UiPath Pioneers Agentic RPA: The Future of AI-Driven Automation

Agentic RPA: AI-driven automation transforming workflows - SiliconANGLE

Tapestry leverages AI-powered agentic RPA for smarter workflows Unlike traditional robotic process automation, which is rule-based and often follows strict and predefined workflows, agentic RPA incorporates elements of artificial intelligence, allowing it to make decisions and adapt to changing conditions within a given framework. Given that agentic RPA is particularly relevant for tasks that require a blend of repetitive execution and flexible responses, such as complex data analysis, Tapestry Inc. has set the ball rolling in this area, according to Karthigeyan Ramakrishnan (pictured, left), director of planning systems and RPA at Tapestry. "Where I think agentic RPA would make a significant leap and help our customers is you can orchestrate multiple things," Ramakrishnan said. "One particular application that we're building using generative AI is we connected our reporting database to a model and the app would convert questions in natural language into SQL queries, fire against the database and get you the response. It's coming up successfully." Ramakrishnan and Tami Becker (right), SAP RISE global ecosystem head at SAP SE, spoke with theCUBE Research's Dave Vellante and co-host Rebecca Knight at UiPath Forward 2024, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media's livestreaming studio. They discussed the revolutionary impact of agentic RPA. (* Disclosure below.) Agentic RPA is a game-changer because it combines the power of automation with AI-driven decision-making. As a result, it handles complex tasks with a level of autonomy that makes it more versatile, quicker and scalable, Ramakrishnan pointed out. "Agentic RPA could give you the power of performing updates to data," he explained. For example, you can say, 'Well, there is less stock in this store for this particular SKU, but you can see the sales were high last week. So, please allocate more of these products from the warehouse to the store.' I mean harmonizing is one way of putting it, but they're more like giving you insights quickly. They're talking to data and giving you insights quickly, and it also enables you to perform updates." The incorporation of AI into RPA is a leap forward because it transforms the latter from a productivity tool into a strategic asset that can handle complex and mission-critical operations. As a result, the partnership between SAP and UiPath Inc. is geared toward the realization of this objective, according to Becker. "How do I remediate that custom code into SAP's technology platform to move it forward?" she said. "The beauty of them going to the cloud is really why the UiPath partnership is so important, because they're able then to take advantage of building more efficient processes because they're able to take advantage of our upgrades moving forward. We really want to help our customers move to the cloud, so that they can become persistent innovators, work with UiPath on building out automations." Since agentic RPA handles manual tasks by using AI-driven automation to mimic human decision-making and adapt to a range of unpredictable scenarios, Tapestry has joined hands with UiPath to make this a reality. This plays an instrumental role in automating complex and non-standard processes, according to Ramakrishnan. "There's a natural lean toward using RPA to automate these manual activities to help them focus on much more rewarding tasks, and that's where UiPath helped," he stated. "AI can now be added onto automation, it's like icing on the cake, but you need to have the automation framework very well-set, robust and solid and then you can throw AI there. For example, optical character reading, , we have a lot of invoices to process in our company ... we're exploring how OCRs can be invoices, then pass it to RPA to perform further automation." Here's the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE's and theCUBE Research's coverage of UiPath Forward 2024:

Agentic automation: UiPath's AI-driven decision-making - SiliconANGLE

UiPath pioneers agentic automation, empowering autonomous systems to drive innovation and precision Based on the urge for practitioners to focus on more complex, creative and strategic roles, the demand for agentic automation is growing because it drives efficiency, reduces costs, enhances precision and opens up new opportunities. As a result, UiPath Inc. is in high gear to deliver the agentic automation vision because it triggers precision, consistency, competitiveness, innovation and enhanced decision making, according to Taqi Jaffri (pictured, right), senior director of product management at UiPath. "Here we are unveiling this vision of agentic automation," Jaffri stated. "One of the premier things is the Agent Builder, how RPA developers can build their own agents and deploy them. Agents are nothing without the tools because to me, an agent needs to have agency, which means it needs to act more than just advise you with some text. It actually needs to take action, and in order to take action, we believe the best way to do that is with robots." Jaffri and Ed Challis (left), head of AI strategy at UiPath, spoke with theCUBE Research's Dave Vellante and co-host Rebecca Knight at UiPath Forward 2024, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media's livestreaming studio. They discussed UiPath's agentic automation roadmap of enhancing human decision-making processes through autonomy. (* Disclosure below.) Based on UiPath's quest to supercharge productivity using artificial intelligence and automation, the company is in high gear to deliver its agentic and robotic vision. As a result, agentic automation is considered a game-changer because it introduces a higher level of autonomy and decision-making capabilities into automated systems, Challis pointed out. "Core screening is definitely a technology which can supercharge the entire digital estate of a business," he stated. "I would say that automation is a necessary prerequisite. Agentic without automation is like a plane without a pilot or a body without a brain. Without taking actions, without causing changes, you are ultimately just an advisor. You can provide useful text, but you're not actually doing anything that moves the needle. Automation closes the gap for AI and is a really critical component." The distinction between bots and agents in terms of defined actions and objectives is of the essence. This is because with a bot, it cannot only be told what to do, but also how to undertake a specific task, which is not the case with an agent since it comes up with the plan dynamically, according to Challis. "The actions a bot takes is completely defined by the control flow that the developer creates," he explained. "There's logic and a predefined set of procedures which define the flow. An agent is defined by an objective, a goal and then it has tools at its disposal, a memory at its disposal to try and achieve that goal. It does so in a recursive way. It will maybe get some information, read that information, decide what next step to take and iteratively do that until it thinks it's achieved its goal." Since robotic process automation is a prerequisite to successful agentic systems, UiPath AI Trust Layer fits into the picture since it triggers model governance, performance monitoring, transparency, as well as bias detection and mitigation, according to Jaffri. "If you actually want your agent to take action on your behalf, you need to give it these tools," he explained. "We believe these robotic automations that UiPath has spent years building are the best kind of tools. I think you can have an agent do secure things through a robot so the robot can have your credentials and all these things, it can be governed. The way I think about the trust layer is it's the sandbox to both of them. We have these gen AI activities and things like that all go through the trust layer." Here's the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE's and theCUBE Research's coverage of UiPath Forward 2024:

Agentic future: Driving transformation in AI - SiliconANGLE

Building an Agentic Future: How hyperautomation and AI fit into the picture As artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotic process automation continue to gain steam when it comes to the automation of complex business processes, they are setting the stage for an agentic future. This is because RPA is enabling the transition of manual and repetitive tasks into more autonomous and intelligent processes, fostering enhanced human creativity and problem-solving solutions, as evidenced by the PricewaterhouseCoopers International Ltd. research on banking, according to Amit Kumar (pictured, left), strategic sales and field chief information officer at UiPath Inc. "This is a journey that we have lived with. Most of the banks who have been part of the survey, which is they first started with RPA, they scaled it to all the business units, to all their core processors," Kumar said. "Then they started deploying intelligent document processing to take care of the unstructured data. They're beginning to use new gen AI experiences like Autopilot and that bodes well for the agentic future that we are trying to paint for the financial service industry." Kumar and Kevin Kroen (right), partner, consulting, technology and transformation, hyperautomation leader at PwC, spoke with theCUBE Research's Dave Vellante and co-host Rebecca Knight at UiPath Forward 2024, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media's livestreaming studio. They discussed what ought to be done to set the ball rolling for an agentic future. (* Disclosure below.) Given that hyperautomation aims to boost operational efficiency, minimize human error and allow businesses to focus on more strategic and creative activities, the PwC research found out that it's a major metric in the agentic future. This is because it leads to AI-powered decision-making, enhanced automation and boosted scalability, Kroen pointed out. "What we found from the survey were two major themes that came out of it," he stated. "One theme was around the fact that investments and what we're calling hyperautomation, the collection of automation technologies, including RPA, are actually increasing. The second piece was, as banks are forming their generative AI investments, there's definitely a lack of connection between their generative AI strategies and their hyperautomation strategies. As we think about the theme that we've heard throughout this conference on agentic automation, there's a big opportunity to think about how hyperautomation really drives action and drives value for generative AI investments." Since the hyperautomation toolkit includes low code, intelligent document processing and AI integration, it paves the way for an agentic future. This is because hyperautomation creates more intelligent, adaptive and efficient systems by integrating multiple advanced technologies, as shown by the banking sector, according to Kroen. "We chose banking because we thought that they were one of their early adopters and probably had the most amount of data and experiences to give a well-rounded view and other industries are a little bit laggard to this, and so this would hopefully somewhat predict how we're seeing this in the future," he said. "I think the interesting part is from a hyperautomation perspective, I think that's true. I think if we flip to the generative AI agenda, one of the pieces of feedback we got pretty consistently through the interviews was that most banks are moving pretty cautiously with their generative AI strategies as they work through concerns on risk and governance." Here's the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE's and theCUBE Research's coverage of UiPath Forward 2024:

Intelligent process automation path from RPA to agentic AI - SiliconANGLE

Everest Group on intelligent process automation evolution from RPA to agentic AI As automation technology advances, a new wave of agentic AI is reshaping the landscape. Discussions are increasingly focused on whether to build intelligent automation on top of robotic process automation (RPA) or approach intelligent process automation as a whole. Ten years ago, script-based automation was in focus. Slowly, RPA came into focus, according to Vaibhav Bansal (pictured, left), vice president at Everest Group. "We had robotics or rules-based automation, robotic desktop automation and robotic process automation. Companies like UiPath have been pioneers of that," Bansal said. "In the past three to four years, what we've been largely hearing, is intelligent automation." Bansal and Anish Nath (pictured, right), practice director at Everest Group, spoke with theCUBE Research's Dave Vellante and host Rebecca Knight at UiPath Forward 2024, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media's livestreaming studio. They discussed the evolution of intelligent process automation and UiPath Inc.'s strategic position in the automation ecosystem. (* Disclosure below.) Over the last three to four years, AI started to become embedded, especially deterministic AI, according to Bansal. Generative AI and LLMs saw that infusion of more probabilistic AI into traditional AI, creating many new opportunities. "Today, where we are now, all of us are hearing of agentic AI or agentic process automation, which is the latest kid on the block," he said. "I think, for us, we see all of this as an extension. Agentic process automation, we really believe, is going to be disruptive." Agentic process automation has been the main theme that has come out of UiPath Forward. There was an overall narrative that UiPath presented throughout the event, having assimilated a number of different components from over the years, according to Nath. "Now, topping it off with agentic and saying, 'This is the complete story, and this is what you need as a platform,'" Nath said. "I think that fit very well with what I was expecting, and that actually holds a lot of promise in terms of what we can expect as being adopted by enterprises in the future." Here's the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE's and theCUBE Research's coverage of UiPath Forward 2024:

Thought leadership on AI agents from UiPath's experts - SiliconANGLE

AI agents supercharge automation and human workflows: Insights from UiPath experts Artificial intelligence is reshaping industries by automating repetitive tasks and creating new efficiencies. One of the most exciting developments in AI is the emergence of AI agents, which are driving significant changes in how organizations operate and enabling new levels of human-machine collaboration. But AI agents can't work alone -- rather, they're part of an integrated ecosystem with APIs and automation in tow. "An agent in isolation is useless," said Mark Geene (pictured, right), senior vice president and general manager of AI product and platform at UiPath Inc. "It might be a prompt and that's it. So you have to give it these tools, some of which are the applications that it needs to be integrated with. One aspect of why APIs have become so important is that the agents are going to communicate with all your systems of record and your business applications via those APIs to get structured data from other systems." Geene and Boris Krumrey (left), vice president of automation innovations at UiPath, spoke with theCUBE Research analyst Dave Vellante and host Rebecca Knight at UiPath Forward 2024, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media's livestreaming studio. They discussed the future of work being reshaped by AI agents that can automate entire roles, integrate seamlessly with business systems and operate under strict governance to ensure security and trust. (* Disclosure below.) Communication with other parts of an organization's technology stack is intrinsic to the optimal functioning of AI agents. For example, AI agents can both retrieve data and provide structured outputs, such as JSON schemas, to enable them to communicate effectively with other agents, business applications and automation robots. By integrating AI agents into an organization's API ecosystem, companies can streamline their workflows and enhance the effectiveness of their automation strategies, according to Geene. "The other aspect of connectivity of an agent is that the agent itself can be invoked via an API," he said. "The UiPath agents can fit into the whole fabric of an enterprise where APIs are how the ecosystem of applications that an enterprise has and the way they get them to work together. These agents can participate and be called from other applications or other systems or platforms in your enterprise as well." The fear of automation replacing human jobs has long been a concern. When RPA was first introduced, many feared it would replace workers. However, the reality is automation and AI agents are more likely to take over specific tasks, rather than replace entire job functions, according to Krumrey. "We could have an agent that would follow up and check the data, follow up with the human as suggested in context, grounding the entire organization," he said. "But every agent has an owner. That's where comes the escalation point in our Agentic Builder. It has an owner, which means if the agent gets stuck, it can contact that person and this person could help and advise." One of the most exciting advancements in AI technology is the concept of agentic orchestration, which refers to the coordination of multiple AI agents working together to achieve complex outcomes. This orchestration allows for the seamless integration of human judgment with the speed and efficiency of AI-powered agents, Krumrey added. "Once we have built one agent and different roles, they have to play with each other and they have to play with humans and so forth," he said. "That's what we're addressing with the agentic orchestration. We're solving two things right away with our technology." Here's the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE's and theCUBE Research's coverage of UiPath Forward 2024:

UiPath enterprise-scale automation aims to reshape AI - SiliconANGLE

Automation and artificial intelligence is rapidly advancing. Businesses are embracing new strategies that blend human expertise with cutting-edge technology to drive productivity and redefine workflows, including UiPath enterprise-scale automation. Transforming with AI has been a key focus in recent months for UiPath Inc., a company that has sought to differentiate itself among others as an early player in enterprise-scale automation. The company has been looking to develop its leadership roles and ecosystem of strategic partners. The next steps for UiPath enterprise-scale automation were a central focus of the UiPath Forward 2024 event, which took place Oct. 21-24. The change comes amid a new era, according to theCUBE Research's Dave Vellante. "The application stack is about to completely change, and UiPath hopes to play a major role in that agent orchestration layer," he said. Use cases in enterprise AI for automated tasks were explored by theCUBE analysts during the event. They talked with thought leaders about developments in the agentic AI space and what comes next for UiPath enterprise-scale automation. (* Disclosure below.) Here are three key insights you may have missed from the UiPath Forward 2024 event: The changes emerging tied to the agent orchestration layer are important to keep an eye on. They're changing the role of AI, according to Vellante. "Things like causal AI, how to harmonize the data, the whole agent orchestration framework, backend connections, all that stuff is increasingly important. UiPath today has its fingers in a lot of those pies," Vellante said, during an analyst segment at UiPath Forward. UiPath has said it has 10,000 global customers, which is good news, according to Vellante. They have also ebbed and flowed with go-to-market. "I think at one point they're really trying to sell to the C-suite. I think for UiPath, that's where partnerships come in," he said. "When you're working with some of these GSIs and other partners that have access to that C-suite, I think that's a good role for the partners. I think UiPath brings the product expertise." During the Day 2 Keynote Analysis, Vellante and co-host Rebecca Knight discussed how single-agent systems are often seen as limited and rudimentary. UiPath is building out an agent control framework, with its "Agent Builder" slated for release soon. "You got intelligent automation and bots, and then you got semi-autonomous. [Bobby Patrick, CMO of UiPath] said the only real AI piece today in the UiPath portfolio was document understanding," Vellante said. "That's where the most of the AI is today. Then agentic is on top of that. I would say it's at least three to four years before you see true agentic orchestration that is going to have meaningful prejudice impact." Here's the complete keynote analysis with Dave Vellante and Rebecca Knight: During the event, Daniel Dines (pictured), founder and chief executive officer of UiPath, spoke about how this point in time represents the most seminal moment in the company's history, referring to it as "act two." Act one was about imitating people and doing repetitive work, as long as the work was defined by rules, according to Dines. "The information that the people used on their work was really structured so a robot can understand it," Dines said, while discussing UiPath enterprise-scale automation during UiPath Forward 2024. "It was actually hard work to make it working reliably, because when you imitate people, it's always more difficult than when you go with other, more precise ways, and there are also a lot of exceptions." The company had to create an orchestration piece that combines robots and humans, according to Dines. Humans are capable of handling exceptions raised by robots. "But that was that big limitation of act one ... you cannot interact with an automation in a natural language," he said. "You always have to be structured, to put in a form in front of an automation, send a request in a very structured form." That was limiting, because if one looks into enterprise processes, many of them will have a mix of rule-based tasks and the unstructured type, Dines added. Sometimes they are intermingled, meaning it's not very easy to separate them. "We have to learn how can we deploy this gen AI technology that is capable of navigating the unstructured part," Dines said. "But the biggest challenge is this technology has agency [that] is nondeterministic. So, how can we make a non-deterministic technology reliable, and how can we deliver into an enterprise workflow context that should be reliable?" Here's the complete video interview with Daniel Dines: Across different sectors, it's clear that the success of automation hinges not only on advanced technologies such as UiPath enterprise-scale automation, but also on ensuring that the workforce is integrated into the transformation process. That focus was displayed at UiPath Forward for several companies, including Coca-Cola Beverages Florida LLC. "We try to make sure that we can bring technology and the use of data through all of those major capabilities," said Terrence Gee, senior vice president of technology and enterprise transformation at Coca-Cola. "The way we make the products is a complicated process. But our ability to draw insights from those processes to bring that process and those capabilities to life in a more streamlined and efficient way is what we're all about." While Coca-Cola showcased how AI-driven insights are boosting efficiency, others emphasized the need to balance innovation with secure, reliable systems. It's integral to ensure governance and security and minimize workforce disruptions, according to Craig Le Clair, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research Inc. "A lot of the AI is helping with the human intent understanding," Le Clair said, during UiPath Forward. "It's helping to reduce the friction between the applications and so forth. But without taking that human intent and doing something with it, getting something done, it becomes kind of sterile." A focus on practical, impactful deployment was found elsewhere throughout UiPath Forward. Inflection AI Inc. and Intel Corp. previously launched a partnership designed to help enterprises tackle critical workloads and model deployment with AI, and outlined details around that partnership at UiPath Forward. "In Inflection AI, we're testing the use cases, what are the models?" said Motti Finkelstein, chief information officer of Intel. "We care about the model, we care about the data, and the data is incredibly important to the enterprise. We have to make sure privacy rules are adhered to; we have to make sure security rules are adhered to. We are focused in AI on very large and very potentially, I'm going to say, game-changing items." Throughout UiPath Forward, it was clear that there's a view that automation has the potential to streamline complex workflows across diverse sectors. That includes healthcare, and the Mayo Clinic has sought to pursue healthcare automation while maintaining the human touch. "Imagine now all the state-of-the-art automations that we can utilize and deploy. For the first time, I actually see that I can give that human touch to my patients because these technologies enable my diagnostic capability, they cut down my administrative time on tasks that actually pull me away from my patients," said Anjali Bhagra, M.D., physician lead and chair, Automation Core, at the Mayo Clinic. Here's the complete video interview with Terrence Gee and Rob Kennedy, client account director at Capgemini Services SAS: Here's the complete video playlist, part of SiliconANGLE's and theCUBE Research's coverage of the UiPath Forward 2024 event: