RPA has been around in some form since modern-day computing has become prevalent. Through its history, it has struggled to be something “everyone” can use. The technology is highly configurable and can make even the most seasoned developer cross eyed for some of its most complex tasks. Some colleagues and industry vets will recall a time (not that long ago) where it took quite a bit of coding and finesse to make a complex script/workflow/automation work. The tools to learn, build and deploy a running bot were not fully formed.
Jump ahead to 2022
We are in a completely different paradigm. Any RPA Solution Provider can say with close to 100% confidence, whatever workflow in need of automation can be automated. The crazy part is that for half of the use cases there is no need for a full-on RPA Developer. The concept of Citizen Development has been talked about for years, but only recently have there been successful outcomes from it. I recently attended the UiPath Forward IV conference and sat in a session focused on the public sector. One of the participants worked at the DoD and he said something that really stuck with me. He indicated that Citizen Development is the best process discovery engine there is. It makes complete sense. If we give subject matter experts the ability to automate something, they will get several benefits immediately.
- Start looking at ways they can automate their day to day.
- Collaborate with other team members to leverage automations they have created.
- Discover use cases that are too complex to build as part of the Citizen Development program and push those to the internal or external Center of Excellence.
- Most importantly, become change agents within the Organization to prototype automations that can have wide reaching effects.
This all sounds great, but what are the barriers?
Accessing the toolset utilized by the internal/external COE and the Citizen Development team itself. At CampTek Software we are huge advocates of the UiPath platform and feel it’s the best platform, making RPA available for all members of an organization and potentially the masses. The UiPath StudioX is a product like no other. It is strictly built for the business user, and it becomes even more powerful with the use of Custom Libraries built by the traditional COE. What is so exciting about this product is that a business user can build a reliable bot without not knowing how to code at all. The activities are so robust that all of the configuration I spoke of earlier is removed. With proper guidance from a program similar to like our Citizen Development as a Service, a team or an individual can start building powerful bots quickly. This rapid time to production and the ease in which it is done will expand the adoption of RPA and make the technology more ubiquitous.
Written by: Peter Camp, CTO & Founder, CampTek Software
