At Transform 2019 in July last year, Guru Chahal from Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Lan Xuezhao from Basis Set Ventures, discussed the second wave of RPA capabilities which was activated by new technologies.
New kinds of AI capabilities, such as computer vision, NLP understanding, overall machine learning & deep learning are moving out of the labs and into production in a big way, and Guru Chahal sees companies doubling down to automate more of their business.
“The big change is that then it was the theory; now the proof points are there. These companies aren’t just raising tons of money; they’re making tons of money.”
Guru Chahal (partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners)
The first wave of RPA required process managers to understand what processes could be automated, as well as special coding skills to script the bots. Most RPA solutions are still generating revenues in this way today.
The second generation of RPA involves using automation to figure out what processes can be automated through better process discovery capabilities. For example, Lightspeed has invested in FortressIQ, which uses machine learning to interpret how employees interact with applications. This will make it easier for businesses to prioritize automation and could play a role in further accelerating the deployment of other RPA capabilities in the enterprise.
We are at the beginning of this second phase, Chahal asserts, but a third phase is looming on the horizon. Both Chahal and Xuezhao assert that it will involve less human participation than ever.
Xuezhao drew a distinction between these early phases and the future third phase. “There are two ways we see companies grow,” she said, framing the former as more horizontal and the latter as primarily vertical.
In a vertically oriented third phase, “Instead of solving one problem, you actually build a robot that just solves literally bottom stack to the top stack — everything — and completely replaces humans,” she said. “In both dimensions, things are happening pretty fast, and iterating very rapidly.”
Get more information from these speakers here.
