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AI FOR THE MASSES BluePrism.com
AI for the Masses AI for the Masses
Walk into any Fortune 500 organization, and you’re more than likely to find a room full of “Scaling the advanced technology is a
data scientists. These individuals are being described by many as the difference makers, key objective for executives in coming
years…Companies expect to increase AI
the propagators of change, the fuel to the fire of innovation, and the essential ingredient
investments, related to talent and technology,
to survival in today’s digital economy. Data scientist job openings are among the hardest 50-100% in the next three years.”3
positions to fill in the market, yet they are among the highest paying jobs at many
“In the crisis and its aftermath, winning
companies. Make no mistake, these data scientists are very smart, educated people, often
companies will reinvent themselves
with PhD credentials, who are typically equipped with the best cognitive technologies in by putting software, data, and AI at
the field of artificial intelligence (AI), such as computer vision, machine learning, natural the core of their organizations.”4
language processing and speech recognition. “The economic crisis triggered by the pandemic
may do little to dim companies' interest in
But what if we turned the table on this scenario and Just Can't Get AI Fast Enough automating decisions and processes with AI.
put the AI capabilities into the hands of business ‘What can be accomplished is expanding really
AI Momentum Past the Tipping Point
users in finance and accounting, marketing, rapidly, and we're still very much in the discovery
human resources, supply chain, customer service, AI has been identified as the foundation for the next phase,’ says David Autor, an economist at MIT.
or IT operations? industrial revolution. The surge in processing power ‘I can’t see any reason why, in the midst of this,
over the last decade has contributed to its dramatic people would say, ‘Oh no, we need less AI.’”5
The democratization of cognitive technology to rise. Among other things, the additional computing There’s a steady stream of content on AI being
the non-data scientist community has been made power and bandwidth has given AI the ability to produced every single day–articles, white papers, “If firms are going to buy their AI applications
possible by robotic process automation (RPA) ingest a wider set of inputs in order to tackle much industry research reports, podcasts, webinars, etc. rather than build them, that means they will
over the past several years. As companies across more complex problems. There’s so much material that some companies have need to understand the vendor marketplace
all industries have adopted RPA and introduced
even produced AI products that summarize content for AI offerings and be able to choose
digital workers into their environments to make The market buzz about AI is everywhere you look:
for you to make it more easily digestible! strategic partners. But less than half of
work smarter and more productive, the spectrum of
automation use cases has exploded. As use cases “The findings of the latest McKinsey Global the AI adopters (47%) say that they have
Despite the buzz and the momentum around AI, it
grew, so did the complexity of the use cases and Survey on the subject show a nearly 25 percent a high level of skill around selecting AI
has, no doubt, been challenging for many companies
the need to give digital workers the ability to do year-over-year increase in the use of AI in technologies and technology suppliers.”6
to source and utilize it effectively.
much more than just follow a workflow defined by a standard business processes, with a sizable A factor that exacerbates the lack of AI skills is the
process subject matter expert. It became essential jump from the past year in companies using Difficulties in sourcing and learning AI unwillingness to invest in training. According to a
for digital workers to know how to see, think, AI across multiple areas of their business.”1 recent Genpact study,
One of the impediments to trying AI in an enterprise
collaborate, detect patterns, solve problems, and “IDC researchers predicted that AI will be setting is the lack of skilled people to manage the
much more. Thus, the digital workforce has become “…a disconnect between executives and
inescapable by 2025. These analysts saw inputs and outputs. However, recent survey results
the conduit to a whole new world of advanced workers prevents employees from fully
AI as a “key ingredient” in 90 percent of indicate that AI and its use cases are becoming
capabilities for the business teams who are desperate reaping the benefits of AI, the report added.
business software applications. They also said easier to comprehend. The growing urgency around
to automate and innovate. While employees want to learn more about AI
that over 50 percent of user interface (UI) getting started with AI (before competitors do) has
functionality, executives aren't following through
Welcome to the world of intelligent automation, interactions will incorporate AI into computer led many to believe that it’s worth the investment
with training…80% of workers want to learn AI
and with it, much greater access to AI, or “AI for vision, speech, natural language processing, to “buy AI” in place of hiring in-house data science
skills, but employers aren't teaching them…”7
the masses.” and augmented and virtual reality.”2 experts to try to create AI. Despite the belief that
AI is becoming easier to use, some companies risk
having the right skill set to select and buy the right AI
as a service platform:
2 | BluePrism.com BluePrism.com | 3
AI for the Masses AI for the Masses
Challenges with finding use The fear of AI failure Where the Revolution is Happening Blue Prism created its proprietary Digital Exchange
Making “smarter robots” to serve as a marketplace for AI and other partner-
The lack of AI expertise, especially at smaller Many organizations that do understand AI—and then driven solutions. In addition, connectors (integrations)
companies, has slowed the adoption of AI. Many find use cases for AI—are hindered by the fear of The initial years of RPA were focused on productivity between these technologies and Blue Prism have
organizations struggle with simply identifying failure. While popular entertainment has sometimes and quality improvements through automating been developed so that they can be easily accessed
practical use cases for AI. However, use cases made AI sound fun (those two famous droids from the manual activities (e.g., keystrokes) required by digital workers. Equipped with intelligent skills,
for AI are well established in many cross- the early Star Wars come to mind here, for example), across systems and data sources to make business digital workers can significantly broaden the value
industry functional areas. A few examples: it has also made AI sound a bit creepy and even processes run. Over time, it became evident that the proposition of automation.
ominous (from HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey digital workers needed additional capabilities
• Marketing – customer scoring maintained to a 2018 X-Files episode “Rm9sbG93ZXJz,” just to Intelligent automation skills have been grouped into
in order to automate a broader spectrum of
by machine learning, the personalization of cite two “scary AI” examples). Beyond the world of six categories by Blue Prism (See Figure 1).
business processes.
marketing campaigns, A/B tests and digital entertainment, the media has also expressed mixed
website engagement leveraging customer messages about the promises and limitations of AI. This is essentially what intelligent automation is all Intelligent skills can be sourced from best-of-breed
or prospect interactivity data about—augmenting digital workers with intelligent providers like Amazon, Microsoft and Google, as
“Yet, lately, doubts have been creeping in or cognitive skills to address more complex activities. well as upstart AI companies that have just come
• IT – anti-spam and information security about whether today’s AI technology is really onto the scene and those that haven’t even been
In this scenario, the digital workforce becomes
as world-changing as it seems. It is running the “gateway” to AI for companies and business created, yet. When digital workers are able to use
• Human Resources – automated resume
up against limits of one kind or another teams who typically don’t have easy access to such these intelligent skills to see, collaborate, plan, learn,
scanning, job candidate scoring, and the
and has failed to deliver on some of its capabilities. Since the digital workforce platform is etc., the sky’s the limit on the processes they can
use of AI-driven chatbots that serve as a
proponents’ more grandiose promises.”8 business-driven and business-owned, access to AI automate. This also fosters a new spirit of innovation
digital concierge for benefits questions
is extended to the business…no Ph.D. required! It’s within the operations teams of the organization. With
Finding sector-specific use cases that are While the stories of successful AI still largely
also important to note that intelligent automation the ability to leverage advanced technologies that
justifiable, with investments in pilots (or outweigh the negative stories, comments like the one
heightens the value a company receives from AI by aren’t typically available to them, more people in the
expensive in-house expertise), may also be a above may make some business leaders hesitant to
connecting it directly to business processes. business get the opportunity to be creative and drive
challenge for companies seeking to experiment give AI a “test drive” even while their Tesla’s Autopilot
positive change.
with AI. A transportation and logistics firm feature does a great job with AI-assisted driving on
with a large fleet of vehicles to maintain might long-distance road trips. Figure 1
foresee a positive investment in using AI for The lack of budget for hardware and software
preventive maintenance analysis of vehicle parts
to help identify stress fractures in a fuel line that Lastly, some organizations are hesitant to try out AI
indicates a replacement need, but what about as they believe they might need to make significant
companies with mid-sized or smaller vehicle new investments in talent (which we’ll discuss
KNOWLEDGE & INSIGHT VISUAL PERCEPTION LEARNING
fleets? Can they justify the investment in AI? later), as well as technology. In most organizations,
What about the firms that still have paper-based technology leaders usually only spend a small portion The ability to harvest, understand The ability to read, understand & The ability to adapt to evolving
& deliver insights from disparate contextualize visual information process patterns & derive
processes? Can they justify the investment in of their annual budgets on innovations such as AI. contextual meaning
data sources
custom AI for high-volume document scanning, A typical CIO budget typically averages around 50-
with custom algorithms to improve the 60% for maintenance, regulatory and information
quality of data scanning into databases, that a security to “keep the lights on,” which leaves a small
healthcare insurance firm might need to make? percentage for improvement projects and innovation
investments. Simply finding the budget to spend on
new servers, new databases and AI applications can
prove to be a challenge. PLANNING & SEQUENCING PROBLEM SOLVING COLLABORATION
The ability to optimize workloads The ability to solve logic, The ability to work
In summary, the hype and urgency around AI is real, and discover opportunities for business, and system problems seamlessly with both people
better outcomes autonomously and systems
but so are the hurdles. How do we make it easier to
explore, try and buy AI?
4 | BluePrism.com BluePrism.com | 5AI for the Masses AI for the Masses
Intelligent Automation in Action
Mashreq Bank – ATB Financial – Uniper – The Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation
based in the UAE and widely the largest Alberta-based a leading international energy (DTCC) – A post-trade financial services
recognized as a technical innovator financial institution company based in Germany company providing clearing and settlement
services to the financial markets
Intelligent Skill: Visual Perception (OCR) Intelligent Skill: Visual Perception (NLP) Intelligent Skill: Collaboration (Chatbot) Intelligent Skill: Learning
• In their Trade Finance operation, Mashreq utilizes • ATB’s team has moved from local automation of • Uniper has operations in more than 40 countries • DTCC processes 90 million financial transactions
digital workers combined with OCR and machine one-off processes to creating end-to-end solutions. and employs approximately 12,000 people. The each day and serves as a centralized clearinghouse
learning capabilities to handle customer cases For example, ATB turns natural language inputs into company's culture puts employees first and for more than 50 exchanges and equity platforms.
that each involve an average of 50 pages with structured data that results in action, rather than encourages them to work to the best of their An increasing number of cyber threats, including
nine types of unstructured documents, such as an information response. This means that when capabilities, so it's important for the company to phishing emails and malicious URLS, led DTCC to
bill of lading, packing list, certificate of origin, etc. someone says ‘I need to change my address’— develop efficient processes that enable employees seek an innovative solution to address threats and
By automating more than 100 rules, the digital instead of written instructions about where to go to be more effective in their roles. Blue Prism's provide the company with a safer and more secure
workers—combined with OCR—extract 500 data and what to do—the request activates an automated digital workers have taken on many everyday tasks work environment.
points from the classified documents, which help back-office process manned by a digital worker. previously assigned to employees, freeing them up
Mashreq employees quickly and efficiently identify to focus on more meaningful tasks. Not only are the • A cross functional team implemented Blue Prism’s
any inconsistencies among the documents. • The company is now layering on machine learning human employees developing new skills, but the intelligent automation along with machine learning to
and natural language processing to allow for more digital workers are as well. assess the severity of these threats. Digital workers
• By improving the process turnaround and quality, dynamic interaction. have increased processing volumes—including during
customer cash cycles have been positively impacted. • Uniper has always envisioned intelligent automation peak times—and decreased the risk to DTCC by
“We’re focused on applying technology in areas
Other benefits of the intelligent automation include: as a starting point and is now adding more focusing on near real-time threat analysis.
that impact customers most. RPA applied to capabilities. For example, this includes building
– 60% productivity increase the right use cases, means better customer more skills to the robot, such as natural language • The digital workforce enabled the organization to
experience, and more time for us to hear our processing, OCR technology and machine learning focus on threat prevention which improved client
– 75% data point extraction accuracy experience and up-leveled employee satisfaction
customers. This is just one of the ways we are to make it smarter. As one example, Uniper has
– 48-hour processing time reduced to 3 hours working every day to make our business better.” integrated a front-end chatbot interface with an creating a more secure work environment. Other
RPA bot in the backend. This reduces front-office benefits included:
– 90% wait time reduction —DAN SEMMENS,
Managing Director of Transformation, staff from having to perform information request – Phishing emails analyzed 80% faster
"We currently have close to 97% of all Process Automation, tasks, including purchase order, shopping card and
our financial transactions originated and ATB FINANCIAL purchase requisition status so they spend time – Malicious URLs analyzed 96% faster
processed digitally. That is extreme.” performing more complex tasks and delivering
– Intrusion events analyzed 80% faster
improved customer experience.
—SANDEEP CHOUHAN,
Group Head –Operations & Technology, "One of the biggest impacts within the
MASHREQ BANK organization is job enrichment. For example,
the back-office analyst is now trained on RPA
to be able to configure his/her own digital
colleague. That analyst will never see his or her
work in the same way anymore; the lens to view
processes has changed. So, what we are doing
is leveraging technology, streamlining processes
and most importantly, empowering people. I
think this is key for digital transformation."
—NANCY SACHDEVA,
RPA Center of Excellence Lead, UNIPER
6 | BluePrism.com BluePrism.com | 7AI for the Masses AI for the Masses
No More Dreaming About AI Furthermore, AIaaS tools are becoming more and data scientists under one roof? Depending on a If your organization hasn’t invested in RPA already
Competing for AI talent — less of a risk factor than more business friendly, with explanations of the handful of these individuals to unlock the power of (or is seeing limited success with your initial foray
many might think algorithms (and use case examples) now being built AI for your company may not provide the speed into RPA), you can experiment with AI by leveraging
into AIaaS interfaces. In addition, new technologies and agility that’s needed. Intelligent automation, another recent technology innovation that is business
In today’s market, it’s wise to compete heavily for AI such as AutoML have some organizations rethinking the combination of digital workers connected to friendly—Cloud RPA. RPA in the Cloud and, with
talent. This is especially true of the financial services their AI talent strategy and minimizing AI talent advanced skills, can help you reduce the burden it, intelligent automation enables organizations to
firms, such as Goldman Sachs and its industry peers. challenges as a risk factor for getting into AI: placed on your data scientist population and allow a quickly deploy digital workers, scale automation
larger number of individuals take advantage of what and AI as a service, while providing governance and
“The rise of machines… is changing [job] “…the evolution of AutoML tools is driving a AI has to offer. security capabilities to further minimize risk. The
definitions and adding some roles. Job seekers radically new way of thinking about data science, flexibility of Cloud RPA mitigates the need to stand
with expertise in artificial intelligence, machine expanding its bench to include business experts In terms of where AI is having the most impact, the up servers for AI pilots, and mitigates the need to
learning, and data science are among the most with extensive domain knowledge, basic data- graphic below from a recent McKinsey survey (See spend on new servers, databases or other
in-demand candidates in finance, according science skills or the willingness to learn them, Figure 2) describes which flavors of AI are getting AI platform needs.
to hiring sites Glassdoor, LinkedIn, Hired, and and AutoML training, rather than solely filling utilized the most.
ZipRecruiter. It’s not only disrupters such as the team with experienced data scientists.”12
Square Inc. or Stripe Inc. hiring this talent; Moving into the AI future with Figure 2
legacy financial companies such as JPMorgan intelligent automation
Chase, Capital One, and Morgan Stanley
The acceptance of (and urgency around) AI raises an
The most commonly deployed technologies are business-process
are scooping these people up as well.”9
obvious question: why not tap into the capabilities of platforms and robotic process automation.
In Fall 2019, Goldman Sachs revealed it was
the “best-of-breed” AI companies and the products
embarking on “its biggest hiring spree in years” Automation technologies currently deployed beyond the piloting phase, % of repondents1
they provide in the marketplace versus building or
for its trading division, according to Bloomberg.
maintaining your own data science organization? Orchestration and task automation Analytics and decision automation Conversation automation
“The catch? The entire effort [was] focused on
Digitization Process insights
coders, a sign of where Wall Street is headed.” It should be no surprise that many of the largest
As a very obvious sign that Goldman Sachs is technology companies in the market who provide AI Business-process and/or Robotic process automation Image-recognition tools, including Machine-learning
case-management platforms assisted and/or unassisted optical character recognition algorithms
competing on talent, the Bloomberg article capabilities have the highest number of data workers 57 44 37 36
further notes that “Goldman [planned] to (data scientists, machine learning engineers, Big Data
raid its rivals and finance industries” to scale specialists, AI experts, etc.) Here’s a sample of the
up its AI and data science bench strength.10 top employers of data workers from the most recent
Despite the perceived risks of talent (and a lack of survey13 conducted by Diffbot:
AI knowledge overall), ongoing innovations in AI as
1. IBM 2,563
a service (AIaaS) tool have made the idea of trying
out AI more and more palatable. Many firms are now 2. Amazon 1,846
willing to place bets on AI tools vs. building their own. 3. Microsoft 1,800
Process mining, discovery, Voice assistants, chatbots, Natural language processing
4. Facebook 1,220 and/or documentation tools and/or conversational agents and/or generation Cognitive engines
Deloitte’s 2020 State of AI in the Enterprise 32 25 16 10
5. Oracle 1,210
Survey revealed that “ 50% say they will
either ‘buy all’ of their AI capabilities or 6. Google 904
‘buy more than build;’ only 8% will ‘build 7. Apple 568
all’ and 13% will ‘build more than buy.’ This
You may feel really good about your team of data
isn’t just an approach particularly favored
scientists and the things they’re accomplishing
by novices at AI; the more experienced a
for your company, but can they really match what
company was in the survey, the more likely it
the companies above are doing with hundreds of
is to prefer buying rather than building."11
8 | BluePrism.com Figure 2: McKinsey & Company, “The imperatives for automation success,” August 25, 2020. BluePrism.com | 9AI for the Masses
Your future isn't in the hands of fate - you can
experiment with AI now. it’s just a matter of time
before other firms in your industry start using AI if
they haven't done so already. It’s a competitive world,
for businesses and governments alike (as ongoing
news accounts about the “AI Arms Race” attest).
Intelligent automation makes it easy to experiment
with AI in small amounts and simple use cases
(vs. placing big risky “bet-the-house” bets on AI).
How to Get Started About the Authors
The power of AI is more accessible than ever. Here Brad Hairston Chris Johannessen
Advisory Alliance Director at Blue Prism Digital Transformation Strategist at Axis Group
are some suggested next steps for unlocking the Based in Dallas, Brad Hairston supports Based in New Jersey, Chris Johannessen advises
value of AI via intelligent automation and getting Blue Prism’s top advisory firm partners in global clients on analytics enablement, data
helping their clients utilize intelligent automation literacy, automation, and AI, while also serving
your organization moving in the right direction: to solve operational issues and innovate across as product advisor for an analytics and data
the enterprise. Hairston joined Blue Prism, the platform startup being incubated by Axis
global leader in intelligent automation, at the Group. Johannessen is also the founding editor
• Develop an understanding of the “art of the end of 2018. Prior to Blue Prism, he spent nearly
30 years in the consulting industry helping
of the Journal of AI, Robotics and Workplace
Automation, which is launching in 2021 and is
possible” with intelligent automation • Conduct a process discovery assessment to companies effectively utilize technology to intended to foster innovation across practitioners,
execute business strategies in both the private industry, government, and academia.
– Visit the Blue Prism web site (blueprism.com) uncover automation opportunities across the and public sector. Johannessen’s career has included stints with
McKinsey, GE, Omnicom, eBay and Sia Partners.
to learn more about how digital workers work organization that can be solved with digital
smarter and more productive so your people workers combined with one or more intelligent 1. McKinsey & Company, “Global AI Survey: AI proves its worth, but few scale impact,” November 22, 2019; 2. Susan Galer, “2020 AI Trends: Here’s Why People Actually
Want More Machines in the Workplace,” Forbes, January 14, 2020; 3. KPMG, “AI transforming the enterprise,” September 2019; 4. Boston Consulting Group, “The Rise of
are free to do great things automation skills the AI-Powered Company in the Postcrisis World,” April 2, 2020; 5. Will Knight, “AI Is All the Rage. So Why Aren’t More Businesses Using It?”, Wired, July 30, 2020;
6. Tom Davenport, “Is AI Getting Easier?”, Forbes, July 14, 2020; 7. Macy Bayern, “80% of workers want to learn AI skills, but employers aren't teaching them,” Tech
– Get assistance from an outside Republic, January 23, 2019; 8. Tim Cross, “An understanding of AI’s limitations is starting to sink in,” The Economist, June 11, 2020; 9. Siobhan Wagner and Shelly Hagan,
– Do some hands-on learning! “Finance Needs People Who Work Well With Robots,” Bloomberg Law, August 20, 2019; 10. Sridhar Natarajan, “Goldman Plans Hiring Spree in Trading (Only Coders
advisory firm, if necessary! Sometimes, Need Apply),” Bloomberg, August 21, 2019; 11. Tom Davenport, “Is AI Getting Easier?” Forbes, July 14, 2020, 12. McKinsey & Company, “Rethinking AI talent strategy as
automated machine learning comes of age,” August 14, 2020; 13. “Diffbot State of Data Science, Engineering & AI Report – 2019”.
à Blue Prism provides a lot of free online an outside perspective is just what the
training in the Blue Prism University organization needs.
section of our portal
(portal.blueprism.com). • Pick one or two compelling process automation
opportunities and conduct a “proof-of-value”
à Blue Prism provides a free trial and (PoV) exercise to demonstrate the intelligent Blue Prism is the global leader in intelligent automation for the enterprise, transforming the way work is done. At Blue Prism, we
Learning Edition on our web site (https:// automation capability, build internal momentum have users in over 170 countries in more than 1,800 businesses, including Fortune 500 and public sector organizations, that are
www.blueprism.com/free-trial/). and gain additional executive support creating value with new ways of working, unlocking efficiencies, and returning millions of hours of work back into their businesses.
Our intelligent digital workforce is smart, secure, scalable and accessible to all; freeing up humans to re-imagine work.
à Blue Prism also has developed 10 really • Refine the business case justification based
To learn more visit www.blueprism.com and follow us on Twitter @blue_prism and on LinkedIn.
helpful learning lab videos that you can on the PoV results and a roadmap of
find on YouTube by searching additional processes to be automated in
“Blue Prism Labs.” subsequent phases
Get going. The future of work is here!
• Find an automation champion/sponsor at Axis Group is the Analytics Enablement® company. With more than twenty years’ experience, Axis Group has delivered thousands
of innovative analytics solutions to Global 1000 enterprises and government organizations. We are driven to make a positive
the business operations executive level and a Thanks, in large part, to intelligent automation, AI is
impact on the world by helping people at all levels solve their biggest problems with analytics by unleashing the analytic potential
collaborative partner in IT more accessible than ever. What are you waiting for? across an enterprise and throughout the data lifecycle, from data management, quality and governance to visual design to
predictive analytics and beyond. Axis Group combines business, leadership, and industry-specific experience with technical
expertise to tackle tough data problems in order to enable better business outcomes for our customers.
Learn more at AxisGroup.Com
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