There is a common view of process optimization that suggests you concentrate on fixing the bottlenecks, as if the rest of the process can look after itself, and this view has been adopted by many people in the RPA world.
#RPA GARTNER HYPE CYCLE PATCH#
The problem with this patchwork approach to automation is that while each patch may make sense in isolation, the overall architecture progressively becomes more complicated. Tool vendors such as KOFAX recommend specific robotic types for different patching requirements. Not even paving the cow-paths, but paving the workarounds. Although it's supposed to be about process automation, some of the use cases I've seen are simply doing localized application patching, using robots to perform adhoc swivel-chair integration. See my post Beyond Bimodal (May 2016).īut as Fersht indicates, there are some specific challenges for RPA in particular. Note: The terms "pioneers" and "settlers" refers to the trimodal approach. There is a discontinuity in the adoption curve, which Geoffrey Moore calls "crossing the chasm".
The "pioneers" have moved on to something else, and the "settlers" aren't yet ready to settle. Opposition from elsewhere in the organization comes not only from people who are generally sceptical about technology adoption, but also from people who wish to direct the available resources towards some even newer and sexier technology. There may be some limited funding to carry out early trials of selected technologies (what Fersht describes as "sometimes painful experimentation"), but in the absence of positive results it gets progressively harder to justify continued funding. Obviously adoption by organizations is a slightly more complicated matter than adoption by individual farmers, but we can find a similar spread of attitudes within a single large organization. Clearly some people can be attracted by a plausible story of future potential, while others need to see convincing evidence that an innovation has already succeeded elsewhere.ĭiffusion of Innovations (Source: Wikipedia)
When Everett Rogers and his colleagues did the original research on the adoption of new technology by farmers in the 1950s, it made sense to identify a spectrum of attitudes, with "innovators" and "early adopters" at one end, and with "late adopters" or "laggards" at the other end. There are some generic models and patterns of technology adoption and diffusion that are largely independent of the specific technology in question. "You can't focus on a tools-first approach to anything." adds jpmorgenthal Failure of the "Big iron" ERP vendors and the digital juggernauts to embrace RPA.Obsession with "numbers of bots deployed" versus quality of outcomes.Huge translation issues between business and IT.Lack of real experiences being shared publicly.
Phil Fersht of HfS explains this in terms that will largely be familiar from previous technological innovations. So from a peak of inflated expectations we should not be surprised to see RPA now entering a trough of disillusionment, with surveys showing significant levels of user dissatisfaction. But by October/November 2018, RPA was declared to be at the top of the Gartner "hype cycle", also known as the Peak of Inflated Expectations. In May 2017, Fran Karamouzis of Gartner stated that "96% of clients are getting real value from RPA" (Robotic Process Automation).