Many people fear automation and believe it will lead to wide scale unemployment. In fact, the World Economic Forum estimated that five million jobs may disappear by 2020. However, experts also believe that more than two million jobs will be created, most of which will require specialisation in areas like engineering, computing, mathematics and architecture. Reassuringly, history also shows us that new technology generally leads to broader levels of employment over the long-term for two reasons. The first has to do with the development of new services. For example, in 1950, very few people could afford air travel. However, as the price of a plane ticket came down, the long-distance tourism industry boomed. Just think of how mobile phones have become all pervasive. The second reason is that while machines will do a great job at high volume routine work, solving unstructured problems, innovation and thinking outside box continues to be the forte of humans – and that’s unlikely to change anytime soon.

People worry that robots will take work from humans but as Leslie Wilcox at the London School of Economics so aptly put it, RPA promises to take the robot out of the human. How many of us enjoy repetitive, routine tasks that are boring and take ages to complete? RPA  can do all of that more quickly, accurately, and tirelessly than humans, freeing us up to do other tasks that need human skills such  as emotional intelligence, good customer handling skills, reasoning and  judgment. Think of manually ploughing a field with a horse versus a tractor? Or how about going to fill buckets of water at a well instead of being able to turn on the tap? Or washing clothes by hand instead of using the washing-machine? Would any of us want to go back to the past? In the same way, we will look back in twenty years’ time and see that Robotic Process Automation has removed huge stress from the lives of everyday workers.

While fear of change is understandable, did you know that in 1950, only 55 percent of the working-age population in the U.S. was employed? By 2015, that percentage had risen to 60 percent — representing a net increase of about 100 million jobs — even after the introduction of new technologies like shipping cranes and ATMs. The same is likely to be true of this new wave of automation but we absolutely need to provide the training to help people adapt.

So, what area the business benefits of robotic process automation? Research across a range of projects shows a return on investment that varies between 30 and as much as 200 percent in the first year. However, there are many other business benefits. For example, companies in highly regulated industries find that automation is a great way to ensure compliance. You also gain better customer service as you can free up your team to deal with the more complicated issues. We believe that automation will become central to your business strategy and operations, driving new standards of customer experience  such as deeper personalization, higher quality, faster delivery and greater convenience.

CitraTest RPA® is application-agnostic, non-intrusive and sits on top of your existing IT infrastructure – there is no need for specialist hardware investment or worry about disruption to existing operations. It works across every development environment and is compatible with EVERY Windows-based application plus EVERY application that is accessible via Windows. Think  scalable –  you can add software bots at any stage with minimal investment. And CitraTest RPA® allows you to introduce basic AI functionality, which is important for the longer-term as RPA technology will likely combine with AI and Machine Learning to execute more complex tasks.

A global leader in automation, Tevron’s customer portfolio includes industry giants such as Xerox, Fujitsu Services, Mayo Foundation, Lockheed Martin, Bank of America, Marathon Oil, Citigroup, Daimler, Hewlett Packard, Siemens, Lucent Technologies and Alcon Labs. What are you waiting for? Let us support you on your software automation journey.

"Best-in-Class companies identified by Aberdeen surveys and interviews were found to be twice as likely as others to manage deployed services proactively. This demonstrates and underscores how solutions such as Tevron's CitraTest APM can help companies to maximize the business value of their IT investments by monitoring application performance proactively and comprehensively."

- Michael Dortch
Senior Analyst, Aberdeen
Author of the recent study "Performance in a Service-Oriented Architecture World."