I had the opportunity to speak with Jon Walden, CTO Americas for Blue Prism at Appian World following the announcement of the availability of the Appian Robotic Workforce Manager solution for Blue Prism. The solution is designed specifically for users of Blue Prism’s connected-robotic process automation (RPA) software, enables superior management of the digital workforce and optimized coordination between robots and humans.

According to Jon, it is necessary for companies to look at the work that needs to be done throughout the organization and assigned to the right worker. Digital and human workforces must work together efficiently and effectively to take care of each person's strength.

If one digital worker is the equivalent of six FTE's, it's incumbent for the organization to plan the management of those digital workers or risk wasting the investment. It's is especially important for an IT compressed enterprise.

There's a tremendous opportunity for automation in legacy systems that require repetitive human actions like querying multiple data sets to get a 360-view of the customer. Day-long processes are reduced to second. The only way to get all of the work done is by offloading repetitive tasks to an automated workforce.

I asked Jon what developers need to do to realize the benefits of RPA. He suggested by starting with a proven platform and understanding the importance of value delivery to your employer. The more value you can deliver for your employer, the more value you will be able to drive for yourself.

Diversify your knowledge and be open to learning and trying new things. Having a diverse background, insights, and experience gives you the ability to understand the process and see and deliver value more quickly. Look at tools like Appian and Blue Prism as libraries that help you be more effective and efficient.

The solution announced today enhances visibility into robotic processes and gives human workers greater control over when and how to invoke, prioritize, and coordinate work with digital workers. It also improves visibility, compliance, and scalability of RPA implementations.

“Using Appian and Blue Prism together gives us greater power in automating complex processes,” said Adeel Javed, Manager of Process Automation at OCC, the world’s largest equity derivatives clearing organization. “Combining the two products extends the reach of our automation initiatives and enables centralized management of the entire workforce.”

Features of the solution include:

• Total visibility into the digital workforce on any device (web or mobile): The solution provides pre-built business reports and dashboards to track and manage robots across applications. Automation Center of Excellence leaders can provide this information to the business owners of respective RPA processes through web and mobile interfaces.
• Automation of work hand-offs between robots and people: The solution provides global case management and exception management framework that automates “human-in-the-loop” tasks and eliminates manual hand-offs. This improves traceability, compliance, and overall SLA management across automated processes.
• Automation Manager: The solution allows business process owners to request new automation and manage the entire life cycle of adding new automation. This gives the Automation COE full visibility, compliance and control over all enterprise-wide RPA deployments. For companies that are building many RPA processes, it becomes critical to track and prioritize new RPA processes and ongoing management of existing RPA processes.
• Assisted Automation and Business Scheduling: With the new solution, process owners can now invoke RPA processes on-demand, or schedule them to run at a later time, on the web or mobile devices.
• Business Decision Management: Blue Prism users now have access to Appian’s business-friendly Decision Designer. The solution allows Blue Prism users to model complex logic in a simple way and use it anywhere within an RPA process. Spreadsheets and lines of complex IT-owned code are no longer needed to define business logic.

Linda Dotts, SVP Global Partner Strategy and Programs for Blue Prism, said, “Appian’s Robotic Workforce Manager solution for Blue Prism provides incredible levels of visibility and self-service to business users and process owners involved with RPA implementations. The solution is a perfect example of how our connected-RPA vision, when coupled with a technology partner, can help drive broader business impact and transformation for our clients.”

In addition to the Robotic Workforce Manager, Appian also released a series of no-code integration plug-ins for designers and administrators in the Blue Prism environment. Called “Appian Skills,” they are drag-and-drop integrations that make it easy for Blue Prism developers to connect with Appian.

New Appian Skills for Blue Prism include:

• Assign Task to Appian User — Passes relevant information to Appian to automate human-in-the-loop tasks
• Send Data to Appian — Sends information to create or update an Appian Record
• Get Data from Appian — Pulls the latest information from Appian Records
• Use Appian Rule — Uses Appian business rules to automate complex decisions

Prittam Bagani, Director of Product Strategy at Appian, said, “The Robotic Workforce Manager stems from our strategic partnership with Blue Prism and was built in collaboration with our joint customers. The solution activates the next-generation enterprise workforce of people and software robots. It provides enterprise automation leaders with the visibility, governance and product capabilities to scale their automation program. The result is greater business impact.”