What Microsoft’s Clippy can teach us about process automation

At a recent Google developers conference, the internet giant introduced a raft of tools under its Duet banner, including Sidekick. Sidekick is an AI helper designed to work within the Google Office suite to provide user support. During the reveal of the concept, many in the hall heard echoes of 1996 and an enthusiastic paperclip who was certain you were writing a letter that you needed help with.

For all its flaws, Microsoft’s Clippy was a phenomenon, and the recent rise of AI tools for productivity proves that its developers were onto something. Although users may not want an animated cheerleader while they write a report, there is growing recognition that digital applications can support better outcomes with custom tools – and that has implications for compliance and training.

Using the guardrails

Anyone who has played a game on a mobile device has likely experienced the guided first-time-user experience that is often built into these products. Users’ actions are restricted to a core sequence of steps until they have fully explored the basic functions and mastered the essentials of the activity.

Some software applications have borrowed this approach, fixing first-time users to a set of rails to ensure they understand the central functionality of the tool before releasing them to explore on their own. These tutorial guides ensure that novice users don’t deviate from good practice and protect both users and systems from the possibility of steps being missed or mixed up.

Once a user has completed the basics, those safety guides are removed, and the application is thrown wide open to them. While that’s necessary for ongoing productivity, it can leave new hires referencing hastily recorded notes or seeking support from more senior staff as they find their way in a still-new environment.

Ideally, those supporting frames should be available for as long as the user needs them, and in some cases, they’d be perpetually present. This is where robotic process automation (RPA) can make a difference.

More than efficiency automation

RPA is often thought of in terms of the efficiencies it can create in reducing manual entry or data handling. However, RPA bots have a remarkable capacity for increasing user effectiveness through supporting staff training and process compliance.

Just like those tutorial guides, RPA bots can be created on a foundation of business rules to assist staff in their processes. Oftentimes a process will require a human operator to translate content from documentation or in-person interactions into systems for sales, marketing or customer support.

Those activities aren’t easily automated but are still governed by protocols and standards that the system may not have the capacity to implement on its own. Many of the existing tools intended to guide these kinds of activities are web-based and can’t interface with legacy or in-house systems and software. RPA bots can, though.

Supporting success

RPA bots trained on internal processes can act as oversight for user-intensive processes and activities. An RPA bot can be directed to monitor legacy software for actions and inputs, ensuring that key steps are followed and core data is captured every time. Those entries can also be checked against business rules, raising alerts for users and stakeholders where limits are exceeded or values don’t meet the expected parameters.

This creates a safety net for new users and provides vital checks for them as they get to grips with their processes and systems. By validating entries, the bots can accelerate process execution and increase user confidence, ensuring that the right data is captured in the right ways.

These checks also increase compliance, ensuring entry errors or business decisions that don’t align with agreed operational guidelines are caught before they go any further. These tools can also raise alerts for users when steps are overlooked or data is incomplete. Legacy tools may accept an input with minimal information, but a directed RPA agent will pick up where additional required data has been missed and call for completion before the next step is kicked off.

Microsoft’s Clippy has earned a place in software history, and many are happy to leave it there. However, there is clearly a place for a supportive digital sidekick that can direct users through better process execution and provide clarity around the business rules that govern those exercises.

By developing effective RPA bots to guide and train users, businesses can improve both compliance and onboarding times, creating safeguards for better outcomes and ensuring clarity around key business processes.