A Trip to Automation Valley

QualiWare and 17 other member companies of Manufacturing Academy of Denmark (MADE) went on an Industrie 4.0 study trip to Automation Valley in North Bavaria last week. The trip was arranged by MADE together with the local chamber of commerce and industry and the Royal Danish Consulate General in München. The Digital Factory Siemens, one of Germany’s largest companies and the largest…

better problems and technology knowledge transfer

Often, the work of problem-solving spurs the creation, or escalation of other problems. Most are implications of solution execution; expected or not. Sometimes though, the new problem is a result of poking and prodding the original problem, long before solution work. While considering your problem, you unearth a better problem. Not better as in more […]

Innovation – What’s Old can be New Again

There’s an old rhyme about what a bride should wear for luck on her wedding day: “Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue…”. While reading an article on the origins of the US highway system, I thought about this rhyme in relation to the concept of innovation. Part of that article related the US […]

Ensuring Successful Enterprise Architecture by Following Kotter’s Eight Stage Journey

By Stuart Macgregor, CEO, Real IRM Solutions and The Open Group South Africa These industry insights look at John Kotter’s eight stages of change management, and explore his timeless blueprint for effective change leadership. These change management principles can gel … Continue reading

Pega Buys OpenSpan: Watch out – RPA Vendnor Landscape Is About to Change

Enterprises, in their quest to reduce labor costs are applying RPA technologies. Yet they do not have a well-defined set of principles and best practices including how to position RPA with other process tools and initatives. Today it may have become a bit more clear. Pega is the first tech provider, and only BPM market particpant of substance, to purchase an RPA provider (OpenSpan). The combination brings robotics, analytics, and case management together – and that makes sense. Think of Pega’s process/rules capibility firing off a set of RPA scripts.

RPA in many respects is an alternative, some would say the polar opposite of Pega’s current business model that feasts on the transformitive “big IT spend” for BPM, case management, automation, and customer service projects. RPA does not require invasive integration. It is a quick hit for automation, a “low touch” approach for process improvement for brittle legacy systems. The bottom line. Enterprises that employ labor on a large scale for process work, can gain efficiencies by just automating repetitive human tasks for the “as is” process.

OpenSpan is nice pick up for Pega that will help with back office BPM work, but more so with contact center environments where the agent requires human and machine multi-tasking that often spans multiple windows and web applications, few of which are integrated with each other. Cumbersome process flows, rekeying of data and lack of integration add up to lengthy call times, reduced accuracy and an overall increase in customer frustration. Pega/OpenSpan, will give Jacada, and NICE a run for thier money and the future integartion with Pega’s analytics tarcks where the RPA space is heading.

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