The 10 Most Innovative Robotics Process Automation Companies of 2019

Vol 12 | Issue 04 | 2019

The

10

Most

Innovative

Robotics Process Automation

Companies of 2019

Editor’s Choice Automobile Brand Slogans: A Line Says It All!

Secure Vision

Should Businesses Adopt Blockchain Technology?

ODED KAREV

GENERAL MANAGER OF ADVANCED PROCESS AUTOMATION SOLUTIONS

BUILDING

TOMORROW’S SOLUTIONS, AND IT'S

NICE!

Editor’s Desk

S When Robots Changed an Industry

“We are fascinated with robots because they’re a reflection of ourselves”.

ince its inception, Robotics has become an integral part of manufacturing, and it plays a major role in the manufacturing landscape nowadays. Robots do not retire, or falls sick, or need breaks, or go on a strike. So, result? You have a mechanical employee who can work 24/7 round the year.

They have taken over most of the repetitive, boring and risky jobs on the manufacturing plant. Thanks to robots and its increased productivity, and lesser worries about the labor cost, more and more manufacturing jobs are remaining in the US shores.

You may argue that, robots are replacing human labors in various manufacturing plants. However, on the contrary robots may have eliminated the need of many lower skilled jobs (which has been the case in US and Japan); they have also created a lot of job opportunities, which requires high skill sets. Robots also come with their own set of limitations. In their initial days, industrial robots are more of automation, and we humans program them to perform any task, and they repetitively does those job again and again. So, tasks that need decision making, creativity, learning on the go tend to go the human workforce. Thanks to the cost savings and productivity improvements, companies now can invest heavily on R&D and innovation, which at the end of the day creates more jobs in areas like engineering, product development and product design.

Also, Robotics Process Automation allows companies to be more competitive, that too by offering an efficient alternative to offshoring and fulfilling the skill gaps in various areas where recruiting an employee can be a tough job. With completely dedicated manufacturing robotics automation, one can see better quality work,

increased productivity and better employee safety, which eventually results a better bottom line.

Of course, just like any other cultural and economic shift robots have caused a shift in the nature of manufacturing jobs, which can eventually cause some of the economic dislocations. So, it is very much important for organizations, to help train their employees so they can occupy highly skilled manufacturing jobs in the future.

So, with great enthusiasm Insights Success has shortlisted, “The 10 Most Innovative Robotics Process Automation Companies of 2019,” who are providing innovative solutions to keep the robots up and running round the clock for a long time.

Also while flipping the pages, don’t forget to go through the articles and CXOs written by our inhouse editorial team and the industry experts respectively.

Enjoy your read!

Kaustav Roy

Cover Story

08

Building Tomorrow’s Solutions, and it’s NICE! Maestro’s Insights

Director’s Viewpoint

Why 3D Printing Consumables Producers need to get involved in PRINTING TECHNOLOGIES?

Future Technologies with a Special Focus on AI and Logo Maker

26

34

CONTENTS Celaton The Best Enterprise Application of Artificial Intelligence

16 Digiblu The Digital Workforce of the Future

22 Knowledge Lake Assisting in RPA to Achieve Success

28 ARTICLES Editor’s Choice

Secure Vision

Automobile Brand Slogans A Line Says It All!

Should Businesses Adopt Blockchain Technology?

20

32

Editor-in-Chief Pooja M. Bansal Executive Editor Rohit Chaturvedi

Managing Editor Anish Miller

Assistant Editors Jenny Fernandes Hitesh Dhamani

Visualizer

Art & Design Director

Associate Designer

Co-designer

David King

Amol Kamble

Kushagra Gupta

Asha Bange

Senior Sales Manager

Business Development Manager

Kshitij S

Peter Collins

Marketing Manager

Sales Executives

John Matthew

David, Kevin, Mark, Prathamesh

Technical Head

Business Development Executives

Jacob Smile

Steve, Joe, Alan, Manish

Technical Specialist Aditya

Digital Marketing Manager Marry D’Souza

SME-SMO Executive Prashant Chevale

Research Analyst Calvin Jones

Circulation Manager Robert Brown

Database Management Stella Andrew

Technology Consultant David Stokes

sales@insightssuccess.com December, 2019

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1 THE

Solutions,

Most Innovative

Robotics Process

Automation Companies

Of 2019

Tomorrow's

& it’s

“

With over 600,000 robots, more than 600 customers, and over 17 years of experience in process optimization, we bring the value of automation to enterprises. And when it's time to scale up, we make it easy and efficient to quickly

“

meet your changing needs.

COVER STORY

Oded Karev General Manager of Advanced Process Automation Solutions

“

The only solution that

delivers both attended

(desktop) and unattended (server-side) automations, so employees can focus on productivity – not

“

processing.

COVER STORY

W

ith the intent of providing a personal robot for every employee and pushing up the scale of process automation, NICE RPA came into existence.

NICE has been active in the process optimization market for over 17 years, with a strong emphasis on optimizing the customer service agent’s desktop activities. With the rise of RPA, the organization embraced it fully and adapted its existing offering to support unattended back office and shared services scenarios, and bring to market a powerful, comprehensive RPA offering which encompasses every element needed for successful implementations.

The company believes that leadership is a result of putting customers first. In fact, its values are grounded in cherishing its customers, and NICE’s employees firmly believe that their success is a reflection of the customer's success.

This means providing the customers with innovative, revolutionary and scalable technology that can make a real difference to their customers. Obviously, the consistent delivery of world class innovation and exceptional customer service is ultimately the responsibility of NICE’s team of dedicated professionals – and this is where its unique culture comes in. Its employees are scientists, engineers, business and thought leaders, people who are subject matter experts who boast extensive experience as experts in their fields.

The Solutions’ Cabinet of NICE NICE’s RPA solution is an all-encompassing solution which includes all the elements needed to succeed with RPA. What’s great about it is that it’s all inclusive, meaning its customers get it all when they purchase the RPA product: an automation authoring tool (which is a single tool used to create both unattended and attended automation flows), an embedded OCR engine, and a control tower which oversees the complete robotic workforce – attended and unattended. NICE’s Process Automation portfolio also includes an Attended

Automation solution named NEVA (NICE Employee Virtual Attendant). NEVA is installed on the employee desktop, and it helps them with their daily tasks. NEVA not only does automated routine activities, but also provides next-best-action guidance to employees, so they have a much easier time in solving customer issues or processing cases. Lastly, the organization's Automation portfolio includes a process discovery tool, which leverages unsupervised machine learning to identify the best processes to automate. This discovery tool comes complimentary with NEVA. So the customers definitely get more with NICE RPA. In the Pursuit of Being Different According to NICE, the main differentiator is its intimate familiarity and experience with the contact center environment and specifically with the agent desktop intricacies. NEVA, the personal RPA bot, brings a lot of intelligence to how she facilitates the employee’s work.

She ‘understands’ the context of the interaction or the process, she knows whether the customer being handled is a VIP customer needed special attention or a customer at risk who now needs to be presented with a retention offer. NEVA can be integrated with the organization’s chat bot, so employees can chat with her and ‘tell’ her what they need. NEVA even knows which CRM application is required for an automation, even when the employee has 3 instances of CRM opened on his desktop. These scenarios require a great deal of expertise, and that is something unique that NICE brings to the table. Another differentiator worth mentioning is the fact that NICE is a portfolio company, with solutions for speech analytics, VOC, Performance Management, interaction recording and much more. This allows the company to create internal integrations within its portfolio, and its existing customer base enjoys these additional benefits from having an automation solution

by NICE. The Knight Rises Oded Karev the General Manager of NICE’s Advanced Process Automation Solutions brings his

extensive experience in corporate strategy and operations. He leads NICE's global RPA business, covering the full spectrum of robotics solutions. Prior to his current role, he served as the Director of Corporate Strategy at NICE, leading some of the company’s key growth initiatives.

Before joining NICE, Oded specialized in delivering multi-channel strategies, operating model designs, and digital transformation projects for Accenture. Oded is a respected industry thought leader and keynote speaker in the field of Robotic Process Automation and is frequently quoted in global media.

The Robotic Process Automation Odyssey NICE takes pride on itself at advancing the automation industry by bringing several in-house AI innovations to RPA. These include a proprietary discovery tool, named Automation Finder, which uses unsupervised machine learning algorithms to identify repetitive patters in employees’ desktop activities, classify and prioritize them. Another unique tool developed by NICE to support connectivity of RPA tools to the underlying applications is Shape Analysis. Based on computer vision, Shape Analysis identified screen elements based on their shape and text. This is especially crucial when the RPA implementation is done in a Citrix environment and there’s no direct integration to the underlying application. Since connectivity is such a critical element of a successful RPA deployment, NICE also delivers its customers with yet another AI innovation for alerting on any connectivity break (when the robot can no longer access the screen element which is required for the automation, for example if a button is missing or changed its location). The organization calls this the Connectivity Watcher. NICE is further enhancing this capability by adding a Connectivity Repair capability which will not only alert and show where the automation broke, but will also fix it on the fly. These innovations proves NICE’s strong commitment to its clients’ success with ability to scale RPA.

The ‘X’ Factor According to NICE, consumer markets are becoming more intelligent, tech savvy and demanding. Just as cognitive technology can be accessed from their pockets, forming an integral part of their life-styles, consumers are expecting service providers as well as the organizations they work for, to integrate and leverage cognitive technology. With more intelligent and demanding customer markets expecting better service delivery as well as greater competitive intensity, RPA has become an essential technology to support organizations to build and improve customer experience while effectively streamlining their operational efficiencies to remain competitive. Since customer experience and employee experience are intertwined – attended automation solutions boost employee performance and motivation, naturally enhancing customer experience.

Into the Future When it comes to the future, NICE would like to bring innovative process automation and AI to every employee's desktop- so they are freed from the mundane, repetitive ordinary work that is keeping them from doing extraordinary work. nice.com/rpa

COVER STORY

“

You ďŹ rst have to know what can and should be automated.

NICE automatically helps you to map employee activities

and processes, identifying where automation is the key to immediate and long-term optimization.

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1 THE

Most Innovative

Robotics Process

Automation Companies

Of 2019

Company Name

Management

Brief

Antworks ant.works

Govind Sandhu Co Founder COO

AntWorks is a global, artiďŹ cial intelligence (AI) and intelligent automation company; creating new possibilities with data through digitization, automation, and enterprise intelligence.

Celaton Ltd celaton.com

Gina Gray Commercial Director

Enabling organisations to streamline end-to-end business processes to achieve operational eďŹƒciency.

CPAutomation SA cpautomation.ch

Marcel Dubey CEO

CPAutomation specializes in developing, producing and delivering standardized turnkey solutions in industrial automation.

Daythree Business Services daythree.co

Raymond Devadass CEO

Daythree is a fast growing regional business service provider in the areas of business and knowledge process, human capital and IT services to global clientele.

DigiBlu digiblu.com

Steve Burke Co-founder and CEO

DigiBlu helps organisations leverage the power of Intelligent Automation to implement and operate Digital Workforces

KnowledgeLake knowledgelake.com

Ron Cameron CEO

The KnowledgeLake platform supports the unique document management needs of your organization by employing robotic process automation and machine learning technology.

KOFAX INC kofax.com

Reynolds C. Bish CEO

Kofax software enables organizations to Work Like Tomorrow today.

myInvenio my-invenio.com

myInvenio provides you with a real Digital Twin of an Organization, in fact, it can derive an extremely precise model of Massimiliano Delsante your processes and enable you to pursue continuous CEO improvement initiatives with a low-cost and fail-fast approach.

NICE Ltd nice.com

Oded Karev General Manager of Advanced Process Automation Solutions

NICE Stands Out for its Technology Innovation, Receiving Four TMC Accolades for Delivering Customer Service-Enhancing Solutions

RoboRana roborana.be

Mathias Fransen Managing Partner

RoboRana helps organizations transform data- intensive business processes, reduce manual work and errors, minimize costs and improve customer experience.

1 THE

Most Innovative

Robotics Process

Automation Companies

Of 2019

The Best Enterprise Application of Artificial Intelligence

“

elaton is a UK based Intelligent Process Automation solution provider, that deploys its technology, inSTREAM™, to deliver Intelligent Document Processing (IDP). With Celaton’s inSTREAM platform, companies can now achieve improved operational efficiencies as well as enhanced job satisfaction through the ability to deliver real value back to the organization and its employees. Celaton applies Intelligent Process Automation (IPA) technology to enable organizations to streamline endto-end business processes such as Accounts Payable, Sales Orders, Customer Correspondence and Claims processing and continually optimize through workforce supported machine learning.

C

inSTREAM can process documents regardless of how they are received including paper (post), email & attachments, web forms, fax, and electronic data interchange (EDI). It is able to read and process all formats, structured, semistructured, and unstructured ensuring all documents received to follow a single process through inSTREAM. inSTREAM prepares the documents for processing by converting them into a digital, machine-readable format. inSTREAM uses its AI algorithms to apply previous learning and experience to understand the document type, meaning, and intent, and then apply business rules to extract key data. Once inSTREAM has extracted the data, it can carry out further tasks for data validation.

Created in response to real business problems Celaton was founded in 2004 with the sole purpose of helping companies achieve efficiencies in processing inbound documents received from both customers and suppliers.

Having reached out to the other sources such as external databases or business systems, the verified and enriched data is collated, and inSTREAM applies business rules to determine outcomes. Should inSTREAM not feel confident about the outcome, it collaborates with an operator who assists it with validation and teaching in a process called ‘Human in the Loop’. If, however, confidence and accuracy are high, inSTREAM can deliver the document and output directly to the business system achieving straight-through processing.

The company was created in response to the realization that despite the growing choice of solutions, there was nothing available at the time that could improve the efficiency of handling of semi-structured and unstructured inbound documents and yet processing this information was one of the biggest issues faced by organizations. The unstructured information received by organizations every day demanded valuable human resources to process and at a high cost.

Applying Intelligent Process Automation to deliver consistent business value Celaton’s solution is not RPA, but rather a complementary extension of RPA’s capabilities. Celaton’s inSTREAM™ platform applies IPA to deliver consistent and measurable business value to end-to-end business processes such as Accounts Payable, Sales Order Processing, Customer Correspondence, and Claims.

16

inSTREAM enables a significant reduction in Average Handling Times (AHT), enabling improved operational efficiencies, as well as enhancing job satisfaction through the ability to deliver real value back to the organization and its employees.

A Customer-Centric Approach Celaton’s vision is, to be recognized as a leader in the application of Intelligent Document Processing (IDP). To achieve this, Celaton’s mission is to apply a customercentric approach to deliver consistent and measurable value to business workflows through Intelligent Process Automation (IPA).

December 2019|

“

Celaton’s Intelligent Process Automation (IPA) platform inSTREAM™ delivers a smart, more efficient process, reducing manual effort, time and cost.

Gina Gray Commercial Director

A 15 Year journey of growth and innovation It has been a 15-year journey for the organization, which eventually helped to achieve the level of knowledge, experience, and technical maturity in Celaton’s solution.

Over the years, the company has worked with some fantastic global brands, including Virgin Trains, Capgemini, ASOS, Kuoni Travel, DHL, and Dixons Carphone, who have been key to establishing this. The longevity of the company’s customer relationships is a testimony to the fact that the organization’s technology delivers rapid tangible benefits and, in its ability to keep its promises.

In 2017 Celaton was awarded a Queen’s Award for Enterprise in Innovation. The Queen’s Award is one of the top accolades in the UK and recognized not only our technology but also Celaton’s commitment to customers across all levels of the organization. Celaton continues to strive to deliver to the high standards of excellence and innovation that were recognized in winning in this award.

Delivering Advancement to the Industry inSTREAM comprises multiple technologies including, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, RPA, OCR/ Intelligent Character Recognition, NLP, and cognitive computing.

Once implemented, processes are continually optimized through workforce supported machine learning, and it is through this Celaton is delivering advancement to the industry. As previously mentioned, there is no need for Developers to re-program inSTREAM with every document exception, meaning the solution can scale with an |December 2019

organizations’ growth and help to achieve sustainable success.

Highly Skilled and Experienced IT and Business Process Automation Leader Gina Gray joined Celaton nearly 6 years ago, and her role was originally focused on business development by building relationships with partners & any new direct customers. Since then, Gina’s role has expanded significantly, and now she has overarching responsibility for the delivery & protection of the total business revenue. In addition, a significant part of her role today is educating not only customers but partners and industry analysts about IPA and its transformational impact. She is able to provide knowledge about different automation technologies, their role & impact, and where inSTREAM sits in the automation landscape.

Sustainable Solutions to Customers The robotic industry is only now starting to realize that RPA is not a ‘silver bullet’. Whilst RPA is very good at automating certain repetitive rules-based tasks such as extracting structured data, it has limitations and should be considered as a component within IPA. It is only through thinking about RPA as part of a comprehensive solution that suppliers can provide sustainable solutions to customers.

Celaton’s customer-centric approach to implementing solutions has already enabled us to adopt this holistic approach and is achieving significant benefits for customers.

17

Editor’s Choice

Brand Slogans A utomobile A Line Says It All!

P

eople love cars. To be honest, they are mad about them.

Cars are the spellbinding aspect of the vastly spread automobile industry. They are the mixture of poise and aggression reflecting your personality traits. As Alexandra Paul said, “The cars we drive say a lot about us.” Therefore everyone is so individualistic about the choices and the brands they opt for. Thanks to some auto-makers, the standards of car-making have been raised so high that for fulfilling customers’ expectations, companies need to be top-notch in Performance, Aesthetics and Service (PAS). Any company meeting these norms will definitely be the customers’ favourite.

Certainly, ’PAS’ parameters are the most important ones, but one cannot deny the fascination of a catchy tagline any automobile brand possesses. A tagline or a catchphrase reflects the ideology and vision of the

20

company. It is a short set of words which delivers a memorable phrase about a brand’s core values. It is evident that a portion of crowd gets attracted towards a particular brand because of the brand’s creative catchphrase. So here are taglines of few globally famous car-making brands.

Aston Martin: Power, Beauty and Soul.

The slogan of this British cultural icon perfectly personifies its incredible products. Power for performance, beauty for aesthetics and soul, reflects the company’s determination to strive for excellence. Ÿ Audi: Vorsprung durch Technik (Being ahead through technology).

This German stalwart has kept it very simple and to the point, focussing more on technical perfection.

However, people are also fond of its state-of-the-art designs.

Ÿ

Ÿ BMW: Sheer Driving Pleasure.

Bayerische Motoren Werke or BMW is one of the leaders of the luxury car market. This Germany based giant has shifted to this catchphrase from its classical one i.e. The Ultimate Driving Machine, both showing its outlook in this segment. Ÿ Ferrari: We are the competition. Ÿ This power packed machine manufacturer overtly expresses dominance through its tagline, setting the benchmark to a level difficult to reach. Ÿ Ford: Go Further Ÿ This US legend has set a slogan not only for customers but also for itself, inspiring to keep moving forward. Ÿ Jaguar: The Art of Performance.

December 2019|

Jaguar, known for its powerful and elegant cars, has exactly resonated this ideology with its tagline, crafting a beautiful blend of performance and beauty. However, many of the Jaguar lovers admire its previous catchphrase, Grace.Space.Pace. Ÿ Lamborghini: We’re not supercars. We’re Lamborghini.

The ’Automobili Lamborghini’ has made this Italian brand, a worldwide phenomenon when it comes to supercars and luxury SUVs. Previously, it had a classical slogan stating, Follow your ears. Ÿ Lexus: Experience Amazing.

This luxury vehicle division of Toyota has truly conveyed its opulence through this catchphrase.

Witnessing its marvellous cars is an amazing experience. Ÿ Mercedes-Benz: The Best or Nothing.

Probably the true leader of the luxury cars segment, Mercedes flaunts its superiority through this incredible tagline replicating its passion about perfection. Ÿ Nissan: Innovation That Excites.

This prominent automobile brand from the land of rising Sun recently shifted from its vintage slogan Shift to the aforesaid newly introduced one. Ÿ Porsche: There Is No Substitute.

Thanks to this creative marketing catchphrase, people don’t need any explanations. If you want to be unique and different, you have no alternative than a Porsche. Ÿ Renault: Passion for Life.

Renault’s newly launched slogan replacing the previous Drive The Change brought a bright, modern take on its historic virtues resonating spirit of automotive revolution. Ÿ Toyota: Let’s Go Places.

A world leader in automotive production, Toyota is

|December 2019

probably the only company having hundreds of taglines, different for different countries. Its US domain slogan Let’s Go Places is among the most popular ones sharing the honour with taglines like Start Your Impossible and Quality Revolution. Ÿ Volkswagen: Das Auto(The Car).

This gigantic German group is well known for its perfectly crafted and engineered vehicles. Historical ’The Car’ slogan could be the only catchphrase that could portray Volkswagen’s vastness. Ÿ Volvo: For Life.

This Swedish automaker through its slogan has expressed two important elements of the brand; loyalty for life and safety of life. Needless to say, this makes it one of the best taglines ever created.

After reading all these creatively crafted taglines, one can easily get an idea of how powerful of a marketing tool they can prove to be. After all, influencing someone’s choices isn’t an easy job. In this world of advertisement, many claim that along with performance, aesthetics and service you need to have incredible marketing tools like that of brand slogans. Without these it is really hard to draw the attention of customers who are equipped with vast number of choices nowadays.

Certainly, in this regard, taglines have proved their importance and comprehensiveness.

21

1 THE

Most Innovative

Robotics Process

Automation Companies

Of 2019

The Digital Workforce of the Future

R

obotic Process Automation (RPA) is software that mimics human workers in conducting routine rulesbased activities. It automates tasks by interacting with any application or system using non-invasive techniques, without need of systems integration, and can orchestrate activities across boundaries. RPA enables cheaper and faster processing and reduces errors, improves security (reduces fraud) and enhances compliance. Used strategically, it enables business and operating model innovation.

At DigiBlu, the company has experienced increased Net Promoter Scores of 30% as a direct result of RPA implementations. Depending on the process, volumes, and the number of human workers involved, cost reductions range from 30-80%. The company’s clients are achieving year one ROI of 200% plus. DigiBlu helps organizations leverage the power of Intelligent Automation to implement and operate Digital Workforces. The company has designed an operating model for the Digital Workforce that aligns the core processes with organizational competencies.

In an interview conducted between Insights Success and Steve Burke Co-founder & CEO, shares his deep experience in leading enterprise transformations and DigiBlu’s objective of realizing the full potential of automation.

Below are the highlights of the interview between Steve Burke and Insights Success: What led to the inception of the DigiBlu? DigiBlu was established in 2014 as a high-value strategy & transformation consulting firm. In mid-2016, we saw the potential of RPA to transform operating models and we repositioned ourselves to become wholly specialist as an RPA delivery and capability partner.

Could you throw some light on your mission and vision statement?

Our mission is to be a world leader in implementing, delivering and operating digital workforces.

22

Our vision is to create the workforce of the future, organized around multi-skilled, multi-purpose digital workers, integrated with human workers, to create high-performance enterprises.

Describe your company’s cutting-edge RPA solutions, which addresses all the needs of your customers.

The need of our customers is to innovate their business models to improve the customer experience, deliver new offerings and increase revenues, while creating low cost, super responsive and agile operating models. Automation enables this, and specifically the automation of routine / transactional activities from customer engagement to fulfillment. This requires the seamless integration of cognitive and robotic capabilities, sometimes delivered over the cloud. This enables omni-channel engagement, the ingestion, structuring and sense-making of data, which informs decisions and triggers execution using RPA. DigiBlu’s platform approach extends the reach and value of the core RPA technology into Intelligent Automation.

How does your RPA solution differ from the other companies’ offerings?

Our integrated Intelligent Automation solutions automate end-to-end activities along value chains and they orchestrate activities across business ecosystems. Used strategically, this solution enables the innovation of offerings and the reimagination of business processes. Other companies focus mostly on automating discrete activities, including desktop and document automation. DigiBlu has no proprietary technology, but rather combines technologies into platforms so that one plus one equals three, and so that our clients can transform their organisation, reimagine their offerings and redesign their processes, from end-to-end.

Our differentiators then, are strategy and transformation consulting and our deep process expertise, which is backed up by technical expertise, great software and excellent delivery.

What technologies are you leveraging to make your RPA solutions resourceful and bringing advancement in the industry?

December 2019|

“

DigiBlu is about transforming organisations by implementing and operating digital workforces, building capabilities on-premise or delivering digital workers over the cloud.

Steve Burke Co-founder & CEO

We mostly use Blue Prism RPA as the core RPA technology.

We add TrustPortal for managing human-to-robot interactions, Antworks’ Cognitive Machine Reading for ingesting and structuring data, and Merlynn’s expert system for decision-making. Our Robotics Operations Centre is powered by the Thoughtonomy platform, which delivers Intelligent Automation over the Cloud.

Describe the experiences, achievements or lessons learned that have shaped the journey of the company.

No one really knows where the journey to digital workforces will take them, and our learnings are continuous. First we had to master the laying of foundations, then we learned how to scale, now we are asking, ‘how does an enterprise operate when it is organized around a Digital Workforce and, how should we organize and reskill to get the very best out of human workers?’ We consider ourselves a learning organization and organize around specialist competencies to capture experience from large implementations (we have one client, for example, where we are helping to implement 500 bots).

We have won numerous international awards, including a coveted Partner of the Year award from Blue Prism in 2019.

What according to you could be the potential future of Robotic industry and how does your company envision sustaining its competency?

The future lies in the creation of digital workforces that will speed innovation and enable unprecedented levels of operational agility. The Digital Workforce will be a key feature of 4IR. The digital workers will require multiple skills, beyond mere robotic execution, which will be enabled by other digital technologies. This puts digital |December 2019

workers at the core of digital transformation.

In DigiBlu we are constantly evolving our own offerings, including Automation-as-a-Service offerings such as the provision of digital workers on demand and Business Processes-as-a-Service (we have an outsourced payments solution, for example). The as-a-service offerings are delivered over the cloud to customers around the world from our Robotic Operations Centre in Cape Town.

About the Leader Steve Burke’s first career was as an officer in the British Parachute Regiment after which he turned to high-value management consulting. His influence over DigiBlu is to bring a transformative mindset and method, which raises RPA from being a mere tool. As a member of Blue Prism’s Partner Executive Council and a keynote speaker, he influences the industry with visionary thinking about the workforce of the future that he combines with deep experience in successfully leading transformational change.

Steve holds a Masters degree in the Design of Information Systems (Cranfield) and an Honours degree in International Politics (UCW Aberystwyth) and was trained in leadership and strategy at Sandhurst and the Army Staff College.

Testimonial “In March 2019 Investec outsourced the RPA implementations and day to day monitoring efforts to DigiBlu’s Robotics Operations Centre. Since the change in approach we have been able to implement faster by introducing governance structures and at a much higher quality by applying best practice standards.”

— (Investec Asset Management)

23

Maestro’s Insights

3D Printing

WHY

Consumables Producers need to get involved in

PRINTING TECHNOLOGIES? “To sell the oil, give away the lamp!”

T

his Chinese proverb already made sense thousands of years ago, when a certain wick sucked up oil of a defined viscosity – and it certainly helped finding new customers for the seller’s oil. This principle has always been utilized; think of the razor blade, game console sellers, mobile phone service providers –or 2D Printer producers offering the machine even at a loss, knowing the specially designed cartridge will more than compensate for the poor hardware deal by selling the modern oil: The ink.

Unfortunately today’s giant chemists like BASF, Covestro, Evonik and the like believe in the “Open Platform Initiative” of the new sun in the 3D printing sky, Hewlett Packard. This is certainly a good deal for HP, as they already lost reputation during the years they couldn’t deliver -after having announced their new technology way before. Realizing their patents and building the machine became a nightmare, thousands of unplanned man-years went into this endeavor; and the big players on the chemical side didn't really know how to access the market that was so young, undeveloped –and still doesn’t show a clear path as to what technology will “win”. So the chemists tested the waters with HP, and it looks as if both sides have found a winning position.

Why then “unfortunately”?

Because both sides will fail: If you dig into the annual reports, truth is that the printer sellers make their profit

26

margin on the oil side –they need to sell consumables in order to finance R&D and machine production. On the other hand the chemists produce their oil, well adapted to the machinist’s needs. Should the hardware partner face economical reality and be forced to achieve margin by taking the nice consumables business into his own hands, the chemist will realize how helpful he was –and how helpless he is now.

And there is even a third loser: The 3D printing r/evolution is retarded! The machinist only knows his kingdom, he creates machines. But 3D printing is about chemistry, the oil is king, for sure! So the chemist should invent the new technologies, as he defines the ingredients of tomorrow’s magic substances, enabling incredible properties. Carbon3D is a good example here, his founder, Joseph Desimone, is a chemist, the well funded company received over 400mio$ and is a unicorn, showing a pre IPO value easily surpassing one billion $.

So chemistry it is! The next revolutionary printing step will be brought to life by a chemist’s imagination.

This is why these big players need the courage to add a hardware leg and start tinkering with prototypes. They cannot wait for the machinist to tell them what material they need, neither for customers cozing their wishes. In the end product producers don’t care about machines, technologies and chemistry, all they need is affordable material properties for production methods that need less

December 2019|

post processing, like assembly. The time is in favor of intelligent more complex design, the chemistry can offer the properties, but the hardware is lacking speed, reliability and affordability. That is why 3D printing didn’t climb up the industrial ladder and injection molding still isn’t replaceable.

In consequence, hardware is the chemist’s “must have”, as it is the chemistry that defines the printing rules, the algorithms, and the speed. It all starts with the combination of molecules, and the hardware is the necessary evil the chemist needs to bring to a working prototype level; a TRL 5 (technology readiness level, 5=technology demonstrator) would already be sufficient, so the baton can be passed on to the professional machinist for optimization of the hardware side.

This is exactly what we do at Geniusthingks.

With a bucket full of 3d Printing inventions we don’t talk to printer producers, but to chemists at first. They give all the necessary input to determine material properties and speeds. We offer technologies from FDM filament heads mixing colors and materials, to huge daylight resin printers, gel pushing robots for prototypes surpassing 100m³ of print volume, house printing robots -and our specialty: drum printers that will replace these lame ducks of planar printers, ac/decelerating for every layer.

Printer design will see a paradigm shift in the coming years, when chemistry allows for faster layers than today’s machines can offer mechanically due to their physical limits.

Industrial production needs to come close to injection molding speeds plus assembly time, so layer-speeds of 100msec need to be achieved.

This is more than a breakneck speed for the current producers; with HP offering 7.55sec/layer, claiming to be 10 times faster than the next fastest machine, their “industrial” future doesn’t look too bright.

Geniusthingks however has filed several patents potentially surpassing this requirement and is looking for partners to realize the prototypes.

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Markus Ulrich Founder & CEO

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Markus Ulrich is the Founder and CEO of Geniusthingks. His think tank offers unconventional solutions for tough nuts to crack, mainly in the 3D printing and smart bullet weapons-industry. Markus studied mechanical engineering, founded and led an IT-database company for 13 years and built machines all his life.

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1 THE

Most Innovative

Robotics Process

Automation Companies

Of 2019

Assisting in RPA to Achieve Success

E

“

nable our customers to reach their full potential by serving them with innovative document technologies.” This is the vision of KnowledgeLake, a software company that focuses 100% on innovating around capture, RPA and the content repository for the purpose of helping its partners and customers to manage transactional content. The company helps busy organizations intelligently automate their most important document processes. The KnowledgeLake platform is the only cloud-native platform for capturing, processing, and managing your most critical business content.

step video replay can be viewed to facilitate exception handling. The video, along with access to both a synched log file and automation specification document, provides the user a 360-degree view of every transaction, and is presented in a manner that speaks something we call “the language of the user.” KnowledgeLake also links the entire support chain to this tooling to ensure all exceptions and handled quickly and completely. Such tooling mitigates the top reasons RPA projects fail in production: poor support and slow remediation. Further, any corrective measures taken by the user to handle exceptions can easily make their way back into the automation so future runs of the automation know how to handle the corrected condition.

Customized Solutions KnowledgeLake RPA is purpose-built for the automation needs of transactional content management (TCM)—conscious organizations. Most data that ultimately flows through an RPA automation originates within documents. Regardless of whether those documents are paper based or are born electronic and ingested via an email attachment or download, the data contained within those documents eventually needs to make its way into one or more line of business systems. These are the automations types for which KnowledgeLake RPA is particularly wellsuited. To support these use cases, KnowledgeLake RPA provides both an unattended and attended bot offering. The purpose of the unattended bots is to process batches of information that have been extracted from documents via our patent-pending machine learning technology.

Once the data is extracted and verified, it is then passed to one or more unattended bots that can enter it into any Windows, browser, or legacy application, either through the application’s user interface or an existing API. All unattended bot transactions are recorded so a full step-by-

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Once the data is in the line of business system, it is common for users to want to refer back to the original document for reference. Rather than forcing the user to open their document management system, login, and re-key search criteria data or updated metadata, KnowledgeLake offers users an attended bot that allows them to retrieve source documents with the mere click of a button KnowledgeLake RPA allows TCM-minded organizations to automate all aspects of integrating documents, data, and line of business applications.

An Expert Ron Cameron, the CEO of KnowledgeLake, is a known expert in the industry and has been featured as an executive speaker for years at events hosted by companies like Microsoft, Fujitsu, and more. Before that, he worked in the industry for a few years as an employee and was frustrated by leadership that didn’t focus on the customer experience.

His goal was to create a company that truly put customers and employees at the center of its existence—even before profit. According to him, at KL, the philosophy is “I’m December 2019|

“

Leverage the KnowledgeLake platform to achieve compliance, provide better governance, and streamline document processing.

Ron Cameron CEO

Third,” which means that the company puts its customers first, its tribe (which is the team) second, and itself third.

It’s a recipe that’s worked very well for 20 years now.

Ron is also a man of character with a strong respect for diversity and willingness to give back. He has served on a number of corporate and philanthropic boards including The Magic House (St. Louis Children’s Museum), Our Little Haven and Louisville Sluggers Warriors Little League Baseball. A trusted mentor to many, he is a known leader in the Information & Content Management industry and has a strong reputation built on integrity, compassion, and a cando executive attitude. The Best is Yet to Come It’s the lessons, experiences, and even failures that ultimately led to the achievements—Ron says he could write a book on those. KnowledgeLake has helped thousands of customers in 34 countries save money and streamline their content processing, which Ron believes is the company’s most important achievement. Secondarily, the organization has partnered deeply with Microsoft for 15 years and has been awarded “Microsoft Partner of the Year” 4 times. He also still believes the best part of the company journey is yet to come.

Merging with Advancement The future of the robotic industry is definitely still emerging. The robots (or bots) are only as smart as the instructions they receive. The future is going to be shaped by the innovation around AI that actually drives the |December 2019

behavior of the robotic workers. KnowledgeLake is right in the middle of the innovation every day. The company will sustain its competency by listening to the customers and the industry and using everything available to help them aggressively solve problems.

Testimonials “Knowledgelake RPA has allowed us to redirect employee efforts to tasks that matter to our customers rather than processing repetitive non value added transactions. With integration between systems we have eliminated thousands of hours from our customer’s processes.” Matthew Danyliw, Analytix BizMgmt, LLC “The KnowledgeLake solution works seamlessly with SharePoint Online.” Aaron Withington, ITS Senior Technician, PRO Club “With the rapid access to documents provided by KnowledgeLake, we can actually spend time and resources on improving and making our processes better than what they were before.” Tye Eyden, Collaboration Analyst, New Belgium Brewery “KnowledgeLake helped us move from out-dated technology to an efficient enterprise content management solution that helps our employees work more effectively.”

Raul Mital, Data Technology Project Leader Hexcel

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Secure Vision

Should

Businesses

Adopt

Blockchain

Technology?

C

entralized systems have treated us well for many years, but if we see the vulnerabilities: money and data is stored in one spot, this makes easy target for malicious activity. What if central banks shut downs or goes through software upgrade for whatever reason? It may halt the entire system and nobody will be able to access the information it possesses. Companies are starting to work with Blockchain technology; some of them are using it in the financial sector while others are trying to improve their bureaucratic systems.

Countries like Singapore, China, Canada, etc. are trying to offer a national digital currency based on Blockchain

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technology and supporting the initiative. The intention is to provide decentralized solution and distributed ledger technology for financial market infrastructures. Although this does not mean that these countries will opt for fullfledged Blockchain, further analysis of the safety and efficiency of this technology is needed.

One of the most interesting and misunderstood concepts in Blockchain technology is transparency, some say it gives you privacy while according to few it is transparent.

However, this leads to some confusion about how privacy and transparency can effectively coexist. In this article we will clear how Blockchain balances the two concepts.

The identity of a user is concealed behind powerful cryptography (encrypting and decrypting), meaning that linking public addresses to private users is difficult to achieve. Transparency of Blockchain comes from the fact that the holdings and transactions of each public address are open for viewing. It is possible through Explorer, an online block chain browser which displays the content of individual Bitcoin blocks, transactions and balances of addresses.

Cryptocurrency and Blockchain are still relatively new technology; companies are likely to pick up the right Blockchain technology for the business. Blockchain companies: Steem is like YouTube on Blockchain and has attracted over 920,000 users who publish more than 1.5 million posts each month. Steem has also paid over $40 million in its digital asset via (cryptocurrency rewards) to content creators. Ripple, Intellectsoft, and Celsius Network, are some of the companies today, assured for success and will be popular soon.

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With the emergence of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Blockchain technology is disrupting almost all markets, changing the way we do our day to day business.

Bitcoins are digital coins you can send through the internet, its software is completely open source and you can trade your currency exchanges with dollars, euros and more. It’s very much still an experimental currency and a high risk for consumers and investors, but the Bitcoin design has been the inspiration for various other applications.

Effectiveness of Blockchain technology in the following areas in future: Smart Contracts- The most critical area where Blockchain helps is to guarantee the validity of a transaction through secure validation mechanism.

Contract is where consent of the parties is involved to agree and interact with each other. Industries and institutions are heavily reliant on contracts, such as insurance, financial institutions, real estate, construction, entertainment and law. A smart contract can formalize the relationships between people, institutions and the assets they own.

They eliminate the need for trusted third parties and are self-verifying, self-executing and Tamper resistant.

A smart contract is like a cryptographic box that contains value and only unlocks if certain conditions are met.

Once involved authorities and companies are on a Blockchain, a smart contract could be used to define the rules of a valid deal.

Supply chain management- A Blockchain is a digitalized, decentralized and incorruptible public ledger that can transform supply chains, industries and ecosystems. The following applications are now in use or can be implemented in supply chain using Blockchain technology: |December 2019

Automotive supplier payments- It is exciting to see cryptocurrency in the automotive industry. There are also suppliers and websites available for buying and selling cars with Bitcoin, which allows transfer of funds anywhere in the world without the need for traditional banking transactions, as transactions are made directly between payer and payee. It is also secure and rapid, transfers also incur lower fees. However, buying a car from a random individual is considered a bit risky.

Food Traceability- Satoshi Nakamoto, inventor of Blockchain technology aimed in creating decentralized ledger leaving behind open source software that the users would be able to update and improve. Companies can use distributed ledger systems to record product status at each stage of production. As the records are permanent and immutable, they make it possible to trace each product to its source.

Food volumes such as coffee, tea, oils, sugar and beans are almost impossible to track. Blockchain technology enables the tracking of food packages, by a unique identifier such as barcode, QR code or RFID transmitter. The benefit from using Blockchain is that no central party needs to be trusted in order to overlook the data, while still allowing volumes to be transparent for everyone in the chain. An area of concern within the food industry is that many food products are small and inexpensive; there is a risk that tracking of every package and seed can become expensive. Blockchain enables integration of simple hardware and cheap software and is ideally suited for managing the process.

Supply chains have already started using Blockchain in some areas of their operations like electric power micro grids and cold chain monitoring.

However, transformation of supply chains will not happen overnight, new doors may open to faster more intelligent and more secure process throughout the entire supply chain.

Criticisms and challenges: Huge electricity required- Remember all the power required to verify transactions demand electricity. In order to unleash the power of Blockchain technology, computer scientists need to solve this big problem.

Security about the private keyPrivate Key must remain secret at all times because revealing it to the third parties is same as giving them controls over Bitcoins secured by that key. Also the key must be backed up and protected from accidental loss, because if it is lost it cannot be recovered and the funds secured by it are forever lost, too.

Extremely volatile- Decentralized Blockchain technology and virtual currencies are extremely new to the market. Fluctuating prices of Bitcoin vary from day to day because companies, investors, and governments adopting or not adopting them greatly affect the volatility.

Blockchain will be an important part of our financial and technological digital future. It is one of the incredibly creative inventions that technology has ever seen. So how we use it is up to us.

Some companies such as Overstock.com and Telsa have already started accepting virtual currencies.

However, it is still not apparent what the retail leaders like Amazon and eBay would do with the cryptocurrency acceptance. But if they start accepting then it could indeed transform the global scenario.

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Director’s Viewpoint

Future Technologies with a Special Focus on AI and Logo Maker

T

he Evolution of Technology

Technology is changing rapidly today.

This technological evolution continues adding significant values to the lives of human beings. With every passing day, it enters a new area of our lives making it more comfortable, convenient. There are tremendous amounts of information over the internet that helps us learn and improve personal lifestyle.

Although it’s little early, I’m sure we’re standing on the verge of a golden era. It’ll be so exciting to see what advancement comes next.

Future Technologies We anticipate that the next five decades will be a period of intense scientific evolvement. That’s because the innovations that were once cramped in the science fiction come into the real life. From near-term potential scientific developments such as robotics and bioengineering to even more futuristic perspectives such as space colonization or teleportation, might be included in the lives of common Americans in the next few years.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) will make computers so smart and sophisticated that human beings will require implanting neural laces in their brains to compete with.

The technologies that will shape the destiny of us all are: Eye-Controlled Technology: Face and movement recognition software in a machine which will be controlled by eye movement or gestures.

Paper Diagnostics: Low-priced tools made of specially designed paper that

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enable quick screening for diseases like Ebola, Swine flu, Zika, TB, and others.

Designer Antibiotics: Bottom-up technology for building macrolides to defeat superbugs.

Smart Clothing: Nonporous fabrics, haptic feedback, and miniaturized electronics make for intelligent clothing that changes shape and color according to the wearer’s movement. It can also cool or warm the wearer as per the need.

Photonics in Space: Increased bandwidth, 100-times greater than RF data rate, and lower requirements for spacecraft communication.

Volcanic Mining: Treasured minerals and metals extraction from active submarine volcanoes will become economical.

logos within a few minutes. The algorithm of an artificially intelligent logo maker, like Designhill, is smart enough to learn how the users communicate with the design tool quickly. Each time the users interact with the tool, deep machine learning helps it study their choices and generates even better results.

Robotics is yet another technology which has immense potential to change the world in days to come. It has already begun transforming the construction industry. Robotics-as-aService (RaaS) is a new service model based on this technology to manage, improve productivity at minimal costs, enable a smarter business network, and focus employees on high-value tasks of an organization.

Adoption is growing Artificial intelligence and machine learning are being used widely in the activities that include healthcare, education, transportation, and finance, etc. These two technologies are the most sought-after with most IT-giants in the world embracing them to make their services smarter, quicker and cheaper. We may see more AI-driven services in coming days, in every form of life.

Globalization and education to spread technology Globalization plays a key driver of spreading technology across the borders. It took around one thousand years to spread the invention of paper from China to Europe preglobalization. Since the world has become more integrated today, innovations travel across the international borders faster than ever before, through many channels. The transfer of technology has helped to improve innovations and productivity.

Because not all technologies essentially develop everywhere and at the same time, the travel of technologies across the countries is pivotal in the global technological growth.

With artificial intelligence and machine learning, the concept of logo designing/branding comes into the picture, thus resulting in a platform that helps to create hundreds of custom

Besides, education and training will keep you abreast of the latest development in the realm of technology. Governments, as well as entrepreneurs, have the onus to educate

Super Antiviral: Based on the ISG15 mutation and other generic therapies broad-spectrum antiviral.

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the gen-next. Research centers must be in sync and equipped with the cutting-edge apparatus.

Life Beyond Science & Technology Despite many innovations in the last decade, we’re still at the very beginning of a technological revolution. Artificial intelligence and machine learning have great potential to revolutionize the entire world. Both researchers and professionals are becoming increasingly aware of their capability for positive impact in the science of better innovations.

About the Author Rahul Aggarwal is among India’s youngest entrepreneurs and Co-founder of Designhill – a graphic design crowdsourcing platform. Designhill is already doing rounds in the business community across the globe.

Rahul along with his brother Varun Aggarwal started Designhill in 2013 and have since grown it to a successful and the most reliable interactive marketplaces for custom graphic design solutions.

Designhill provides an interactive interface that allows the customers to give real time feedback and ratings to design works, to help the designers better understand the customer’s expectations.

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