Expert Insights

This October, hundreds of RPA experts gathered to celebrate and accelerate their journeys towards becoming fully automated enterprises at UiPath Forward IV. The two-day event was full of presentations, breakout sessions, booth discussions and other events giving actionable insights into the evolution of automation, and where companies should aim next in their journeys to reach a state of hyperautomation.

Taking Off: UiPath Unveils New Release

This year’s conference theme of “taking off” couldn’t be more appropriate. RPA has continued its ascendancy, with one estimate suggesting that more than 90 percent of enterprises will have an automation architect by 2025, up from less than 20 percent today. Param Kahlon, Chief Product Officer at UiPath, delivered a keynote at the conference addressing the features in the company’s new 2021.10 product release that are helping customers build faster, more secure automations and deeper integration within enterprise environments. UiPath 2021.10’s capabilities help customers tackle common issues in the enterprise such as sprawling and disparate applications, applying AI to every facet of work, and making it easier for developers to build automations.

The opening presentation also covered how UiPath apps can access both attended and unattended automations, helping enterprises to truly “take off” with RPA by bringing automations to every application and across every platform and operating system; making the vision of a robot for every person a reality.

Accelirate Knocks Out ROI on the Main Stage (and in Expertsville!)

As a Diamond Partner and four-time Ruby Sponsor of the event, Accelirate had a strong presence at Forward this year. With a private booth in Expertsville, four roundtable discussions, two client main stage presentations, and a mission to knock out ROI, the Accelirate team spent the conference immersed in conversation with RPA practitioners and business leaders seeking to leverage the power of the UiPath platform with our expert solutions.

The first main stage presentation, Reinvigorating Your Automation Program, provided critical insights for overcoming common automation program pitfalls. Featuring Juan Muskus, Head of Enterprise Optimization at Accelirate client City National Bank, the discussion tackled the cross-industry barriers to automation success at scale, with Muskus describing how partnership with Accelirate was key in reviving CNB’s automation practice and transforming it into a focused, value-driven program.

“Like & Share: How Facebook is Scaling Intelligent Automation in Finance & Beyond,” our second main stage discussion, featured Intelligent Automation COE Manager, Joe Bohnert, of Facebook. Joined by Accelirate CEO, Ahmed Zaidi, the pair delivered an in-depth presentation on how to scale automations globally. The Facebook Intelligent Automation COE currently designs, develops, and supports intelligent automation solutions for the company’s Finance Unit and enables other organizations within the company to leverage the technology as well. Bohnert and Zaidi discussed the steps to building and supporting Facebook’s IA COE, best practices for change management in a developer-centric company, and the criteria that should be evaluated when selecting an automation partner.

Conference Takeaways

We’ve come a long way since the first UiPath Forward conference in 2017, where starting an automation program was a hot topic. This year’s theme of the fully automated enterprise reflects how, in just four short years, the UiPath platform has enabled the evolution of business automation to wholly transform how work is done.

According to UiPath CEO Daniel Dines, the fully automated enterprise is “the next natural step in the evolution of automation”. The release of UiPath 2021.10 gave attendees a firsthand look at the innovations that are making this vision a reality, while solving the longstanding problem of a fragmented technology landscape and making automation across the enterprise friction-free. With more enterprises pursuing this state of hyperautomation, the adoption of advanced tools and platforms like Process and Task Mining, Document Understanding, and the use of bot monitoring and management programs will help business leaders be perfectly positioned for the new era of automation.

If you have any inquiries about Accelirate’s service offerings, our customer stories, or how our teams are leveraging the capabilities of the latest UiPath release, please contact info@accelirate.com