Software robots and artificial intelligence - and what do I get out of it?

New technologies have dramatically changed our working lives over the last two decades. Internet, smartphone, process automation sweeten our lives since then.

This has drastically simplified our lives, leaving us with less to do and more time for family, friends and hobbies! Or is it? So your life has not become easier and less stressful?

I'm afraid you're not alone in this. We have become victims of the so-called Productivity Gap. Studies show that after a strong rise in productivity up to the early 2000s, productivity increases have declined and are even now almost stagnating. What could be the reason for this? Three possible reasons come to the fore:

First, the complexity of the tasks for the individual has become much greater. Whereas it used to be enough to be familiar with office software and one or two core applications, many, many systems have now been added.

The number of applications we are expected to master has already reached overwhelming proportions for some of us.

Secondly, despite full-bodied promises by the manufacturers to offer perfect and seamless integration, these systems still often stand next to each other as silos with little integration. This means that users often still have to keep track of where they enter which data and how they ensure data consistency.

Third, while many repetitive tasks have already been eliminated through automation, employees are still left with a multitude of tasks on a daily basis. The time spent per email keeping track of information from numerous channels is increasing.

As a possible tool to address these issues, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has made something of a name for itself in recent years.

Is RPA really a magic bullet against the aforementioned productivity gap? Well, there is a lot of enthusiasm for the introduction of RPA; robots take repetitive tasks from us on the computer.

Typical use cases such as data entry, data reconciliation and evaluations were increasingly handled by the quickly provided robots instead of having to build lengthy integrations for them.

Fortunately, with the rapid progress of RPA and AI, mere screen scraping is a thing of the past. The real potential of RPA technology is revealed in the interaction with AI.

Like a personal assistant, a software robot can free us from mindless manual input and additionally support us in our daily decisions. It cannot do the thinking for us, but it can support us in doing so.

Robots can finally support us in processes either fully automatically or guided (keyword "human in the loop"). This means that you no longer have to memorize the sequence of any screens or transactions, but can rely on the robot's support. Rarely used applications no longer need to be trained and mastered on an ongoing basis in order to operate them successfully.

Barriers between system silos can also be broken down by robots. For example, data transfers and consolidations can be performed by robots.

Or entire presentations can be created automatically using data from various systems, for example to deliver the quarterly report in PowerPoint form.

Or software robots take over helpful daily services such as pre-sorting emails. The AI-supported capture of the semantics of an e-mail helps to classify the importance of an e-mail and, for example, to prioritize orders higher than address changes.

This presorting allows you to focus on the essential tasks first. So, I welcome the fact that RPA and AI will allow us to focus much more on the exciting, creative and interpersonal aspects of our work in the future.