Hyperautomation: The most significant RPA trend of 2020
What’s in a name: Hyperautomation vs. the alternatives
As companies barrel toward becoming digitally transformed enterprises, some experts wonder if the workplace needs yet another buzzword to fret about.
De Caux, for example, takes issue with the term hyperautomation — although not the concept.
“The idea of hyperautomation makes perfect sense and is very much the way that we think about automation at IFS. But I don’t like the term, as I think it covers the same ground as intelligent process automation,” he said.
Meanwhile, the consultancy HFS Research Ltd., which coined the term RPA, likes to keep things simple with its trifecta of automation, AI and analytics. “The people we deal with are tired of the buzz terms,” said Phil Fersht, CEO and chief analyst at HFS. The real watchword is transformation, he said, and automation, AI and analytics are the tools that help with transformation.
De Caux noted that he already feels challenged having to navigate the hype around RPA when working with enterprises. “There is a significant level of confusion arising from the way the terms RPA and automation regularly get conflated, which I see often,” he said.
One prospective client, for example, recently asked to understand IFS’ strategy around RPA, when what the client was actually interested in was how to firmly connect different systems (including a CRM and an IoT hub) with an ERP, so that data could flow easily between them for their business processes. That client is not an exception. De Caux said he often finds that when he explains what RPA actually is, the majority of his customers realize they are looking for APIs instead.
At the same time, he sees RPA vendors all moving in the direction of building out an orchestration tier that can sit above the different systems and manage the business processes end-to-end. “They can still only interact with the different systems in controlled ways according to which APIs are available,” he said. Offering that orchestration tier makes a lot of sense for RPA vendors, he said. Until that happens, firms like his will work hand in glove with business users to make automation more intelligent.
“Our job is to find the right tools and effectively create the glue to bind the different technologies together, but we rely on domain experts to understand the business processes from end-to-end and make sure our solutions are fit for purpose,” De Caux said.