the real problem – which is that the tech they have in place is inhibiting their people and their customers.

To find out precisely what those problems are we always ask why a few times over. This helps us dive into the real problem and get our customers to look up from their initial idea of a solution. If you understand something you have a fair better chance of solving it.

1s and 0s?

One of the benefits of the current age is companies can look for true problems and solutions in their data. Data often cuts through the preconceptions that business leaders have. This could be customer interaction data or call monitoring data from staff. Just having reliable information to hand is key to putting people before technology because you can often change a businesses’ mindset by showing them cold, hard data.

Looping in our love of RPA, we don’t believe that robots are there to remove people. They should be there to empower them. Taking away menial tasks frees up an individual to focus on value adding jobs. It helps to focus their sense of purpose and gives them a role which taps into their talent. If the big problem companies face is that systems are holding back their people and their customers, then solving that is going to make for better work and happier customers.

Take attendant automation in a call centre, it’s a prime example of where tech unshackles a staff member and benefits the customer. An automated attendant, if built right, can instantly provide a call agent with all the information relevant to the caller without the need to search a database. This means the agent can focus on the caller themselves and in turn that will mean the customer is going to get a more focused response, improving customer satisfaction.

In other areas of business we all implement flexible solutions by understanding problems. Even simple examples like small meeting rooms that can house quick catch ups between a few people. These rooms can be repurposed if needed without much trouble but they are a great way of having a space you don’t have to book or set up in any way. We should all think about technology in the same way, how it can be used now as well as when business needs change.

Why Us?

Bringing this together we want to talk about what makes us, PAteam, different from other RPA and tech providers. We believe in putting people first and we come armed with a healthy distrust of the buzzword solutions that are often put in front of us. We take the time to understand you, your people, and your customers. With that understanding we can then start to look at the processes a bot can tackle. Asking why isn’t always comfortable but it is essential.

We really dislike the trend in tech of slapping features on software that a user base never actually asked for just because it’ll look good on a product data sheet. We want to give you and your business material benefit, offering tailored advice and technology which improve how you work and what you can give your customers.

If that sounds like something you’re interested in then get in touch for a chat, just expect us to find out what you really need.

We’re going to tread very carefully in this blog for two reasons.

Firstly, we don’t like buzzwords very much but sometimes they are a handy way of grabbing attention to talk about interesting topics.

Secondly, we don’t want you to think RPA is going anywhere – but we want to give you an idea of the future. RPA and (in the future) AI are fantastic technologies that we want to help you seek out and bring into your business.

That said, RPA, in its current form, is not the future

Bot Extinction

We don’t want to undermine all our hard work or make you think it isn’t valuable. RPA right now offers businesses a great way of reducing repetitive work, saving money, and improving quality. However, the pace of technological improvement means that we need to stay ahead of where we find ourselves at the moment.

Hyper automation is a combination of three things: Business Process Management, RPA and AI. It’s a fluffy word, we’ll admit, but it does show a particular drive from businesses to find the key technologies they need to access in the future to have an edge. And while true AI is still a way off, functional AI that can perceive and make decisions for itself is getting closer.

Seeing Is Believing

Document recognition and understanding is a big drive for AI. There is a huge amount of work which goes into reading and collating information. Being able to automate this has huge upside for businesses.

At the moment you have to define a template where all the fields are and tell your bot where to look and what to look for. With AI and Machine Learning, a computer can ‘read’ the information from the page without prior knowledge of what it is going to be looking at.

Hello, Operator?

Take the classic automated voice on the phone telling you “We may record this conversation for training…”. Well, that somewhat trite and hackneyed auto-voice is evolving… and transforming into something quite special.

In near real time, an AI can transcribe the content of a call and begin to detect the emotion of the caller. Imagine how this could work in a call centre environment. The AI would function as the frontline operator, able to pass calls onto a human call handler to help customers. In this way, rather than remove a task, AI can extend the capability of a human.

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

Right now we are automating processes. In the future, bots are going to be able to provide insight and be predictive rather than just being completely procedural. We’re all in on RPA, AI, and Business Process Management so if you’ve got any questions, or think that you want to go further with bots then let us know – we’d love to hear from you.