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Rick Harshman addressed members of the media during a briefing to share about UIPath’s performance in APAC and more. He was joined by CEO and co-founder, Daniel Dines, who later shared about the organisation’s story and its plans for continuous growth.
This media briefing was held a day before UIPath customers in APAC region, shared about the different breakthroughs they experienced after implementing automation via RPA or robotic process automation.
Table of contents
Rick kicked the the briefing off with the main description, “We effectively emulate what humans do with a computer. So really, what we are looking to do is to accelerate human achievement.”
He shared results of a study which reveal individuals spend up to five hours per week on tasks that are manual in nature. “This ultimately does not add value to their business an creates dissatisfaction within the workforce,” Rick shared.
RPA is widely known to help automate mundane tasks like writing reports, freeing up employees to concentrate on their key strengths like creativity, emotion and innovation.
Automation relevance
Rick highlighted healthcare as one industry that could really use automation right now. “Healthcare needs to automate right now, and not just because of COVID. For example, one third of the Singapore nursing staff are from foreign countries, and they’re still not sufficiently meeting the rising demand of an aging population, combine with the pandemic.
So, to combat fatigue and stress, many of these governments across the region are looking at incorporating automation and additional technology to help nursing care to lighten the workload.
That’s just some of the examples that the RPA vendor is seeing across the region.
Applying automation to different tasks in different industries
Starhub was one of many customers which came forward to share their experience with RPA. Jason Liew, RPA CoE leader talked about how the use of RPA, robots and queues helped them create operational efficiencies by managing seasonal surges in online sales, as well as fulfilment of these transactions.
Tony Kee, head of Rewards and HRIS, saw opportunities within human resource to leverage automation. As part of their internal transformation journey, automation is actually a key enabler, Tony said.
The largest mobile operator in Thailand, AIS, began their automation journey in 2019. Its head of Novel Engine Execution Team, Arakin Rakchittapoke, shared they began this journey to ensure required levels of competency.
“With each generation of of telco technologies, we want to ensure productivity is in place and that we keep improving. As a company of over 30 years, there are many legacy technology systems to contend with.
“People tend to be addicted to old tools,” he said, adding that with the IT team’s high turnover rate, RPA could actually help AIS maintain required competency levels. “We need to capture the knowledge (of performing human tasks) inside RPA.”
Arakin rated themselves as being at second stage of their RPA journey, with full approval from company executives, good governance and processes in place, as well as about 800 citizen developers.
The two-day event saw customers from a wide range of industries sharing how automation and RPA helped them achieve “Aha!” moments that convinced them to take their automation initiatives to the next level.
During the media briefing, Rick also shared that leader organisations who were ahead of the automation curve, grew by 75-percent, with company’s operating expenses reducing by 75-percent also.
Rick attributed this to companies being able to be more efficient with the staff that they have in place.
Partners ecosystem and citizen developers
UIPath boasts the largest partner ecosystem in the automation industry. Rick said, “Partners are like force multipliers and are crucial for an industry to move forward.”
Citing system integrators (SIs) and technology alliances as two examples, Rick said they are only as good as their partner ecosystem. “They show up with us either jointly or independently to our customers to help (customers) achieve their goals.
The RPA vendor works with a number of SIs like Accenture, Deloitte, PwC, or regional SIs that focus geographically in places like Japan, China or Korea… they are vital to extend our reach into these markets (which may be horizontal or only automation-focused).
But partners may have a vertical- or industry-focus which helps extend UIPath’s reach into financial institutions, telcos, and manufacturing, especially in APAC.
The RPA vendor works with a number of SIs like Accenture, Deloitte, PwC, or regional SIs that focus geographically in places like Japan, China or Korea… they are vital to extend our reach into these markets (which may be horizontal or only automation-focused).
“Having subject matter expertise and automation expertise, really creates a ‘one plus one equals three’ environment for us,” Rick said.
UIPath recently announced a global partnership with Tableau, and also work with a number of regional technology partners to augment their overall enterprise automation platform.
Besides this, Rick also talked about the leader role UIPath has in building up the automation community and ecosystem through their academy, their academic alliances, and community efforts.
“We have over 500 academic alliances across 16 countries in the region. That’s supported by more than 700 educators that are teaching UIPath and automation in their institutions,” he said.
Strategic markets
The organisation is currently enjoying demand which Rick shared, “…outstrips our ability to hire.”
UIPath continues to expand its footprint across the region, with staff n over 20 countries in APJ, in functions like sales, pre-sales, or partners, or professional services, Rick concluded.
