7 ms·

RPA just seems crazy... I mean, I see the golden shimmer, but why do so many enterprises refuse to actually, you know, solve the problem? I have, btw, just fin

RPA just seems crazy... I mean, I see the golden shimmer, but why do so many enterprises refuse to actually, you know, solve the problem? I have, btw, just finished reading “the phoenix project”. Brilliant book! Having lived through pretty much that story a couple of times, the solution is just that simple. Not easy, but simple. Been around a while, at several big companies, I know most of them will do RPA (they are of course the ones having a blockchain project plodding along), but only a few will go down the “software company” route. It’s kind of tragic.

blowski 7y ago
Because they can’t go straight from A to B, because there are so many audited processes that are tightly coupled to A. So they replace A with B one step at a time, and keep A in sync with B using RPA. When the whole of A is replaced, you turn it off along with the RPA. The problem comes when RPA stops being a short-term tactic, and starts being a long-term cottage industry. Unfortunately, RPA vendors have a vested interest in keeping A around as long as possible in order to maintain the necessity of their solution.
- jordanbeiber 7y ago
  Well, they can’t because they usually don’t really try. Most likely they have outsourced years ago and lost a lot of competency along the way. They have invested heavily on in really crappy software and solving this with something like RPA seems to me like introducing a ginormous footgun/perpetual roadblock. That RPA is not going anywhere soon... Or will it be replaced by the billion dollar, just a bit late, “phoenix project”? The ONE platform that promises speed and agility? That one? :)
alicorn 7y ago
There is a competition between RPA and automation by Python ongoing in my workplace. We are low on devs and high on buzzword-susceptible non-technical managers. The argument that it is a lot smarter to hire a few more devs that would add a lot more value to the company, especially given that we have already made significant inroads in 'proper' automation, than pay for a proprietary tool that is essentially an overhyped Selenium browser falls on deaf ears, since learning is hard and klickety klick is simple and easy to outsource. So it goes.
- jordanbeiber 7y ago
  I’m sorry to hear. The RPA abstraction just seem so fragile and unflexible. I _had_ to build “rpa” like solutions to problems in the late 90s using tools like scriptit, and later vbscript. Crap software have no APIs... I guess, it’s the same type of companies, still with the same type of software.

blowski 7y ago

Because they can’t go straight from A to B, because there are so many audited processes that are tightly coupled to A. So they replace A with B one step at a time, and keep A in sync with B using RPA. When the whole of A is replaced, you turn it off along with the RPA. The problem comes when RPA stops being a short-term tactic, and starts being a long-term cottage industry. Unfortunately, RPA vendors have a vested interest in keeping A around as long as possible in order to maintain the necessity of their solution.

jordanbeiber 7y ago
Well, they can’t because they usually don’t really try. Most likely they have outsourced years ago and lost a lot of competency along the way. They have invested heavily on in really crappy software and solving this with something like RPA seems to me like introducing a ginormous footgun/perpetual roadblock. That RPA is not going anywhere soon... Or will it be replaced by the billion dollar, just a bit late, “phoenix project”? The ONE platform that promises speed and agility? That one? :)

alicorn 7y ago

There is a competition between RPA and automation by Python ongoing in my workplace. We are low on devs and high on buzzword-susceptible non-technical managers. The argument that it is a lot smarter to hire a few more devs that would add a lot more value to the company, especially given that we have already made significant inroads in 'proper' automation, than pay for a proprietary tool that is essentially an overhyped Selenium browser falls on deaf ears, since learning is hard and klickety klick is simple and easy to outsource. So it goes.

jordanbeiber 7y ago
I’m sorry to hear. The RPA abstraction just seem so fragile and unflexible. I _had_ to build “rpa” like solutions to problems in the late 90s using tools like scriptit, and later vbscript. Crap software have no APIs... I guess, it’s the same type of companies, still with the same type of software.