PEXworks: Out-executing digital native upstarts

PEXworks is a conversation with key PEX practitioners about what they do, the problems they solve, and the solutions they offer.

PEX caught up with Manish Rai from Automation Anywhere. 

Manish Rai is a Product Marketing Leader with over 15 years of successful leadership experience with Silicon Valley companies.

His has expertise in enterprise RPA and AI - among many other disciplines - with a proven track record of bringing intuitive and easy to use products to market that solve complex business problems. We caught up with him to ask how Automation Anywhere is helping their clients.

PEX: So Manish, every business that's successful solves a problem, so what is the problem that Automation Anywhere solves?

Manish Rai: I think Automation Anywhere really solves one of the biggest challenges out there – automating existing business processes. The company was started when the founders asked themselves the question why after decades and decades of technological innovation less than 20% of what can be automated has been automated? Our mission is to empower enterprises to automate everything that can be automated.

PEX: How do clients find themselves with these problems?

Manish: Every customer that we have has business processes, and only a very small fraction of these processes have been automated. There are opportunities everywhere.

PEX: What is it that Automation Anywhere does differently from anyone else?

Manish: What we're doing differently is we are taking the lead in injecting AI and machine learning into the technology to automate these business processes at every step of the way. Every business has a number of business processes that power it throughout the execution. If you look at finance, HR, supply chain, sales, every department has certain business processes.

Today, many steps in those business processes are manual. That is why the businesses are facing competition from digital native competitors who are building processes from the ground up so that can be automated end-to-end. We see opportunities throughout the organization for automation.

First, our technology is designed for business users. We make it very easy for every business user to learn our technology in a matter of hours and be productive with it. It's the most intuitive, as well as most scalable technology underneath. Second, we are injecting AI and machine learning in all our products, be it to bring structure to unstructured data, be it to make better decisions, be it for analytics. We are injecting it throughout, and we are making AI and machine learning accessible to business users. You don't have to be a data scientist or a developer to understand that.

PEX: What do you think the barrier is to implementation?

Manish: I think barrier to implementation is enterprise inertia. People do not realize the big shift and the big challenges in front of them: competition coming from digital native enterprises that are being built from the ground up to be more user friendly and efficient.  I think every organization should be paranoid. Like Intel's former CEO Andy Grove used to say only the paranoid survive. We have fierce competition coming from every angle, in every industry, and people are looking at doing things differently. Doing it faster and better. If enterprises don't automate everything that can be automated, they risk being left behind.

PEX: Okay. Finally, what does success look like for you?

Manish: Success for us looks like where we have helped enterprises really transform their businesses, so they are competitive with their digital native counterparts, and they're able to out-execute these upstarts that are trying to disrupt their businesses. To us, success means we have helped enterprises transform themselves into these agile digital organizations, digital enterprises, where they can be competitive.

PEX: Manish, thank you very much for your time.