HKPC Webinar - How Machine Learning & AI work in Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

HKPC held a webinar named “How can Machine Learning and AI in RPA solution accelerate digital automation?” on 9^th Oct 2020.  Robotic process automation (RPA) has proven as a money saving tool by automation which can reduce human errors and improve efficiency.  Before the webinar, Ms. Vanessa Chin (Senior Consultant, Intelligent Enterprise, HKPC) was facilitator and introduced the schedule and speaker.

Mr. Greg Wong (Director of Analytics, Platform & Technology, Centre of Excellence, SAP Greater China) was the guest speark.  He shared his success story on AI in Robotic process automation (RPA) (It is a software robot).  

In the beginning, Mr. Wong briefed the capability of RPA what it can do and can’t do.  One of good example to employ RPA in airlines industry during COVID-19. The airline built an RPA “bot” in just six days and this bot was able to address 80% of the airline’s cancellation requests or about 4000 per day!  (equal to at least 6000 manhours of work)

Then Mr. Wong showed some evidence that RPA is growing significantly.  Robotic process automation adoption looks strong in a post-COVID-19 said by Mr. Wong.  And then he discussed which department in company to provide most value using RPA.  He said most valuable to use in finance department (excel related), data extraction, and external web site data collection.

However, initial RPA project fail rate was high upto 30% to 50%.  There were two key problems that too much complexity and fail to Scale.  And then he introduced the overlapping area between RPA and AI.  It aimed the outcome to give out-of-the-box solution.  Some red flags in RPA were discussed such as OCR, Workflow

After that Mr. Wong introduced SAP Intelligent RPA + SAP Cash Application (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOoYX-GAZeE)

Finally, Mr. Wong introduced the business technology platform for integration of processes using RPA. 

And he demonstrated the Celonis Process Mining for Accounts Payable process. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwryDeicpsU) 

Lastly, Mr. Wong shared some tips to initiate RPA project and alerted to reserve enough time for accident and avoiding OCR.  

Reference:

HKPC Academy – https://www.hkpc.org/en/hkpc-academy/rttp

Robotic process automation adoption looks strong in a post-COVID world - https://siliconangle.com/2020/05/21/robotic-process-automation-adoption-looks-strong-post-covid-world/

20190930: HKPC AI & 5G Workshop: Alibaba Damo Academy and Huawei (阿里巴巴達摩院及華為工作坊) - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2019/09/hkpc-ai-5g-workshop-alibaba-damo.html

20190617: HKPC AI Impulse 2019 Summit - Day 1 - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2019/06/hkpc-ai-impulse-2019-summit-day-1.html

20190618: HKPC AI Impulse 2019 Summit - Day 2 - https://qualityalchemist.blogspot.com/2019/06/hkpc-ai-impulse-2019-summit-day-2.html