November 2, 2024 • 25 mins
In this episode, Jeremy Gilliland (Automation & AI Leader) and Andreas Welsch discuss how Generative AI enables next-level process automation. Jeremy shares his learnings on vendors adding agentic AI to their RPA products and provides valuable advice for listeners looking to explore both technologies together..
Key topics:
- Describe how Generative AI expands traditional RPA
- Assess the potential for IT and Automation leaders when combining technologies
- Leverage both technologies’ advantages when integrating them
- Decide how to start using Generative AI and RPA together
Listen to the full episode to hear how you can:
- Benefit from RPA and Generative AI integration
- Leverage Generative AI agents and RPA for business model transformation
- Minimize dependencies within your tech stack and have an AI and automation platform for increased efficiency
Watch this episode on YouTube:
https://www.youtu.be/Qmn6kMTkDmw
Questions or suggestions? Send me a Text Message.
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Disclaimer: Views are the participants’ own and do not represent those of any participant’s past, present, or future employers. Participation in this event is independent of any potential business relationship (past, present, or future) between the participants or between their employers.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Andreas Welsch (00:00):
Today, we'll talk about how generative AI
enables next level processautomation.
And who better to talk about itthan someone who's actively
working on that?
Jeremy Gilliland.
Hey, Jeremy, thank you so muchfor joining.
Jeremy Gilliland (00:11):
Hey, I'm doing well.
I'm glad to be here.
Thank you so much for theinvite.
Andreas Welsch (00:15):
Wonderful.
Hey, why don't you tell ouraudience a little bit about
yourself, who you are and whatyou do?
Jeremy Gilliland (00:19):
Yeah, no, thank you.
My name is Jeremy Gilliland andcurrently I am the automation
platform team manager forSouthern Glaciers Wine and
Spirits.
I've been working in theintelligent automation space for
over a decade now, helpedmultiple organizations and
consulting practices grow theirprograms.
Prior to that, I spent over adecade in the military.
I was working in their spacefirst as an enlisted soldier and
(00:42):
then eventually as an officer.
I definitely have a passion fortechnology, starting all the way
back when I was in high school,working with Cisco 1 and 2, as a
fan of this show, Andreas, Ihave to say, I've been watching
for a long time, and I'm sothankful for this opportunity.
I can't wait to dive in.
Andreas Welsch (00:57):
Awesome.
It's great to have you on.
Thank you for making the time,and I know you Actually, just
come back from a pretty bigindustry event last week, right?
Jeremy Gilliland (01:06):
Yeah, it was a UiPath marquee event here in the
States called Forward TechEdDay.
I had an opportunity to give aspeech there, if you will, a
presentation about this sametopic, as well as a hands on
demo of using some of thisgenerative technology that
they're trying to roll out.
Very interesting, loved thecollaboration, had a chance to
speak with a lot of otherexperts in the field.
(01:29):
And it's incredible how quickthis space is moving.
Andreas Welsch (01:32):
Wonderful.
I'm glad we get just the rightperson for this conversation and
with the latest information too.
Hey folks for those of you whoare just joining the stream,
please drop a comment in thechat where you're joining us
from.
I'm always curious to see howglobal our audience is.
And also don't forget to get theAI Leadership Handbook on
AIleadershiphandbook.
com.
(01:52):
So you can check it out.
Learn how you can turntechnology hype into outcome.
It's actually based on thispodcast and livestream.
And more than 60 leaders haveshared.
Jeremy Gilliland (02:02):
It got me, too.
I got the book.
It's already working.
It's already working.
Andreas Welsch (02:05):
Awesome.
Fantastic.
That's awesome.
Now, what do you say?
Should we play a little game tokick things off?
Jeremy Gilliland (02:13):
That's part of the reason I wanted to join.
Hit me with it.
Andreas Welsch (02:16):
This game is called In Your Own Words, and,
it's all about coming up withthe first thing that comes to
mind, and why, in your ownwords.
You have about 60 seconds foryour answer to make it a little
more interesting, keeping an eyeon the clock here.
And for those of you watching uslive as well, please put your
answer in the chat too, curiousto see what you come up with.
(02:39):
Are you ready for What's theBUZZ?
Jeremy Gilliland (02:41):
Yes, I'm ready.
Andreas Welsch (02:42):
If AI were a sports car, what would it be?
60 seconds on the clock.
Jeremy Gilliland (02:49):
Oh, man, that's a good one.
I haven't seen this one.
I would say if I were a sportscar, I'm going to have to go
with future state, right?
And yeah, This might sound alittle awkward because of its
size, but why don't we go with aPorsche Macan?
I think that, yeah, because ifyou're thinking about sports
car, it's not something that'straditional, right?
Even though you could put it upagainst a supercar, and if you
(03:09):
have a Macan turbo, it'sdefinitely going to hit those
high speeds.
But also there's enough room tobring yourselves and others,
right?
So it's a sleeper, it looks likesomething you'd be taking your
kids to soccer in, but it hasevery bit of technology that
you'd expect.
Yeah, and plus on top of it ithas that extra go, which you
wouldn't anticipate.
So I'd have to say that frombeing on the spot, and I didn't
(03:32):
get this question ahead of time,so I'm going to stick with that,
the Porsche Macan.
Andreas Welsch (03:36):
I love that.
A great answer, especially thepart about bringing more people
along and bringing your family.
Family long, I think is supercritical and super key.
Now moving on from sports carsto the other kind of technology
that we'll talk about, AI.
I think for the last two years,if we look at the industry,
generative AI has been gettingall the attention after RPA has
(03:59):
matured and after it's provenits value in the tool belt.
And vendors have been superquick to pivot towards AI and
GenAI, and we've always done AI,these claims that we saw early
on and that we're still seeing,but I'm wondering in what ways
does generative AI actuallyexpand traditional robotic
process automation?
Jeremy Gilliland (04:20):
That's a good question, and I think that the
answer evolves, but if you takesomeone from myself as an
example who's been doing thisfor about a decade, automation's
always been around, whether it'smacros before we used the
platform tools, but I rememberthere used to be criteria,
right?
There were clear cut.
If your process involves makinga voice call out, that's not an
(04:42):
RPA initiative, right?
Or if it has to work inside of aCitrix environment where you
can't access the tools, right?
That was another reason we woulddisqualify it.
But I'd almost Take it a stepfurther and say that the
combination of these two is Theability to leverage RPA in all
of those use cases, right?
You couldn't have made a phonecall with RPA software
(05:04):
Historically, but now withgenerative AI you have something
where you have to respond to acustomer You're able to create
the messaging and have a robotcall your customer and have a
human like interaction a humanlike touch points and you're
able to combine that technologywith And I think that capability
definitely gives it thefunctionality to expand.
(05:25):
And then in this case, you'renot looking for overlap.
You're not trying to make onetool do something that it's not.
One group I'm a part of thatcomes up quite consistently is a
term called fit for purpose,right?
Fit for purpose.
And I think if you take thatinto mind, when you're thinking
about where it is, generativeAI, Enable RPA.
You can think of it in sort ofthose terms.
(05:46):
If there's something that RPAcan't do, guarantee you we're at
a stage now where generative AIcombined with RPA can do that
kind of stuff.
Andreas Welsch (05:53):
You said it's fit for purpose.
And I think the exciting partthat I am seeing is that it goes
beyond just mere automation ofrepetitive things, right?
First of all, it was a lot rulebased and we added AI and you
could bring in your documentsand more unstructured data.
Where are you seeing it goingnext?
And what does that combinationmean for IT and automation
(06:16):
leaders?
Jeremy Gilliland (06:17):
Very good point.
So I think the combination forIT and automation leaders, you
almost have to draw a line inthe sand, right?
And from that perspective, Ithink you have the group of
incumbents.
Right?
And that's anybody from a CIO,CTO, Chief Digital Officer,
whoever is in these positionsnow.
And then the people who aspireto be in those roles in the
(06:37):
future because your objectiveswill be different.
And so what that combinationmeans right now, I think that if
you draw a line in the sand,what it means for your
organization is speed to marketvalue is going to be phenomenal.
That's going to be a key driver.
And what I mean by that is thatwhen historically it had taken
days and months or weeks tobuild solutions, you're going to
(06:58):
see people to bring onlineproofs of concept or pilots, not
just automation, but generativeAI in combination with
automation in hours and days,right?
And so being able to manage thatkind of workflow is very
important, right?
And I think that if you're anincumbent and you're sitting in
these roles, Then trying to getyour house in order is probably
(07:19):
the biggest priority right now.
There's a lot of noise, right?
Not everybody has an opportunityto earn a degree in this space.
So if you have a lot ofinformation coming at you, it's
important that you realize thatwe're at this monumental shift
and the combination of bothautomation and generative
intelligence is going to be acombination that clearly refaces
(07:41):
what businesses look like.
You're not going to be able toget there today.
I think that's a bridge too bigto jump, but what you need to
do, and I think you've beenmentioning it with some of your
guests, is being able toidentify true value and target
that value and pilots to makesure that you're delivering
value that's connected to boardobjectives, that's connected to
your larger strategy.
(08:03):
And then from there, if you canfind ways to try to use these
technologies to shape whatyou're doing.
What your business looks liketomorrow, then you're getting a
step up.
But I think that will be thenext group.
If you're able to get your housein order and make sure that
you've done pilots to identifyvalue from there, I think that
this technology really have abig benefit.
Andreas Welsch (08:22):
I really like how you're framing this, and
especially coming back to,business value.
Maybe if I look at one of theresponses here in the chat, I
see Enes is saying RPA is dead.
I think that's a very verypolarizing point, and I would
love to pick up on that and getyour perspective.
(08:44):
Because I see on one hand, thereare traditional RPA vendors that
are adding AI in, and more AIare now talking about it.
Agentic AI is the next evolutionof their technology
capabilities.
And on the other hand, you havethe AI labs like Anthropic and
their computer use beta thatthey just showed, I think, last
(09:04):
week as well.
What are you seeing?
What are you thinking?
Are you seeing RPA vendors moveup?
Are you seeing traditional AIlabs moving down?
Will we still need both?
Will it be one that wins overthe other?
Is it too early to say?
Jeremy Gilliland (09:19):
Yeah, I think that from my perspective, we've
got to hit the pause button onthe right there.
I think that we've got to thedecision hasn't been made.
But what I will say is, When itcomes to the generative
component trying to do what RPAdoes I think that's going to be
a tough pill to swallow, right?
I feel like if you haveorganizations where their chief
(09:42):
information security officeralready doesn't know maybe how
to manage or support generativeAI, then asking it to do even
more than what it's doing,including RPA stuff might be a
big ask.
And if you just look athistorically, where did RPA It's
the long tail of automation, soit's what didn't get developed.
(10:02):
It's the features that got leftoff.
It's the functionality that thebusiness didn't get when they
asked for some of this to bebuilt.
So I, the, that will always bethere, right?
Because you're bound by timeresources and the money that you
have and the quickest thing tochop are the features of
functionality.
So there's always going to bemore stuff to automate.
(10:22):
But is RPA dead?
I don't think that there was anyscenario when I questioned
people leading up to thepresentation I gave and forward.
I asked every single person Iinterviewed, I said, is RPA
dead?
It's the first thing I askedthem and zero people believe
that.
And that's whether they wereautomation practitioners or AI
practitioners making some ofthese models.
I think that the world is goingto be different, right?
(10:43):
It's not going to be just RPAand UiPath and even other people
who are doing AI trying to doautomation is.
is the proof that this space isalive and well.
I think they're fighting formarket share.
You, as you well know, it's hardto take AI and bring it to a
business and run it long term ifyou're not generating value.
They know they can generatevalue doing what automation does
(11:05):
because we've already provedthat as you mentioned in the
first question, right?
So I believe that, RPA is aliveand well.
It won't look like what it didhistorically and it won't look
like what it does today.
It's going to be a mash up ofthis, but there'll be plenty of
stuff for, practitioners to workon.
Andreas Welsch (11:20):
I think that's very comforting and very
assuring to, to, to those whoare strong in the intelligent
automation space and, seeingwhere, this goes now from, what
you've seen at forward and, whatyou're seeing others do in, the
industry, why, do we even needboth technologies together and
how do they benefit from theintegration with one another?
Jeremy Gilliland (11:44):
So I'll go in on this is I touched on it my
last point, right?
And I think that you take itfrom a CISO perspective, right?
If you're not familiar withCISO, chief information security
officer, right?
Though, how what we know abouthow these generative models
create responses is, limited inscope, right?
It takes a lot of compute to beable to decipher how it got to a
(12:08):
response, even though we knowthe architecture.
And if you put that inperspective with what's going on
with automation, as an exampleof UiPath's orchestration, I
think Gartner put out Boat orsomething, right?
There are different models onhow we're going to manage this.
I don't think that there needsto be individual COEs that kind
of run this, right?
You need to take all of yourtechnology we talked about,
(12:30):
Reducing tech stack, right?
And I think that this is goingto give leaders a phenomenal
capability to minimize their,technology.
But what automation does, andwe've been proving this out for
years, is it gives youtraceability, reproducibility,
and capability to be able tomanage other technologies, not
just But if you put in AI how doyou get from that model?
(12:53):
That's not just being aproductivity assistant in
Microsoft PowerPoint or word,but actually something that
every employee uses, there needsto be a vector, right?
There needs to be a mode totransmit the capabilities to the
employee.
And then on the back end.
From a technology perspective,you want to understand metrics
and utilization.
(13:13):
And then also from security, asI started off with, you want to
be able to track and havetraceability there.
And automation already hassomething that's well managed
and well developed to be able toaccomplish that means.
So even if the automation.
need, if you will, reducesbecause of what generative AI
can do.
(13:33):
I think that there's a bigquestion on how do we manage it?
How do we deploy it?
How do we maintain traceabilityon who's using it and what
they're asking?
I think that automation is thatperfect layer that it gives you
the trust and confidence to beable to deploy those solutions
at scale, which I'm not reallyseeing anything out there today.
And maybe I haven't seenanything yet that really gives
you a streamlined way to, tomanage all of that
(13:57):
orchestration.
Andreas Welsch (13:58):
Now, there are two questions that come to mind
with that.
One is, you talked aboutbusiness value earlier.
What does it mean in concreteterms, right?
We love to throw around this,phrase or this term of, it needs
to create value, but what doesit actually mean when you look
at something like intelligentautomation or even intelligent
automation with AI, with agentsthat the next level Stuff that
(14:23):
they were talking about.
What does value look like?
Jeremy Gilliland (14:26):
Excellent question, right?
And this is going to be Businessspecific, right?
It has to be tied to whateveryour business is, right?
For instance, my organization,very strategically, on a certain
timeframe, we come up with a 10year goal or a 10 year
objective.
Where do you want to be in 5years or 10 years?
And more or less, when youcascade that, that objective
(14:49):
down, you have to meet certainmetrics or create certain value
in order to achieve thatobjective.
And so when it comes togenerating value, that will be
different to your organization.
But what I promise you it's not,is it's something that's not
generating value for yourorganization.
If you're not deploying thistool, in a way that's helping
you get to where you want to bein 2030, then that's a clear
(15:10):
demonstration of it not beingvaluable.
And that doesn't mean it doesn'tgenerate some type of value.
It's just not the value that'sgoing to turn the key on your
organization and help you getwhere you want to go.
Yeah, we already talked aboutcopilots.
We know about assistants, right?
They're all there, but is thatgoing to be the transformational
value that helps you get whereyou wanted to go?
Probably not.
So that's hopefully I gave you agood snapshot on how you can
(15:31):
define value in yourorganization.
Andreas Welsch (15:34):
Thanks for sharing that.
I think that that makes it moreconcrete.
And again the call to action toalign your.
AI and automation strategy withyour business strategy and don't
do it in isolation the usualthings that we talk about, don't
chase the shiny object and soon.
But I'm also wondering ifthere's more AI, more gen AI,
(15:55):
more agentic AI, whatever youwant to call that the next
evolution being embedded intoRPA.
What's your perspective onincreasing robustness and
resilience on one hand.
I see that we might beintroducing additional failure
points, right?
If we don't know if it's rightall the time, every time.
(16:16):
Maybe not.
But on the other hand, if weknow that the underlying
applications and UI, it changesas well from time to time, and
your bots break, do you feel itincreases resilience, or do you
feel it introduces more, failurepoints at this point?
And again, looking at thecrystal ball, I don't know if
anybody has the right answer,but I'm curious what you're
seeing.
Jeremy Gilliland (16:37):
I, from what I'm, from what I'm hearing and
what I'm seeing in applicationand a lot, some of this is still
theory, right?
As you mentioned, it's notsomething that is universal
across different industries.
But I think that not only, we'vetalked about generative AI and
the value that it create, inisolation.
But as you mentioned when,they're combined, what does it,
(16:59):
what do we get out of that?
And I think that.
Actually, instead of havingbroken bot syndrome, which I if
anybody's been working in thisspace you know exactly what I
mean, no matter how good yourprogram is, you need governance
and you need some of thoseguardrails, even just
automation.
And these tools are pretty muchdrag and drop nowadays.
So I don't think that paradigmshifts.
(17:20):
If anything, it's more importantto have that support mechanism
for generative AI.
But what I do think, and oddlyenough, when you combined it,
that generative AI fixes some ofAI's biggest issues like broken,
broken bot syndrome.
I've already seen some inpreview, not quite general
release capabilities to whereselector fixes adjustments on
(17:41):
the back ends.
And if you and, you're beingfrom SAP, you're quite familiar,
I'm sure with jewel and wherethey're headed with this, I see
a world where our automationsare talking to other automations
that have gen AI capabilities,where these things are fixed on
the fly, right now.
We have to be careful, right?
Because if you're talking abouta selector that was supposed to
(18:01):
cancel a payment, fixing it now,making a payment, right?
We might have some risks.
But I think all in all,obviously, that's again, back to
guardrails and testing andmaking sure that it's doing what
it's supposed to do.
But I see this as an overhaulenhancement once we get the
guardrails in place to be ableto support both programs.
Automation will enhancegenerative AI deployments.
Generative AI will enhance thevalue that your automation
(18:24):
programs bring, in myperspective.
Andreas Welsch (18:26):
Awesome.
And from what I'm envisioningalso, building on this is at
some point, your agents will hita roadblock when there's no API
when they're, yes, they can takea screenshot off of the screen
that they're seeing.
Anticipate what should I beentering there, but most likely
(18:48):
at some point that is not goingto be 100%, so you need some
robust and proven technologythat can automate the repeatable
steps in that process.
Meaning something like RoboticProcess Automation.
By the way, I see Viniciusposting in the chat, I don't
think RPA is dead.
So good, another supporter.
(19:08):
And rather, things are evolving.
I think that mirrors what youshared as well.
So now we have more tools tointegrate with our bots and more
opportunities to improveprocesses.
for sharing that, by the way.
That's wonderful.
Now, Building on the thingsyou've shared so far, yes, there
are two capabilities, theybenefit from integrating with
(19:30):
one another.
They will need one anotherdefinitely in the foreseeable
future.
What do you recommend AIleaders, automation leaders, to
do?
need to be aware of right nowand need to be doing.
What's the the one, two, threethings that are really top of
mind to either ride this wave orstay ahead of it or, I'm really
(19:53):
curious what, do you see in yourrole there?
Jeremy Gilliland (19:56):
I think that one thing that I would really
recommend is understanding thatwe're certain we're currently in
a timeline or a timeframe wherea term called technical lag is
incredibly prevalent.
So if you're not familiar withthe term technical lag, it's
basically this concept where allof our technologies and the
(20:16):
tools we use to create them areevolving at such a rapid pace.
That's humankind and our brains,right?
We can't quite keep up and wecan't quite envision how to
fully maximize the potential ofall these tools.
We're just fumbling around.
And if you take that intoperspective, and you combine
that with the fact that AIitself is a not a GPT, yes, but
(20:39):
a general purpose technologythat's going to have fundamental
impact.
You can imagine the impact thatelectricity had.
On society and the impact thatthe Internet had on businesses
and you mash those together in aHadron Collider.
That's what generative AI is.
And I think that we're justscratching the surface.
(20:59):
So one be aware that there'sthis concept called technology
lag, and we aren't quite awareof what we can do.
But I promise you that you cansee this as an example with the
adoption of automation programs.
I've helped organizations saveover 200 million in the last
decade, and I still meetmultiple organizations and even
(21:20):
some of those that don't scalethe program throughout the
organization.
So there's huge amounts ofmissed value.
So I think if you understandthat we're in the situation
where there's all sorts of toolsthat can do pretty much
everything, then being verystrategic and how you pick those
tools is going to be paramount.
Money doesn't grow on trees,right?
So if you miss swing and you betbig on some just generative AI
(21:42):
solution alone or onlyautomation, you will quickly
find yourself a year or twobehind trying to recoup those,
the value from those projectsand then invest it back in this.
So definitely be aware of thatterm and try to understand
what's the best value you canget around the tools that you
have in the space.
Andreas Welsch (21:59):
Now, if you also combine the technology lag with
the technology depth.
Did you know?
I'm wondering if that alsobecomes a technology drag
because it gets more difficultto innovate if even your
foundation has some catching upto do.
Jeremy Gilliland (22:17):
You gave me ideas for a book.
Don't don't, tell me too much,Andreas.
Andreas Welsch (22:21):
Hey we're, getting close to the end of the
show and I was wondering if youcan summarize the key three
takeaways for our audiencetoday.
Jeremy Gilliland (22:27):
Yeah, absolutely.
So from my perspective, I thinkthat the three major takeaways
from this conversation if youhad to summarize it or distill
it is one that in the futurestate RPA need each other,
right?
The marriage needs to beharmonious.
And if you do that, I think thatthe people will, there'll be
bigger wins than trying toleverage these technologies in
(22:49):
isolation and your managementwill also 2X.
I think the second takeaway is,that not only will this.
Technology transform how we dobusiness.
I believe that this technologywill have a fundamental
transformation on just businessmodels in general.
So while you try to, as Imentioned, get your house in
order to be able to leveragethese technologies, consider.
(23:11):
What ways you can reshape yourbusiness with these technologies
because they'll be thattransformative.
And lastly, recognize thatthere's a technology lag out
there, and there's all sorts oftech that you have.
A lot of them can do the samething.
But if you can minimize yourtech stack and have an
automation platform, plus atechnology like generative AI
that buffers and supports all ofthe blank spaces that the
(23:34):
automation program You runcurrently doesn't do, I think
between those three points,you'll definitely be well on
your way to getting where youneed to be as long as you take
those and you read Andres bookand put those together, then
you'll definitely be where youneed to be.
Andreas Welsch (23:49):
Awesome.
Jeremy, thank you so much forjoining us and for sharing your
experience with us.
And to those in the audience forlearning with us, it's always
exciting to see the differentperspectives and also, again,
from a global audience, whatwe're seeing around the globe.
Jeremy Gilliland (24:05):
Great.
Thank you so much for having me,Andreas.
I appreciate it.
Andreas Welsch (24:08):
Perfect.
Today, we'll talk about how generative AI
enables next level processautomation.
And who better to talk about itthan someone who's actively
working on that?
Jeremy Gilliland.
Hey, Jeremy, thank you so muchfor joining.
Jeremy Gilliland (00:11):
Hey, I'm doing well.
I'm glad to be here.
Thank you so much for theinvite.
Andreas Welsch (00:15):
Wonderful.
Hey, why don't you tell ouraudience a little bit about
yourself, who you are and whatyou do?
Jeremy Gilliland (00:19):
Yeah, no, thank you.
My name is Jeremy Gilliland andcurrently I am the automation
platform team manager forSouthern Glaciers Wine and
Spirits.
I've been working in theintelligent automation space for
over a decade now, helpedmultiple organizations and
consulting practices grow theirprograms.
Prior to that, I spent over adecade in the military.
I was working in their spacefirst as an enlisted soldier and
(00:42):
then eventually as an officer.
I definitely have a passion fortechnology, starting all the way
back when I was in high school,working with Cisco 1 and 2, as a
fan of this show, Andreas, Ihave to say, I've been watching
for a long time, and I'm sothankful for this opportunity.
I can't wait to dive in.
Andreas Welsch (00:57):
Awesome.
It's great to have you on.
Thank you for making the time,and I know you Actually, just
come back from a pretty bigindustry event last week, right?
Jeremy Gilliland (01:06):
Yeah, it was a UiPath marquee event here in the
States called Forward TechEdDay.
I had an opportunity to give aspeech there, if you will, a
presentation about this sametopic, as well as a hands on
demo of using some of thisgenerative technology that
they're trying to roll out.
Very interesting, loved thecollaboration, had a chance to
speak with a lot of otherexperts in the field.
(01:29):
And it's incredible how quickthis space is moving.
Andreas Welsch (01:32):
Wonderful.
I'm glad we get just the rightperson for this conversation and
with the latest information too.
Hey folks for those of you whoare just joining the stream,
please drop a comment in thechat where you're joining us
from.
I'm always curious to see howglobal our audience is.
And also don't forget to get theAI Leadership Handbook on
AIleadershiphandbook.
com.
(01:52):
So you can check it out.
Learn how you can turntechnology hype into outcome.
It's actually based on thispodcast and livestream.
And more than 60 leaders haveshared.
Jeremy Gilliland (02:02):
It got me, too.
I got the book.
It's already working.
It's already working.
Andreas Welsch (02:05):
Awesome.
Fantastic.
That's awesome.
Now, what do you say?
Should we play a little game tokick things off?
Jeremy Gilliland (02:13):
That's part of the reason I wanted to join.
Hit me with it.
Andreas Welsch (02:16):
This game is called In Your Own Words, and,
it's all about coming up withthe first thing that comes to
mind, and why, in your ownwords.
You have about 60 seconds foryour answer to make it a little
more interesting, keeping an eyeon the clock here.
And for those of you watching uslive as well, please put your
answer in the chat too, curiousto see what you come up with.
(02:39):
Are you ready for What's theBUZZ?
Jeremy Gilliland (02:41):
Yes, I'm ready.
Andreas Welsch (02:42):
If AI were a sports car, what would it be?
60 seconds on the clock.
Jeremy Gilliland (02:49):
Oh, man, that's a good one.
I haven't seen this one.
I would say if I were a sportscar, I'm going to have to go
with future state, right?
And yeah, This might sound alittle awkward because of its
size, but why don't we go with aPorsche Macan?
I think that, yeah, because ifyou're thinking about sports
car, it's not something that'straditional, right?
Even though you could put it upagainst a supercar, and if you
(03:09):
have a Macan turbo, it'sdefinitely going to hit those
high speeds.
But also there's enough room tobring yourselves and others,
right?
So it's a sleeper, it looks likesomething you'd be taking your
kids to soccer in, but it hasevery bit of technology that
you'd expect.
Yeah, and plus on top of it ithas that extra go, which you
wouldn't anticipate.
So I'd have to say that frombeing on the spot, and I didn't
(03:32):
get this question ahead of time,so I'm going to stick with that,
the Porsche Macan.
Andreas Welsch (03:36):
I love that.
A great answer, especially thepart about bringing more people
along and bringing your family.
Family long, I think is supercritical and super key.
Now moving on from sports carsto the other kind of technology
that we'll talk about, AI.
I think for the last two years,if we look at the industry,
generative AI has been gettingall the attention after RPA has
(03:59):
matured and after it's provenits value in the tool belt.
And vendors have been superquick to pivot towards AI and
GenAI, and we've always done AI,these claims that we saw early
on and that we're still seeing,but I'm wondering in what ways
does generative AI actuallyexpand traditional robotic
process automation?
Jeremy Gilliland (04:20):
That's a good question, and I think that the
answer evolves, but if you takesomeone from myself as an
example who's been doing thisfor about a decade, automation's
always been around, whether it'smacros before we used the
platform tools, but I rememberthere used to be criteria,
right?
There were clear cut.
If your process involves makinga voice call out, that's not an
(04:42):
RPA initiative, right?
Or if it has to work inside of aCitrix environment where you
can't access the tools, right?
That was another reason we woulddisqualify it.
But I'd almost Take it a stepfurther and say that the
combination of these two is Theability to leverage RPA in all
of those use cases, right?
You couldn't have made a phonecall with RPA software
(05:04):
Historically, but now withgenerative AI you have something
where you have to respond to acustomer You're able to create
the messaging and have a robotcall your customer and have a
human like interaction a humanlike touch points and you're
able to combine that technologywith And I think that capability
definitely gives it thefunctionality to expand.
(05:25):
And then in this case, you'renot looking for overlap.
You're not trying to make onetool do something that it's not.
One group I'm a part of thatcomes up quite consistently is a
term called fit for purpose,right?
Fit for purpose.
And I think if you take thatinto mind, when you're thinking
about where it is, generativeAI, Enable RPA.
You can think of it in sort ofthose terms.
(05:46):
If there's something that RPAcan't do, guarantee you we're at
a stage now where generative AIcombined with RPA can do that
kind of stuff.
Andreas Welsch (05:53):
You said it's fit for purpose.
And I think the exciting partthat I am seeing is that it goes
beyond just mere automation ofrepetitive things, right?
First of all, it was a lot rulebased and we added AI and you
could bring in your documentsand more unstructured data.
Where are you seeing it goingnext?
And what does that combinationmean for IT and automation
(06:16):
leaders?
Jeremy Gilliland (06:17):
Very good point.
So I think the combination forIT and automation leaders, you
almost have to draw a line inthe sand, right?
And from that perspective, Ithink you have the group of
incumbents.
Right?
And that's anybody from a CIO,CTO, Chief Digital Officer,
whoever is in these positionsnow.
And then the people who aspireto be in those roles in the
(06:37):
future because your objectiveswill be different.
And so what that combinationmeans right now, I think that if
you draw a line in the sand,what it means for your
organization is speed to marketvalue is going to be phenomenal.
That's going to be a key driver.
And what I mean by that is thatwhen historically it had taken
days and months or weeks tobuild solutions, you're going to
(06:58):
see people to bring onlineproofs of concept or pilots, not
just automation, but generativeAI in combination with
automation in hours and days,right?
And so being able to manage thatkind of workflow is very
important, right?
And I think that if you're anincumbent and you're sitting in
these roles, Then trying to getyour house in order is probably
(07:19):
the biggest priority right now.
There's a lot of noise, right?
Not everybody has an opportunityto earn a degree in this space.
So if you have a lot ofinformation coming at you, it's
important that you realize thatwe're at this monumental shift
and the combination of bothautomation and generative
intelligence is going to be acombination that clearly refaces
(07:41):
what businesses look like.
You're not going to be able toget there today.
I think that's a bridge too bigto jump, but what you need to
do, and I think you've beenmentioning it with some of your
guests, is being able toidentify true value and target
that value and pilots to makesure that you're delivering
value that's connected to boardobjectives, that's connected to
your larger strategy.
(08:03):
And then from there, if you canfind ways to try to use these
technologies to shape whatyou're doing.
What your business looks liketomorrow, then you're getting a
step up.
But I think that will be thenext group.
If you're able to get your housein order and make sure that
you've done pilots to identifyvalue from there, I think that
this technology really have abig benefit.
Andreas Welsch (08:22):
I really like how you're framing this, and
especially coming back to,business value.
Maybe if I look at one of theresponses here in the chat, I
see Enes is saying RPA is dead.
I think that's a very verypolarizing point, and I would
love to pick up on that and getyour perspective.
(08:44):
Because I see on one hand, thereare traditional RPA vendors that
are adding AI in, and more AIare now talking about it.
Agentic AI is the next evolutionof their technology
capabilities.
And on the other hand, you havethe AI labs like Anthropic and
their computer use beta thatthey just showed, I think, last
(09:04):
week as well.
What are you seeing?
What are you thinking?
Are you seeing RPA vendors moveup?
Are you seeing traditional AIlabs moving down?
Will we still need both?
Will it be one that wins overthe other?
Is it too early to say?
Jeremy Gilliland (09:19):
Yeah, I think that from my perspective, we've
got to hit the pause button onthe right there.
I think that we've got to thedecision hasn't been made.
But what I will say is, When itcomes to the generative
component trying to do what RPAdoes I think that's going to be
a tough pill to swallow, right?
I feel like if you haveorganizations where their chief
(09:42):
information security officeralready doesn't know maybe how
to manage or support generativeAI, then asking it to do even
more than what it's doing,including RPA stuff might be a
big ask.
And if you just look athistorically, where did RPA It's
the long tail of automation, soit's what didn't get developed.
(10:02):
It's the features that got leftoff.
It's the functionality that thebusiness didn't get when they
asked for some of this to bebuilt.
So I, the, that will always bethere, right?
Because you're bound by timeresources and the money that you
have and the quickest thing tochop are the features of
functionality.
So there's always going to bemore stuff to automate.
(10:22):
But is RPA dead?
I don't think that there was anyscenario when I questioned
people leading up to thepresentation I gave and forward.
I asked every single person Iinterviewed, I said, is RPA
dead?
It's the first thing I askedthem and zero people believe
that.
And that's whether they wereautomation practitioners or AI
practitioners making some ofthese models.
I think that the world is goingto be different, right?
(10:43):
It's not going to be just RPAand UiPath and even other people
who are doing AI trying to doautomation is.
is the proof that this space isalive and well.
I think they're fighting formarket share.
You, as you well know, it's hardto take AI and bring it to a
business and run it long term ifyou're not generating value.
They know they can generatevalue doing what automation does
(11:05):
because we've already provedthat as you mentioned in the
first question, right?
So I believe that, RPA is aliveand well.
It won't look like what it didhistorically and it won't look
like what it does today.
It's going to be a mash up ofthis, but there'll be plenty of
stuff for, practitioners to workon.
Andreas Welsch (11:20):
I think that's very comforting and very
assuring to, to, to those whoare strong in the intelligent
automation space and, seeingwhere, this goes now from, what
you've seen at forward and, whatyou're seeing others do in, the
industry, why, do we even needboth technologies together and
how do they benefit from theintegration with one another?
Jeremy Gilliland (11:44):
So I'll go in on this is I touched on it my
last point, right?
And I think that you take itfrom a CISO perspective, right?
If you're not familiar withCISO, chief information security
officer, right?
Though, how what we know abouthow these generative models
create responses is, limited inscope, right?
It takes a lot of compute to beable to decipher how it got to a
(12:08):
response, even though we knowthe architecture.
And if you put that inperspective with what's going on
with automation, as an exampleof UiPath's orchestration, I
think Gartner put out Boat orsomething, right?
There are different models onhow we're going to manage this.
I don't think that there needsto be individual COEs that kind
of run this, right?
You need to take all of yourtechnology we talked about,
(12:30):
Reducing tech stack, right?
And I think that this is goingto give leaders a phenomenal
capability to minimize their,technology.
But what automation does, andwe've been proving this out for
years, is it gives youtraceability, reproducibility,
and capability to be able tomanage other technologies, not
just But if you put in AI how doyou get from that model?
(12:53):
That's not just being aproductivity assistant in
Microsoft PowerPoint or word,but actually something that
every employee uses, there needsto be a vector, right?
There needs to be a mode totransmit the capabilities to the
employee.
And then on the back end.
From a technology perspective,you want to understand metrics
and utilization.
(13:13):
And then also from security, asI started off with, you want to
be able to track and havetraceability there.
And automation already hassomething that's well managed
and well developed to be able toaccomplish that means.
So even if the automation.
need, if you will, reducesbecause of what generative AI
can do.
(13:33):
I think that there's a bigquestion on how do we manage it?
How do we deploy it?
How do we maintain traceabilityon who's using it and what
they're asking?
I think that automation is thatperfect layer that it gives you
the trust and confidence to beable to deploy those solutions
at scale, which I'm not reallyseeing anything out there today.
And maybe I haven't seenanything yet that really gives
you a streamlined way to, tomanage all of that
(13:57):
orchestration.
Andreas Welsch (13:58):
Now, there are two questions that come to mind
with that.
One is, you talked aboutbusiness value earlier.
What does it mean in concreteterms, right?
We love to throw around this,phrase or this term of, it needs
to create value, but what doesit actually mean when you look
at something like intelligentautomation or even intelligent
automation with AI, with agentsthat the next level Stuff that
(14:23):
they were talking about.
What does value look like?
Jeremy Gilliland (14:26):
Excellent question, right?
And this is going to be Businessspecific, right?
It has to be tied to whateveryour business is, right?
For instance, my organization,very strategically, on a certain
timeframe, we come up with a 10year goal or a 10 year
objective.
Where do you want to be in 5years or 10 years?
And more or less, when youcascade that, that objective
(14:49):
down, you have to meet certainmetrics or create certain value
in order to achieve thatobjective.
And so when it comes togenerating value, that will be
different to your organization.
But what I promise you it's not,is it's something that's not
generating value for yourorganization.
If you're not deploying thistool, in a way that's helping
you get to where you want to bein 2030, then that's a clear
(15:10):
demonstration of it not beingvaluable.
And that doesn't mean it doesn'tgenerate some type of value.
It's just not the value that'sgoing to turn the key on your
organization and help you getwhere you want to go.
Yeah, we already talked aboutcopilots.
We know about assistants, right?
They're all there, but is thatgoing to be the transformational
value that helps you get whereyou wanted to go?
Probably not.
So that's hopefully I gave you agood snapshot on how you can
(15:31):
define value in yourorganization.
Andreas Welsch (15:34):
Thanks for sharing that.
I think that that makes it moreconcrete.
And again the call to action toalign your.
AI and automation strategy withyour business strategy and don't
do it in isolation the usualthings that we talk about, don't
chase the shiny object and soon.
But I'm also wondering ifthere's more AI, more gen AI,
(15:55):
more agentic AI, whatever youwant to call that the next
evolution being embedded intoRPA.
What's your perspective onincreasing robustness and
resilience on one hand.
I see that we might beintroducing additional failure
points, right?
If we don't know if it's rightall the time, every time.
(16:16):
Maybe not.
But on the other hand, if weknow that the underlying
applications and UI, it changesas well from time to time, and
your bots break, do you feel itincreases resilience, or do you
feel it introduces more, failurepoints at this point?
And again, looking at thecrystal ball, I don't know if
anybody has the right answer,but I'm curious what you're
seeing.
Jeremy Gilliland (16:37):
I, from what I'm, from what I'm hearing and
what I'm seeing in applicationand a lot, some of this is still
theory, right?
As you mentioned, it's notsomething that is universal
across different industries.
But I think that not only, we'vetalked about generative AI and
the value that it create, inisolation.
But as you mentioned when,they're combined, what does it,
(16:59):
what do we get out of that?
And I think that.
Actually, instead of havingbroken bot syndrome, which I if
anybody's been working in thisspace you know exactly what I
mean, no matter how good yourprogram is, you need governance
and you need some of thoseguardrails, even just
automation.
And these tools are pretty muchdrag and drop nowadays.
So I don't think that paradigmshifts.
(17:20):
If anything, it's more importantto have that support mechanism
for generative AI.
But what I do think, and oddlyenough, when you combined it,
that generative AI fixes some ofAI's biggest issues like broken,
broken bot syndrome.
I've already seen some inpreview, not quite general
release capabilities to whereselector fixes adjustments on
(17:41):
the back ends.
And if you and, you're beingfrom SAP, you're quite familiar,
I'm sure with jewel and wherethey're headed with this, I see
a world where our automationsare talking to other automations
that have gen AI capabilities,where these things are fixed on
the fly, right now.
We have to be careful, right?
Because if you're talking abouta selector that was supposed to
(18:01):
cancel a payment, fixing it now,making a payment, right?
We might have some risks.
But I think all in all,obviously, that's again, back to
guardrails and testing andmaking sure that it's doing what
it's supposed to do.
But I see this as an overhaulenhancement once we get the
guardrails in place to be ableto support both programs.
Automation will enhancegenerative AI deployments.
Generative AI will enhance thevalue that your automation
(18:24):
programs bring, in myperspective.
Andreas Welsch (18:26):
Awesome.
And from what I'm envisioningalso, building on this is at
some point, your agents will hita roadblock when there's no API
when they're, yes, they can takea screenshot off of the screen
that they're seeing.
Anticipate what should I beentering there, but most likely
(18:48):
at some point that is not goingto be 100%, so you need some
robust and proven technologythat can automate the repeatable
steps in that process.
Meaning something like RoboticProcess Automation.
By the way, I see Viniciusposting in the chat, I don't
think RPA is dead.
So good, another supporter.
(19:08):
And rather, things are evolving.
I think that mirrors what youshared as well.
So now we have more tools tointegrate with our bots and more
opportunities to improveprocesses.
for sharing that, by the way.
That's wonderful.
Now, Building on the thingsyou've shared so far, yes, there
are two capabilities, theybenefit from integrating with
(19:30):
one another.
They will need one anotherdefinitely in the foreseeable
future.
What do you recommend AIleaders, automation leaders, to
do?
need to be aware of right nowand need to be doing.
What's the the one, two, threethings that are really top of
mind to either ride this wave orstay ahead of it or, I'm really
(19:53):
curious what, do you see in yourrole there?
Jeremy Gilliland (19:56):
I think that one thing that I would really
recommend is understanding thatwe're certain we're currently in
a timeline or a timeframe wherea term called technical lag is
incredibly prevalent.
So if you're not familiar withthe term technical lag, it's
basically this concept where allof our technologies and the
(20:16):
tools we use to create them areevolving at such a rapid pace.
That's humankind and our brains,right?
We can't quite keep up and wecan't quite envision how to
fully maximize the potential ofall these tools.
We're just fumbling around.
And if you take that intoperspective, and you combine
that with the fact that AIitself is a not a GPT, yes, but
(20:39):
a general purpose technologythat's going to have fundamental
impact.
You can imagine the impact thatelectricity had.
On society and the impact thatthe Internet had on businesses
and you mash those together in aHadron Collider.
That's what generative AI is.
And I think that we're justscratching the surface.
(20:59):
So one be aware that there'sthis concept called technology
lag, and we aren't quite awareof what we can do.
But I promise you that you cansee this as an example with the
adoption of automation programs.
I've helped organizations saveover 200 million in the last
decade, and I still meetmultiple organizations and even
(21:20):
some of those that don't scalethe program throughout the
organization.
So there's huge amounts ofmissed value.
So I think if you understandthat we're in the situation
where there's all sorts of toolsthat can do pretty much
everything, then being verystrategic and how you pick those
tools is going to be paramount.
Money doesn't grow on trees,right?
So if you miss swing and you betbig on some just generative AI
(21:42):
solution alone or onlyautomation, you will quickly
find yourself a year or twobehind trying to recoup those,
the value from those projectsand then invest it back in this.
So definitely be aware of thatterm and try to understand
what's the best value you canget around the tools that you
have in the space.
Andreas Welsch (21:59):
Now, if you also combine the technology lag with
the technology depth.
Did you know?
I'm wondering if that alsobecomes a technology drag
because it gets more difficultto innovate if even your
foundation has some catching upto do.
Jeremy Gilliland (22:17):
You gave me ideas for a book.
Don't don't, tell me too much,Andreas.
Andreas Welsch (22:21):
Hey we're, getting close to the end of the
show and I was wondering if youcan summarize the key three
takeaways for our audiencetoday.
Jeremy Gilliland (22:27):
Yeah, absolutely.
So from my perspective, I thinkthat the three major takeaways
from this conversation if youhad to summarize it or distill
it is one that in the futurestate RPA need each other,
right?
The marriage needs to beharmonious.
And if you do that, I think thatthe people will, there'll be
bigger wins than trying toleverage these technologies in
(22:49):
isolation and your managementwill also 2X.
I think the second takeaway is,that not only will this.
Technology transform how we dobusiness.
I believe that this technologywill have a fundamental
transformation on just businessmodels in general.
So while you try to, as Imentioned, get your house in
order to be able to leveragethese technologies, consider.
(23:11):
What ways you can reshape yourbusiness with these technologies
because they'll be thattransformative.
And lastly, recognize thatthere's a technology lag out
there, and there's all sorts oftech that you have.
A lot of them can do the samething.
But if you can minimize yourtech stack and have an
automation platform, plus atechnology like generative AI
that buffers and supports all ofthe blank spaces that the
(23:34):
automation program You runcurrently doesn't do, I think
between those three points,you'll definitely be well on
your way to getting where youneed to be as long as you take
those and you read Andres bookand put those together, then
you'll definitely be where youneed to be.
Andreas Welsch (23:49):
Awesome.
Jeremy, thank you so much forjoining us and for sharing your
experience with us.
And to those in the audience forlearning with us, it's always
exciting to see the differentperspectives and also, again,
from a global audience, whatwe're seeing around the globe.
Jeremy Gilliland (24:05):
Great.
Thank you so much for having me,Andreas.
I appreciate it.
Andreas Welsch (24:08):
Perfect.
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