Blue Prism develops robotic process automation (RPA) software and provides a "Digital Workforce of Software Robots" to businesses and organizations. These software robots provide an agile virtual workforce which have inbuilt IT governance and security capabilities. As a result, human employees can focus on higher-value work and delegate repetitive tasks to the autonomous multi-skilled software robots who can tirelessly perform rules-based admin transactions without any errors.
Recently, Blue Prism certified Symphony Ventures as one of their global training partner to train and develop best-in-class Blue Prism design and configuration talent. We speak with Neil Wright, global head of professional services, to find out about their recent partnership with Symphony Ventures and their future plans.

Please tell us about Blue Prism and its robotic process automation (RPA) solution.

Blue Prism is the market creator and leader in enterprise robotic process automation technology, or what’s become known as the world’s most successful digital workforce. To date, more than 1 billion transactions have been automated using Blue Prism, and our customers are typically large enterprises in highly-regulated industries, such as financial services and banking, insurance, healthcare, utilities, and shared services. 

Blue Prism has grown exponentially over the last decade, both in terms of size and geographic footprint. We’re headquartered in London and in Austin, Texas, and over the last year have also grown our presence significantly in Asia Pacific. Beyond the huge demand we’re seeing for RPA, our company’s growth is a testament to the quality of the technology we’ve developed, the tenacity of our team, and the deep, industry-level expertise we’ve built up through our partner ecosystem. 

How does RPA help organizations automate repetitive and rules-based administrative transactions without any errors? What are the benefits?  

Blue Prism RPA is built directly into the data center, whether that’s on premise or in a cloud environment, making it both secure and extremely scalable depending on the organization’s needs. Unlike humans, the Digital Workforce works around the clock, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and in complete accordance with the rules and parameters they’ve been assigned. They don’t take sick days or vacations, and ultimately, they’re assuming the aspect of employees’ jobs that they do not want to be doing. 
We like to say that RPA takes the robot out of the human. This means that it allows organizations to allocate manual, monotonous work to their Digital Workforce, and put people back into the roles that they enjoy and are better suited for, like strategic planning and development, or creative and customer-facing roles. With RPA, companies’ employees are more motivated and satisfied with the jobs they’re doing. They’re often delivering more value to the organization as well, especially in terms of service and satisfaction of customers.

To use Blue Prism RPA solutions, do you need specially trained employees? What work would these employees do?
One thing that is different about Blue Prism’s RPA is that the technology is used by the business and approved by IT. On the business side, it’s just as you’d train a regular employee. RPA is configured by subject matter experts and instructed to work through specified process flows. It is able to input data and switch between applications, and should it run into an error or new task it’s unfamiliar with, the “software robot” will flag the item for follow up by a human employee within the organization. 

On the IT side, the technology is deployed from the data center—not on desktops—and offers the scalability and security that enterprise IT demands. 

Just recently, we unveiled details of the Blue Prism Authorized Training Partner program, which is meeting a growing demand from prospective RPA users for quality, trained RPA developers to deploy this enterprise technology.

You have recently made Symphony Ventures a global training partner. How does this partnership help Blue Prism?

Blue Prism is always looking to increase the number of accredited developers in the ecosystem. We understand that preparing a trainee developer is more than just exposing them to the basics of our foundation training. They require instructor-led training and support from those that don’t just understand the mechanics of how Blue Prism works, but also have experience of how to use it to create scalable, secure, and efficient RPA solutions. It is an essential model if quality is to be preserved, and Blue Prism needs experienced partners like Symphony to accept the challenge of preparing the next generation of Blue Prism developers.

How will your customers benefit from the training?

Our accreditation standards are high and we demand quality training from our training partners. However, Symphony is not just a training partner—it is a delivery partner as well, and using years of delivery experience have created a course around an authentic model office with faithfully reproduced business scenarios. This ensures training stays relevant to the continually evolving demands of enterprise RPA and allows customers to expose their trainee developers to a realistic yet compressed delivery cycle—stimulating the trainees with typical development challenges regularly seen in the field. 

Who do you see as your top competitors? How do you differentiate your offerings/services from those offered by your competitors?

Blue Prism is the only true enterprise RPA solution in the market. It’s the only solution that meets the strict standards of security and compliance that enterprises in highly-regulated industries like banking, insurance, and healthcare require today, and that’s why we count more than half of the Fortune 500 in banking and insurance among our user base. 

Blue Prism is a founding member of the IEEE P2755 Working Group, an assembly of companies at the forefront of what’s termed “intelligent process automation.” For the last several months, the working group has been developing a common nomenclature around the rapidly-evolving landscape of automation technologies, like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and RPA. Not all solutions are created equal, so we encourage organizations considering a new automation project to familiarize themselves with the array of solutions available and understand what each offers in terms of security, scalability, cost, and practical application in their business. 

What are your thoughts on the way RPA is growing? What are the major trends that would affect and fuel its growth? 

Digital transformation is the term in everyone’s mouths these days, and automation is one of the core drivers helping enterprises achieve it. The demand for RPA is growing at a tremendous pace, which is why we’re particularly excited about the latest iteration in our own platform, Blue Prism Version 6.0. Now, our cutting-edge RPA technology can be integrated with AI and cloud capabilities provided by our Technology Alliance partners, which include companies like Captricity, Celaton, Expert System, IBM, and Minit. The seamless interaction between our system and others is one step closer we’ve taken toward realizing the vision of an Operating System for the Digital Workforce—an all-encompassing automation platform characteristic of the future of work. 

What is the one thing about Blue Prism that you would like our readers to know right now?

With more than 200 users in the banking and financial services sector, Blue Prism has become the de facto standard RPA platform trusted as the secure and scalable solution for this highly regulated and demanding industry sector.

What are the 3 top technologies the IT leaders need to watch out for?

Clearly there is a huge interest in AI and expanding the scope of automation beyond simple rules based cases. In this very broad space, we see text analytics and natural language processing as the top priorities for IT leaders within our ecosystem, as these will enable the widest opportunity to expand the capabilities of an automated process. The third technology that we see as being in demand is OCR and more importantly, its use within document processing and the structuring of data, such as part of an invoicing process. IT leaders should consider that the overall requirement in this space is unlikely to be satisfied by OCR technology alone and should look at the business problem more holistically in order to find the best technology fit.

Source: Read IT Quik