with great enthusiasm Insights Success has
shortlisted, “The 10 Most Innovative Robotics
Process Automation Companies of 2019,” who are
providing innovative solutions to keep the robots up
and running round the clock for a long time.
QSM Chap 10 Service Culture in Tourism and Hospitality Industry.pptx
The 10 most innovative robotics process automation companies of 2019
1. Vol 12 | Issue 04 | 2019
ODED KAREV
GENERAL MANAGER
OF ADVANCED
PROCESS AUTOMATION
SOLUTIONS
BUILDING
TOMORROW’S
SOLUTIONS, AND IT'S
NICE!
The
10Most
Innovative
Robotics
Process
Automation
Companies of 2019
Editor’s Choice
Automobile Brand
Slogans:
A Line Says It All!
Secure Vision
Should Businesses
Adopt Blockchain
Technology?
2.
3.
4. When Robots
Changed an
Industry
ince its inception, Robotics has become an
Sintegral part of manufacturing, and it plays a
major role in the manufacturing landscape
nowadays. Robots do not retire, or falls sick, or need
breaks, or go on a strike. So, result? You have a
mechanical employee who can work 24/7 round the year.
They have taken over most of the repetitive, boring and
risky jobs on the manufacturing plant. Thanks to robots
and its increased productivity, and lesser worries about
the labor cost, more and more manufacturing jobs are
remaining in the US shores.
You may argue that, robots are replacing human labors in
various manufacturing plants. However, on the contrary
robots may have eliminated the need of many lower
skilled jobs (which has been the case in US and Japan);
they have also created a lot of job opportunities, which
requires high skill sets. Robots also come with their own
set of limitations. In their initial days, industrial robots
are more of automation, and we humans program them
to perform any task, and they repetitively does those job
again and again. So, tasks that need decision making,
creativity, learning on the go tend to go the human
workforce. Thanks to the cost savings and productivity
improvements, companies now can invest heavily on
R&D and innovation, which at the end of the day creates
more jobs in areas like engineering, product
development and product design.
Also, Robotics Process Automation allows companies to
be more competitive, that too by offering an efficient
alternative to offshoring and fulfilling the skill gaps in
various areas where recruiting an employee can be a
tough job. With completely dedicated manufacturing
robotics automation, one can see better quality work,
Editor’s Desk
“We are fascinated with
robots because they’re a
reflection of ourselves”.
5. increased productivity and better employee safety,
which eventually results a better bottom line.
Of course, just like any other cultural and economic
shift robots have caused a shift in the nature of
manufacturing jobs, which can eventually cause
some of the economic dislocations. So, it is very
much important for organizations, to help train their
employees so they can occupy highly skilled
manufacturing jobs in the future.
So, with great enthusiasm Insights Success has
shortlisted, “The 10 Most Innovative Robotics
Process Automation Companies of 2019,” who are
providing innovative solutions to keep the robots up
and running round the clock for a long time.
Also while flipping the pages, don’t forget to go
through the articles and CXOs written by our in-
house editorial team and the industry experts
respectively.
Enjoy your read!
Kaustav Roy
6. Building
Tomorrow’s
Solutions, and
it’s NICE!
08
Cover Story
Director’s Viewpoint
Future Technologies with a Special
Focus on AI and Logo Maker
34
Maestro’s Insights
Why 3D Printing Consumables
Producers need to get involved
in PRINTING TECHNOLOGIES?
26
7. 22
CONTENTS
Digiblu
The Digital Workforce
of the Future
16
Celaton
The Best Enterprise Application
of Artificial Intelligence
28
Knowledge Lake
Assisting in RPA to
Achieve Success
Secure Vision
Should Businesses Adopt
Blockchain Technology?
32
Editor’s Choice
Automobile Brand Slogans
A Line Says It All!
20
ARTICLES
10. Tomorrow's
Solutions,
& it’s
“With over 600,000 robots, more than 600
customers, and over 17 years of experience in
process optimization, we bring the value of
automation to enterprises. And when it's time to
scale up, we make it easy and efficient to quickly
meet your changing needs.“
1
THE
Most Innovative
Robotics Process
Automation Companies
Of 2019
12. The only solution that
delivers both attended
(desktop) and unattended
(server-side) automations,
so employees can focus
on productivity – not
processing.
“
“
13. W
ith the intent of providing a personal
robot for every employee and pushing
up the scale of process automation,
NICE RPA came into existence.
NICE has been active in the process optimization market
for over 17 years, with a strong emphasis on optimizing
the customer service agent’s desktop activities. With the
rise of RPA, the organization embraced it fully and
adapted its existing offering to support unattended back
office and shared services scenarios, and bring to market
a powerful, comprehensive RPA offering which
encompasses every element needed for successful
implementations.
The company believes that leadership is a result of
putting customers first. In fact, its values are grounded in
cherishing its customers, and NICE’s employees firmly
believe that their success is a reflection of the customer's
success.
This means providing the customers with innovative,
revolutionary and scalable technology that can make a
real difference to their customers. Obviously, the
consistent delivery of world class innovation and
exceptional customer service is ultimately the
responsibility of NICE’s team of dedicated professionals
– and this is where its unique culture comes in. Its
employees are scientists, engineers, business and thought
leaders, people who are subject matter experts who boast
extensive experience as experts in their fields.
The Solutions’ Cabinet of NICE
NICE’s RPA solution is an all-encompassing solution
which includes all the elements needed to succeed with
RPA. What’s great about it is that it’s all inclusive,
meaning its customers get it all when they purchase the
RPA product: an automation authoring tool (which is a
single tool used to create both unattended and attended
automation flows), an embedded OCR engine, and a
control tower which oversees the complete robotic
workforce – attended and unattended. NICE’s Process
Automation portfolio also includes an Attended
Automation solution named NEVA (NICE Employee
Virtual Attendant). NEVA is installed on the employee
desktop, and it helps them with their daily tasks. NEVA
not only does automated routine activities, but also
provides next-best-action guidance to employees, so they
have a much easier time in solving customer issues or
processing cases. Lastly, the organization's Automation
portfolio includes a process discovery tool, which
leverages unsupervised machine learning to identify the
best processes to automate. This discovery tool comes
complimentary with NEVA. So the customers definitely
get more with NICE RPA.
In the Pursuit of Being Different
According to NICE, the main differentiator is its intimate
familiarity and experience with the contact center
environment and specifically with the agent desktop
intricacies. NEVA, the personal RPA bot, brings a lot of
intelligence to how she facilitates the employee’s work.
She ‘understands’ the context of the interaction or the
process, she knows whether the customer being handled
is a VIP customer needed special attention or a customer
at risk who now needs to be presented with a retention
offer. NEVA can be integrated with the organization’s
chat bot, so employees can chat with her and ‘tell’ her
what they need. NEVA even knows which CRM
application is required for an automation, even when the
employee has 3 instances of CRM opened on his
desktop. These scenarios require a great deal of
expertise, and that is something unique that NICE brings
to the table. Another differentiator worth mentioning is
the fact that NICE is a portfolio company, with solutions
for speech analytics, VOC, Performance Management,
interaction recording and much more. This allows the
company to create internal integrations within its
portfolio, and its existing customer base enjoys these
additional benefits from having an automation solution
by NICE.
The Knight Rises
Oded Karev the General Manager of NICE’s
Advanced Process Automation Solutions brings his
COVER STORY
14. extensive experience in corporate strategy and
operations. He leads NICE's global RPA business,
covering the full spectrum of robotics solutions. Prior to
his current role, he served as the Director of Corporate
Strategy at NICE, leading some of the company’s key
growth initiatives.
Before joining NICE, Oded specialized in delivering
multi-channel strategies, operating model designs, and
digital transformation projects for Accenture. Oded is a
respected industry thought leader and keynote speaker in
the field of Robotic Process Automation and is
frequently quoted in global media.
The Robotic Process Automation Odyssey
NICE takes pride on itself at advancing the automation
industry by bringing several in-house AI innovations to
RPA. These include a proprietary discovery tool, named
Automation Finder, which uses unsupervised machine
learning algorithms to identify repetitive patters in
employees’ desktop activities, classify and prioritize
them. Another unique tool developed by NICE to support
connectivity of RPA tools to the underlying applications
is Shape Analysis. Based on computer vision, Shape
Analysis identified screen elements based on their shape
and text. This is especially crucial when the RPA
implementation is done in a Citrix environment and
there’s no direct integration to the underlying
application. Since connectivity is such a critical element
of a successful RPA deployment, NICE also delivers its
customers with yet another AI innovation for alerting on
any connectivity break (when the robot can no longer
access the screen element which is required for the
automation, for example if a button is missing or
changed its location). The organization calls this the
Connectivity Watcher. NICE is further enhancing this
capability by adding a Connectivity Repair capability
which will not only alert and show where the automation
broke, but will also fix it on the fly. These innovations
proves NICE’s strong commitment to its clients’ success
with ability to scale RPA.
The ‘X’ Factor
According to NICE, consumer markets are becoming
more intelligent, tech savvy and demanding. Just as
cognitive technology can be accessed from their pockets,
forming an integral part of their life-styles, consumers
are expecting service providers as well as the
organizations they work for, to integrate and leverage
cognitive technology. With more intelligent and
demanding customer markets expecting better service
delivery as well as greater competitive intensity, RPA has
become an essential technology to support organizations
to build and improve customer experience while
effectively streamlining their operational efficiencies to
remain competitive. Since customer experience and
employee experience are intertwined – attended
automation solutions boost employee performance and
motivation, naturally enhancing customer experience.
Into the Future
When it comes to the future, NICE would like to bring
innovative process automation and AI to every
employee's desktop- so they are freed from the mundane,
repetitive ordinary work that is keeping them from doing
extraordinary work.
nice.com/rpa
15. COVER STORY
You first have to know what can and should be automated.
NICE automatically helps you to map employee activities
and processes, identifying where automation is the key to
immediate and long-term optimization.
“
16. Address :
Country :City : State : Zip :
Date :Name :
Telephone :
Email :
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17. Management BriefCompany Name
Antworks
ant.works
Govind Sandhu
Co Founder COO
AntWorks is a global, artificial intelligence (AI) and intelligent
automation company; creating new possibilities with data
through digitization, automation, and enterprise intelligence.
Celaton Ltd
celaton.com
Gina Gray
Commercial Director
Enabling organisations to streamline end-to-end
business processes to achieve operational efficiency.
CPAutomation SA
cpautomation.ch
Marcel Dubey
CEO
CPAutomation specializes in developing, producing and
delivering standardized turnkey solutions in industrial
automation.
Daythree Business Services
daythree.co
Daythree is a fast growing regional business service provider in
the areas of business and knowledge process, human capital and
IT services to global clientele.
The KnowledgeLake platform supports the unique document
management needs of your organization by employing robotic
process automation and machine learning technology.
Kofax software enables organizations to Work Like Tomorrow -
today.
myInvenio provides you with a real Digital Twin of an
Organization, in fact, it can derive an extremely precise model of
your processes and enable you to pursue continuous
improvement initiatives with a low-cost and fail-fast approach.
NICE Stands Out for its Technology Innovation, Receiving Four
TMC Accolades for Delivering Customer Service-Enhancing
Solutions
RoboRana helps organizations transform data- intensive
business processes, reduce manual work and errors, minimize
costs and improve customer experience.
DigiBlu
digiblu.com
Steve Burke
Co-founder and CEO
DigiBlu helps organisations leverage the power of Intelligent
Automation to implement and operate Digital Workforces
KnowledgeLake
knowledgelake.com
Ron Cameron
CEO
KOFAX INC
kofax.com
Reynolds C. Bish
CEO
myInvenio
my-invenio.com
Massimiliano Delsante
CEO
NICE Ltd
nice.com
Oded Karev
General Manager of
Advanced Process
Automation Solutions
RoboRana
roborana.be
Mathias Fransen
Managing Partner
Raymond Devadass
CEO
1
THE
Most Innovative
Robotics Process
Automation Companies
Of 2019
18. 16
The Best Enterprise Application of Artificial Intelligence
elaton is a UK based Intelligent Process
CAutomation solution provider, that deploys its
technology, inSTREAM™, to deliver Intelligent
Document Processing (IDP). With Celaton’s inSTREAM
platform, companies can now achieve improved operational
efficiencies as well as enhanced job satisfaction through the
ability to deliver real value back to the organization and its
employees. Celaton applies Intelligent Process Automation
(IPA) technology to enable organizations to streamline end-
to-end business processes such as Accounts Payable, Sales
Orders, Customer Correspondence and Claims processing
and continually optimize through workforce supported
machine learning.
Created in response to real business problems
Celaton was founded in 2004 with the sole purpose of
helping companies achieve efficiencies in processing
inbound documents received from both customers and
suppliers.
The company was created in response to the realization that
despite the growing choice of solutions, there was nothing
available at the time that could improve the efficiency of
handling of semi-structured and unstructured inbound
documents and yet processing this information was one of
the biggest issues faced by organizations. The unstructured
information received by organizations every day demanded
valuable human resources to process and at a high cost.
Applying Intelligent Process Automation to deliver
consistent business value
Celaton’s solution is not RPA, but rather a complementary
extension of RPA’s capabilities. Celaton’s inSTREAM™
platform applies IPA to deliver consistent and measurable
business value to end-to-end business processes such as
Accounts Payable, Sales Order Processing, Customer
Correspondence, and Claims.
inSTREAM can process documents regardless of how they
are received including paper (post), email & attachments,
web forms, fax, and electronic data interchange (EDI). It is
able to read and process all formats, structured, semi-
structured, and unstructured ensuring all documents
received to follow a single process through inSTREAM.
inSTREAM prepares the documents for processing by
converting them into a digital, machine-readable format.
inSTREAM uses its AI algorithms to apply previous
learning and experience to understand the document type,
meaning, and intent, and then apply business rules to
extract key data. Once inSTREAM has extracted the data, it
can carry out further tasks for data validation.
Having reached out to the other sources such as external
databases or business systems, the verified and enriched
data is collated, and inSTREAM applies business rules to
determine outcomes. Should inSTREAM not feel confident
about the outcome, it collaborates with an operator who
assists it with validation and teaching in a process called
‘Human in the Loop’. If, however, confidence and accuracy
are high, inSTREAM can deliver the document and output
directly to the business system achieving straight-through
processing.
inSTREAM enables a significant reduction in Average
Handling Times (AHT), enabling improved operational
efficiencies, as well as enhancing job satisfaction through
the ability to deliver real value back to the organization and
its employees.
A Customer-Centric Approach
Celaton’s vision is, to be recognized as a leader in the
application of Intelligent Document Processing (IDP). To
achieve this, Celaton’s mission is to apply a customer-
centric approach to deliver consistent and measurable value
to business workflows through Intelligent Process
Automation (IPA).
“
December 2019|
1
THE
Most Innovative
Robotics Process
Automation Companies
Of 2019
19. 17|December 2019
Celaton’s Intelligent
Process Automation (IPA)
platform inSTREAM™
delivers a smart, more
efficient process,
reducing manual effort,
time and cost.
“
A 15 Year journey of growth and innovation
It has been a 15-year journey for the organization, which
eventually helped to achieve the level of knowledge,
experience, and technical maturity in Celaton’s solution.
Over the years, the company has worked with some
fantastic global brands, including Virgin Trains, Capgemini,
ASOS, Kuoni Travel, DHL, and Dixons Carphone, who
have been key to establishing this. The longevity of the
company’s customer relationships is a testimony to the fact
that the organization’s technology delivers rapid tangible
benefits and, in its ability to keep its promises.
In 2017 Celaton was awarded a Queen’s Award for
Enterprise in Innovation. The Queen’s Award is one of the
top accolades in the UK and recognized not only our
technology but also Celaton’s commitment to customers
across all levels of the organization. Celaton continues to
strive to deliver to the high standards of excellence and
innovation that were recognized in winning in this award.
Delivering Advancement to the Industry
inSTREAM comprises multiple technologies including,
Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, RPA, OCR/
Intelligent Character Recognition, NLP, and cognitive
computing.
Once implemented, processes are continually optimized
through workforce supported machine learning, and it is
through this Celaton is delivering advancement to the
industry. As previously mentioned, there is no need for
Developers to re-program inSTREAM with every document
exception, meaning the solution can scale with an
organizations’ growth and help to achieve sustainable
success.
Highly Skilled and Experienced IT and Business Process
Automation Leader
Gina Gray joined Celaton nearly 6 years ago, and her role
was originally focused on business development by
building relationships with partners & any new direct
customers. Since then, Gina’s role has expanded
significantly, and now she has overarching responsibility for
the delivery & protection of the total business revenue. In
addition, a significant part of her role today is educating not
only customers but partners and industry analysts about IPA
and its transformational impact. She is able to provide
knowledge about different automation technologies, their
role & impact, and where inSTREAM sits in the automation
landscape.
Sustainable Solutions to Customers
The robotic industry is only now starting to realize that RPA
is not a ‘silver bullet’. Whilst RPA is very good at
automating certain repetitive rules-based tasks such as
extracting structured data, it has limitations and should be
considered as a component within IPA. It is only through
thinking about RPA as part of a comprehensive solution that
suppliers can provide sustainable solutions to customers.
Celaton’s customer-centric approach to implementing
solutions has already enabled us to adopt this holistic
approach and is achieving significant benefits for
customers.
Gina Gray
Commercial Director
20.
21.
22. utomobile Brand Slogans
A Line Says It All!
A
company. It is a short set of words
which delivers a memorable phrase
about a brand’s core values. It is
evident that a portion of crowd gets
attracted towards a particular brand
because of the brand’s creative
catchphrase. So here are taglines of
few globally famous car-making
brands.
Ÿ Aston Martin: Power, Beauty
and Soul.
The slogan of this British cultural
icon perfectly personifies its
incredible products. Power for
performance, beauty for aesthetics
and soul, reflects the company’s
determination to strive for
excellence.
Ÿ Audi: Vorsprung durch Technik
(Being ahead through
technology).
This German stalwart has kept it very
simple and to the point, focussing
more on technical perfection.
However, people are also fond of its
state-of-the-art designs.
Ÿ BMW: Sheer Driving Pleasure.
Bayerische Motoren Werke or BMW
is one of the leaders of the luxury car
market. This Germany based giant
has shifted to this catchphrase from
its classical one i.e. The Ultimate
Driving Machine, both showing its
outlook in this segment.
Ÿ Ferrari: We are the
competition.
Ÿ This power packed machine
manufacturer overtly expresses
dominance through its tagline,
setting the benchmark to a level
difficult to reach.
Ÿ Ford: Go Further
Ÿ This US legend has set a slogan
not only for customers but also
for itself, inspiring to keep
moving forward.
Ÿ Jaguar: The Art of
Performance.
People love cars. To be honest,
they are mad about them.
Cars are the spellbinding
aspect of the vastly spread
automobile industry. They are the
mixture of poise and aggression
reflecting your personality traits. As
Alexandra Paul said, “The cars we
drive say a lot about us.” Therefore
everyone is so individualistic about
the choices and the brands they opt
for. Thanks to some auto-makers, the
standards of car-making have been
raised so high that for fulfilling
customers’ expectations, companies
need to be top-notch in Performance,
Aesthetics and Service (PAS). Any
company meeting these norms will
definitely be the customers’
favourite.
Certainly, ’PAS’ parameters are the
most important ones, but one cannot
deny the fascination of a catchy
tagline any automobile brand
possesses. A tagline or a catchphrase
reflects the ideology and vision of the
20 December 2019|
Editor’s Choice
23. Jaguar, known for its powerful and elegant cars, has
exactly resonated this ideology with its tagline, crafting a
beautiful blend of performance and beauty. However,
many of the Jaguar lovers admire its previous
catchphrase, Grace.Space.Pace.
Ÿ Lamborghini: We’re not supercars. We’re
Lamborghini.
The ’Automobili Lamborghini’ has made this Italian
brand, a worldwide phenomenon when it comes to
supercars and luxury SUVs. Previously, it had a classical
slogan stating, Follow your ears.
Ÿ Lexus: Experience Amazing.
This luxury vehicle division of Toyota has truly
conveyed its opulence through this catchphrase.
Witnessing its marvellous cars is an amazing experience.
Ÿ Mercedes-Benz: The Best or Nothing.
Probably the true leader of the luxury cars segment,
Mercedes flaunts its superiority through this incredible
tagline replicating its passion about perfection.
Ÿ Nissan: Innovation That Excites.
This prominent automobile brand from the land of rising
Sun recently shifted from its vintage slogan Shift to the
aforesaid newly introduced one.
Ÿ Porsche: There Is No Substitute.
Thanks to this creative marketing catchphrase, people
don’t need any explanations. If you want to be unique
and different, you have no alternative than a Porsche.
Ÿ Renault: Passion for Life.
Renault’s newly launched slogan replacing the previous
Drive The Change brought a bright, modern take on its
historic virtues resonating spirit of automotive
revolution.
Ÿ Toyota: Let’s Go Places.
A world leader in automotive production, Toyota is
probably the only company having hundreds of taglines,
different for different countries. Its US domain slogan
Let’s Go Places is among the most popular ones sharing
the honour with taglines like Start Your Impossible and
Quality Revolution.
Ÿ Volkswagen: Das Auto(The Car).
This gigantic German group is well known for its
perfectly crafted and engineered vehicles. Historical
’The Car’ slogan could be the only catchphrase that
could portray Volkswagen’s vastness.
Ÿ Volvo: For Life.
This Swedish automaker through its slogan has
expressed two important elements of the brand; loyalty
for life and safety of life. Needless to say, this makes it
one of the best taglines ever created.
After reading all these creatively crafted taglines, one
can easily get an idea of how powerful of a marketing
tool they can prove to be. After all, influencing
someone’s choices isn’t an easy job. In this world of
advertisement, many claim that along with performance,
aesthetics and service you need to have incredible
marketing tools like that of brand slogans. Without these
it is really hard to draw the attention of customers who
are equipped with vast number of choices nowadays.
Certainly, in this regard, taglines have proved their
importance and comprehensiveness.
21|December 2019
24. The Digital Workforce of the Future
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is software that
mimics human workers in conducting routine rules-
based activities. It automates tasks by interacting
with any application or system using non-invasive
techniques, without need of systems integration, and can
orchestrate activities across boundaries. RPA enables
cheaper and faster processing and reduces errors, improves
security (reduces fraud) and enhances compliance. Used
strategically, it enables business and operating model
innovation.
At DigiBlu, the company has experienced increased Net
Promoter Scores of 30% as a direct result of RPA
implementations. Depending on the process, volumes, and
the number of human workers involved, cost reductions
range from 30-80%. The company’s clients are achieving
year one ROI of 200% plus. DigiBlu helps organizations
leverage the power of Intelligent Automation to implement
and operate Digital Workforces. The company has designed
an operating model for the Digital Workforce that aligns the
core processes with organizational competencies.
In an interview conducted between Insights Success and
Steve Burke Co-founder & CEO, shares his deep
experience in leading enterprise transformations and
DigiBlu’s objective of realizing the full potential of
automation.
Below are the highlights of the interview between Steve
Burke and Insights Success:
What led to the inception of the DigiBlu?
DigiBlu was established in 2014 as a high-value strategy &
transformation consulting firm. In mid-2016, we saw the
potential of RPA to transform operating models and we
repositioned ourselves to become wholly specialist as an
RPA delivery and capability partner.
Could you throw some light on your mission and vision
statement?
Our mission is to be a world leader in implementing,
delivering and operating digital workforces.
Our vision is to create the workforce of the future, organized
around multi-skilled, multi-purpose digital workers,
integrated with human workers, to create high-performance
enterprises.
Describe your company’s cutting-edge RPA solutions,
which addresses all the needs of your customers.
The need of our customers is to innovate their business
models to improve the customer experience, deliver new
offerings and increase revenues, while creating low cost,
super responsive and agile operating models. Automation
enables this, and specifically the automation of routine /
transactional activities from customer engagement to
fulfillment. This requires the seamless integration of
cognitive and robotic capabilities, sometimes delivered over
the cloud. This enables omni-channel engagement, the
ingestion, structuring and sense-making of data, which
informs decisions and triggers execution using RPA.
DigiBlu’s platform approach extends the reach and value of
the core RPA technology into Intelligent Automation.
How does your RPA solution differ from the other
companies’ offerings?
Our integrated Intelligent Automation solutions automate
end-to-end activities along value chains and they
orchestrate activities across business ecosystems. Used
strategically, this solution enables the innovation of
offerings and the reimagination of business processes. Other
companies focus mostly on automating discrete activities,
including desktop and document automation. DigiBlu has
no proprietary technology, but rather combines technologies
into platforms so that one plus one equals three, and so that
our clients can transform their organisation, reimagine their
offerings and redesign their processes, from end-to-end.
Our differentiators then, are strategy and transformation
consulting and our deep process expertise, which is backed
up by technical expertise, great software and excellent
delivery.
What technologies are you leveraging to make your RPA
solutions resourceful and bringing advancement in the
industry?
22 December 2019|
1
THE
Most Innovative
Robotics Process
Automation Companies
Of 2019
25. DigiBlu is about
transforming organisations
by implementing and
operating digital
workforces, building
capabilities on-premise or
delivering digital workers
over the cloud.
“
We mostly use Blue Prism RPA as the core RPA technology.
We add TrustPortal for managing human-to-robot
interactions, Antworks’ Cognitive Machine Reading for
ingesting and structuring data, and Merlynn’s expert system
for decision-making. Our Robotics Operations Centre is
powered by the Thoughtonomy platform, which delivers
Intelligent Automation over the Cloud.
Describe the experiences, achievements or lessons
learned that have shaped the journey of the company.
No one really knows where the journey to digital
workforces will take them, and our learnings are
continuous. First we had to master the laying of
foundations, then we learned how to scale, now we are
asking, ‘how does an enterprise operate when it is
organized around a Digital Workforce and, how should we
organize and reskill to get the very best out of human
workers?’ We consider ourselves a learning organization
and organize around specialist competencies to capture
experience from large implementations (we have one client,
for example, where we are helping to implement 500 bots).
We have won numerous international awards, including a
coveted Partner of the Year award from Blue Prism in 2019.
What according to you could be the potential future of
Robotic industry and how does your company envision
sustaining its competency?
The future lies in the creation of digital workforces that will
speed innovation and enable unprecedented levels of
operational agility. The Digital Workforce will be a key
feature of 4IR. The digital workers will require multiple
skills, beyond mere robotic execution, which will be
enabled by other digital technologies. This puts digital
workers at the core of digital transformation.
In DigiBlu we are constantly evolving our own offerings,
including Automation-as-a-Service offerings such as the
provision of digital workers on demand and Business
Processes-as-a-Service (we have an outsourced payments
solution, for example). The as-a-service offerings are
delivered over the cloud to customers around the world
from our Robotic Operations Centre in Cape Town.
About the Leader
Steve Burke’s first career was as an officer in the British
Parachute Regiment after which he turned to high-value
management consulting. His influence over DigiBlu is to
bring a transformative mindset and method, which raises
RPA from being a mere tool. As a member of Blue Prism’s
Partner Executive Council and a keynote speaker, he
influences the industry with visionary thinking about the
workforce of the future that he combines with deep
experience in successfully leading transformational change.
Steve holds a Masters degree in the Design of Information
Systems (Cranfield) and an Honours degree in International
Politics (UCW Aberystwyth) and was trained in leadership
and strategy at Sandhurst and the Army Staff College.
Testimonial
“In March 2019 Investec outsourced the RPA
implementations and day to day monitoring efforts to
DigiBlu’s Robotics Operations Centre. Since the change in
approach we have been able to implement faster by
introducing governance structures and at a much higher
quality by applying best practice standards.”
— (Investec Asset Management)
Steve Burke
Co-founder & CEO
23|December 2019
26.
27.
28. 3D
This Chinese proverb already made sense thousands
of years ago, when a certain wick sucked up oil of a
defined viscosity – and it certainly helped finding
new customers for the seller’s oil. This principle has always
been utilized; think of the razor blade, game console sellers,
mobile phone service providers –or 2D Printer producers
offering the machine even at a loss, knowing the specially
designed cartridge will more than compensate for the poor
hardware deal by selling the modern oil: The ink.
Unfortunately today’s giant chemists like BASF, Covestro,
Evonik and the like believe in the “Open Platform
Initiative” of the new sun in the 3D printing sky, Hewlett
Packard. This is certainly a good deal for HP, as they
already lost reputation during the years they couldn’t
deliver -after having announced their new technology way
before. Realizing their patents and building the machine
became a nightmare, thousands of unplanned man-years
went into this endeavor; and the big players on the chemical
side didn't really know how to access the market that was so
young, undeveloped –and still doesn’t show a clear path as
to what technology will “win”. So the chemists tested the
waters with HP, and it looks as if both sides have found a
winning position.
Why then “unfortunately”?
Because both sides will fail: If you dig into the annual
reports, truth is that the printer sellers make their profit
margin on the oil side –they need to sell consumables in
order to finance R&D and machine production. On the other
hand the chemists produce their oil, well adapted to the
machinist’s needs. Should the hardware partner face
economical reality and be forced to achieve margin by
taking the nice consumables business into his own hands,
the chemist will realize how helpful he was –and how
helpless he is now.
And there is even a third loser: The 3D printing r/evolution
is retarded! The machinist only knows his kingdom, he
creates machines. But 3D printing is about chemistry, the
oil is king, for sure! So the chemist should invent the new
technologies, as he defines the ingredients of tomorrow’s
magic substances, enabling incredible properties. Carbon3D
is a good example here, his founder, Joseph Desimone, is a
chemist, the well funded company received over 400mio$
and is a unicorn, showing a pre IPO value easily surpassing
one billion $.
So chemistry it is! The next revolutionary printing step
will be brought to life by a chemist’s imagination.
This is why these big players need the courage to add a
hardware leg and start tinkering with prototypes. They
cannot wait for the machinist to tell them what material
they need, neither for customers cozing their wishes. In the
end product producers don’t care about machines,
technologies and chemistry, all they need is affordable
material properties for production methods that need less
“To sell the oil, give away the lamp!”
WHY
3DPrintingConsumables Producers need to get involved in
PRINTING TECHNOLOGIES?
26 December 2019|
Maestro’s Insights
29. post processing, like assembly. The time is in
favor of intelligent more complex design, the
chemistry can offer the properties, but the
hardware is lacking speed, reliability and
affordability. That is why 3D printing didn’t
climb up the industrial ladder and injection
molding still isn’t replaceable.
In consequence, hardware is the chemist’s “must
have”, as it is the chemistry that defines the
printing rules, the algorithms, and the speed. It all
starts with the combination of molecules, and the
hardware is the necessary evil the chemist needs
to bring to a working prototype level; a TRL 5
(technology readiness level, 5=technology
demonstrator) would already be sufficient, so the
baton can be passed on to the professional
machinist for optimization of the hardware side.
This is exactly what we do at Geniusthingks.
With a bucket full of 3d Printing inventions we
don’t talk to printer producers, but to chemists at
first. They give all the necessary input to
determine material properties and speeds. We
offer technologies from FDM filament heads
mixing colors and materials, to huge daylight
resin printers, gel pushing robots for prototypes
surpassing 100m³ of print volume, house printing
robots -and our specialty: drum printers that will
replace these lame ducks of planar printers,
ac/decelerating for every layer.
Printer design will see a paradigm shift in the
coming years, when chemistry allows for faster
layers than today’s machines can offer
mechanically due to their physical limits.
Industrial production needs to come close to
injection molding speeds plus assembly time, so
layer-speeds of 100msec need to be achieved.
This is more than a breakneck speed for the
current producers; with HP offering
7.55sec/layer, claiming to be 10 times faster than
the next fastest machine, their “industrial” future
doesn’t look too bright.
Geniusthingks however has filed several patents
potentially surpassing this requirement and is
looking for partners to realize the prototypes.
Markus Ulrich is the
Founder and CEO of
Geniusthingks. His think
tank offers unconventional
solutions for tough nuts to
crack, mainly in the 3D
printing and smart bullet
weapons-industry. Markus
studied mechanical
engineering, founded and
led an IT-database
company for 13 years and
built machines all his life.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Markus Ulrich
Founder & CEO
27|December 2019
30. Assisting in RPA to Achieve Success
Enable our customers to reach their full potential by
serving them with innovative document
technologies.” This is the vision of
KnowledgeLake, a software company that focuses 100%
on innovating around capture, RPA and the content
repository for the purpose of helping its partners and
customers to manage transactional content. The company
helps busy organizations intelligently automate their most
important document processes. The KnowledgeLake
platform is the only cloud-native platform for capturing,
processing, and managing your most critical business
content.
Customized Solutions
KnowledgeLake RPA is purpose-built for the automation
needs of transactional content management
(TCM)—conscious organizations. Most data that ultimately
flows through an RPA automation originates within
documents. Regardless of whether those documents are
paper based or are born electronic and ingested via an email
attachment or download, the data contained within those
documents eventually needs to make its way into one or
more line of business systems. These are the automations
types for which KnowledgeLake RPA is particularly well-
suited. To support these use cases, KnowledgeLake RPA
provides both an unattended and attended bot offering. The
purpose of the unattended bots is to process batches of
information that have been extracted from documents via
our patent-pending machine learning technology.
Once the data is extracted and verified, it is then passed to
one or more unattended bots that can enter it into any
Windows, browser, or legacy application, either through the
application’s user interface or an existing API. All
unattended bot transactions are recorded so a full step-by-
step video replay can be viewed to facilitate exception
handling. The video, along with access to both a synched
log file and automation specification document, provides
the user a 360-degree view of every transaction, and is
presented in a manner that speaks something we call “the
language of the user.” KnowledgeLake also links the entire
support chain to this tooling to ensure all exceptions and
handled quickly and completely. Such tooling mitigates the
top reasons RPA projects fail in production: poor support
and slow remediation. Further, any corrective measures
taken by the user to handle exceptions can easily make their
way back into the automation so future runs of the
automation know how to handle the corrected condition.
Once the data is in the line of business system, it is
common for users to want to refer back to the original
document for reference. Rather than forcing the user to
open their document management system, login, and re-key
search criteria data or updated metadata, KnowledgeLake
offers users an attended bot that allows them to retrieve
source documents with the mere click of a button
KnowledgeLake RPA allows TCM-minded organizations to
automate all aspects of integrating documents, data, and
line of business applications.
An Expert
Ron Cameron, the CEO of KnowledgeLake, is a known
expert in the industry and has been featured as an executive
speaker for years at events hosted by companies like
Microsoft, Fujitsu, and more. Before that, he worked in the
industry for a few years as an employee and was frustrated
by leadership that didn’t focus on the customer experience.
His goal was to create a company that truly put customers
and employees at the center of its existence—even before
profit. According to him, at KL, the philosophy is “I’m
“
28 December 2019|
1
THE
Most Innovative
Robotics Process
Automation Companies
Of 2019
31. Leverage the
KnowledgeLake platform
to achieve compliance,
provide better
governance, and
streamline document
processing.
“
Third,” which means that the company puts its customers
first, its tribe (which is the team) second, and itself third.
It’s a recipe that’s worked very well for 20 years now.
Ron is also a man of character with a strong respect for
diversity and willingness to give back. He has served on a
number of corporate and philanthropic boards including
The Magic House (St. Louis Children’s Museum), Our
Little Haven and Louisville Sluggers Warriors Little League
Baseball. A trusted mentor to many, he is a known leader in
the Information & Content Management industry and has a
strong reputation built on integrity, compassion, and a can-
do executive attitude. The Best is Yet to Come
It’s the lessons, experiences, and even failures that
ultimately led to the achievements—Ron says he could
write a book on those. KnowledgeLake has helped
thousands of customers in 34 countries save money and
streamline their content processing, which Ron believes is
the company’s most important achievement. Secondarily,
the organization has partnered deeply with Microsoft for 15
years and has been awarded “Microsoft Partner of the Year”
4 times. He also still believes the best part of the company
journey is yet to come.
Merging with Advancement
The future of the robotic industry is definitely still
emerging. The robots (or bots) are only as smart as the
instructions they receive. The future is going to be shaped
by the innovation around AI that actually drives the
behavior of the robotic workers. KnowledgeLake is right in
the middle of the innovation every day. The company will
sustain its competency by listening to the customers and the
industry and using everything available to help them
aggressively solve problems.
Testimonials
“Knowledgelake RPA has allowed us to redirect employee
efforts to tasks that matter to our customers rather than
processing repetitive non value added transactions. With
integration between systems we have eliminated thousands
of hours from our customer’s processes.” Matthew
Danyliw, Analytix BizMgmt, LLC
“The KnowledgeLake solution works seamlessly with
SharePoint Online.” Aaron Withington, ITS Senior
Technician, PRO Club
“With the rapid access to documents provided by
KnowledgeLake, we can actually spend time and resources
on improving and making our processes better than what
they were before.” Tye Eyden, Collaboration Analyst, New
Belgium Brewery
“KnowledgeLake helped us move from out-dated
technology to an efficient enterprise content management
solution that helps our employees work more effectively.”
Raul Mital, Data Technology Project Leader Hexcel
Ron Cameron
CEO
29|December 2019
32.
33.
34. Should
Businesses
Adopt
Blockchain
Technology?
technology and supporting the initiative. The intention is to
provide decentralized solution and distributed ledger
technology for financial market infrastructures. Although
this does not mean that these countries will opt for full-
fledged Blockchain, further analysis of the safety and
efficiency of this technology is needed.
One of the most interesting and misunderstood concepts in
Blockchain technology is transparency, some say it gives
you privacy while according to few it is transparent.
However, this leads to some confusion about how privacy
and transparency can effectively coexist. In this article we
will clear how Blockchain balances the two concepts.
The identity of a user is concealed behind powerful
cryptography (encrypting and decrypting), meaning that
linking public addresses to private users is difficult to
achieve. Transparency of Blockchain comes from the fact
that the holdings and transactions of each public address are
open for viewing. It is possible through Explorer, an online
block chain browser which displays the content of
individual Bitcoin blocks, transactions and balances of
addresses.
Cryptocurrency and Blockchain are still relatively new
technology; companies are likely to pick up the right
Blockchain technology for the business. Blockchain
companies: Steem is like YouTube on Blockchain and has
attracted over 920,000 users who publish more than 1.5
million posts each month. Steem has also paid over $40
million in its digital asset via (cryptocurrency rewards) to
content creators. Ripple, Intellectsoft, and Celsius Network,
are some of the companies today, assured for success and
will be popular soon.
Centralized systems have treated us well for many
years, but if we see the vulnerabilities: money and
data is stored in one spot, this makes easy target for
malicious activity. What if central banks shut downs or goes
through software upgrade for whatever reason? It may halt
the entire system and nobody will be able to access the
information it possesses. Companies are starting to work
with Blockchain technology; some of them are using it in
the financial sector while others are trying to improve their
bureaucratic systems.
Countries like Singapore, China, Canada, etc. are trying to
offer a national digital currency based on Blockchain
32 December 2019|
Secure Vision
35. With the emergence of
cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin,
Blockchain technology is disrupting
almost all markets, changing the way
we do our day to day business.
Bitcoins are digital coins you can send
through the internet, its software is
completely open source and you can
trade your currency exchanges with
dollars, euros and more. It’s very much
still an experimental currency and a
high risk for consumers and investors,
but the Bitcoin design has been the
inspiration for various other
applications.
Effectiveness of Blockchain
technology in the following areas in
future:
Smart Contracts- The most critical
area where Blockchain helps is to
guarantee the validity of a transaction
through secure validation mechanism.
Contract is where consent of the parties
is involved to agree and interact with
each other. Industries and institutions
are heavily reliant on contracts, such as
insurance, financial institutions, real
estate, construction, entertainment and
law. A smart contract can formalize the
relationships between people,
institutions and the assets they own.
They eliminate the need for trusted
third parties and are self-verifying,
self-executing and Tamper resistant.
A smart contract is like a cryptographic
box that contains value and only
unlocks if certain conditions are met.
Once involved authorities and
companies are on a Blockchain, a
smart contract could be used to define
the rules of a valid deal.
Supply chain management- A
Blockchain is a digitalized,
decentralized and incorruptible public
ledger that can transform supply
chains, industries and ecosystems. The
following applications are now in use
or can be implemented in supply chain
using Blockchain technology:
Automotive supplier payments- It is
exciting to see cryptocurrency in the
automotive industry. There are also
suppliers and websites available for
buying and selling cars with Bitcoin,
which allows transfer of funds
anywhere in the world without the
need for traditional banking
transactions, as transactions are made
directly between payer and payee. It is
also secure and rapid, transfers also
incur lower fees. However, buying a
car from a random individual is
considered a bit risky.
Food Traceability- Satoshi Nakamoto,
inventor of Blockchain technology
aimed in creating decentralized ledger
leaving behind open source software
that the users would be able to update
and improve. Companies can use
distributed ledger systems to record
product status at each stage of
production. As the records are
permanent and immutable, they make
it possible to trace each product to its
source.
Food volumes such as coffee, tea, oils,
sugar and beans are almost impossible
to track. Blockchain technology
enables the tracking of food packages,
by a unique identifier such as barcode,
QR code or RFID transmitter. The
benefit from using Blockchain is that
no central party needs to be trusted in
order to overlook the data, while still
allowing volumes to be transparent for
everyone in the chain. An area of
concern within the food industry is that
many food products are small and
inexpensive; there is a risk that
tracking of every package and seed can
become expensive. Blockchain enables
integration of simple hardware and
cheap software and is ideally suited for
managing the process.
Supply chains have already started
using Blockchain in some areas of their
operations like electric power micro
grids and cold chain monitoring.
However, transformation of supply
chains will not happen overnight, new
doors may open to faster more
intelligent and more secure process
throughout the entire supply chain.
Criticisms and challenges:
Huge electricity required- Remember
all the power required to verify
transactions demand electricity. In
order to unleash the power of
Blockchain technology, computer
scientists need to solve this big
problem.
Security about the private key-
Private Key must remain secret at all
times because revealing it to the third
parties is same as giving them controls
over Bitcoins secured by that key. Also
the key must be backed up and
protected from accidental loss, because
if it is lost it cannot be recovered and
the funds secured by it are forever lost,
too.
Extremely volatile- Decentralized
Blockchain technology and virtual
currencies are extremely new to the
market. Fluctuating prices of Bitcoin
vary from day to day because
companies, investors, and governments
adopting or not adopting them greatly
affect the volatility.
Blockchain will be an important part of
our financial and technological digital
future. It is one of the incredibly
creative inventions that technology has
ever seen. So how we use it is up to us.
Some companies such as
Overstock.com and Telsa have already
started accepting virtual currencies.
However, it is still not apparent what
the retail leaders like Amazon and
eBay would do with the
cryptocurrency acceptance. But if they
start accepting then it could indeed
transform the global scenario.
33|December 2019
36. he Evolution of Technology
TTechnology is changing rapidly today.
This technological evolution continues
adding significant values to the lives of
human beings. With every passing day,
it enters a new area of our lives making
it more comfortable, convenient. There
are tremendous amounts of information
over the internet that helps us learn and
improve personal lifestyle.
Although it’s little early, I’m sure
we’re standing on the verge of a golden
era. It’ll be so exciting to see what
advancement comes next.
Future Technologies
We anticipate that the next five decades
will be a period of intense scientific
evolvement. That’s because the
innovations that were once cramped in
the science fiction come into the real
life. From near-term potential scientific
developments such as robotics and
bioengineering to even more futuristic
perspectives such as space colonization
or teleportation, might be included in
the lives of common Americans in the
next few years.
Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine
learning (ML) will make computers so
smart and sophisticated that human
beings will require implanting neural
laces in their brains to compete with.
The technologies that will shape the
destiny of us all are:
Eye-Controlled Technology: Face
and movement recognition software in
a machine which will be controlled by
eye movement or gestures.
Paper Diagnostics: Low-priced tools
made of specially designed paper that
logos within a few minutes. The
algorithm of an artificially intelligent
logo maker, like Designhill, is smart
enough to learn how the users
communicate with the design tool
quickly. Each time the users interact
with the tool, deep machine learning
helps it study their choices and
generates even better results.
Robotics is yet another technology
which has immense potential to change
the world in days to come. It has
already begun transforming the
construction industry. Robotics-as-a-
Service (RaaS) is a new service model
based on this technology to manage,
improve productivity at minimal costs,
enable a smarter business network, and
focus employees on high-value tasks of
an organization.
Globalization and education to
spread technology
Globalization plays a key driver of
spreading technology across the
borders. It took around one thousand
years to spread the invention of paper
from China to Europe pre-
globalization. Since the world has
become more integrated today,
innovations travel across the
international borders faster than ever
before, through many channels. The
transfer of technology has helped to
improve innovations and productivity.
Because not all technologies
essentially develop everywhere and at
the same time, the travel of
technologies across the countries is
pivotal in the global technological
growth.
Besides, education and training will
keep you abreast of the latest
development in the realm of
technology. Governments, as well as
entrepreneurs, have the onus to educate
enable quick screening for diseases
like Ebola, Swine flu, Zika, TB, and
others.
Designer Antibiotics: Bottom-up
technology for building macrolides to
defeat superbugs.
Smart Clothing: Nonporous fabrics,
haptic feedback, and miniaturized
electronics make for intelligent
clothing that changes shape and color
according to the wearer’s movement. It
can also cool or warm the wearer as
per the need.
Photonics in Space: Increased
bandwidth, 100-times greater than RF
data rate, and lower requirements for
spacecraft communication.
Volcanic Mining: Treasured minerals
and metals extraction from active
submarine volcanoes will become
economical.
Super Antiviral: Based on the ISG15
mutation and other generic therapies
broad-spectrum antiviral.
Adoption is growing
Artificial intelligence and machine
learning are being used widely in the
activities that include healthcare,
education, transportation, and finance,
etc. These two technologies are the
most sought-after with most IT-giants
in the world embracing them to make
their services smarter, quicker and
cheaper. We may see more AI-driven
services in coming days, in every form
of life.
With artificial intelligence and machine
learning, the concept of logo
designing/branding comes into the
picture, thus resulting in a platform
that helps to create hundreds of custom
Future Technologies with a Special
Focus on AI and Logo Maker
Director’s Viewpoint
34 December 2019|
37. the gen-next. Research centers must be in sync and equipped
with the cutting-edge apparatus.
Life Beyond Science & Technology
Despite many innovations in the last decade, we’re still at the
very beginning of a technological revolution. Artificial
intelligence and machine learning have great potential to
revolutionize the entire world. Both researchers and
professionals are becoming increasingly aware of their
capability for positive impact in the science of better
innovations.
About the Author
Rahul Aggarwal is among
India’s youngest entrepreneurs
and Co-founder of Designhill –
a graphic design crowdsourcing
platform. Designhill is already
doing rounds in the business
community across the globe.
Rahul along with his brother
Varun Aggarwal started
Designhill in 2013 and have since
grown it to a successful and the
most reliable interactive
marketplaces for custom
graphic design solutions.
Designhill provides an interactive
interface that allows the
customers to give real time
feedback and ratings to design
works, to help the designers
better understand the
customer’s expectations.
35|December 2019