Mike Binder, Vice President of Global Services at UiPath, explains that many businesses struggle to grasp the full capabilities of RPA:

“Customers are eager to explore AI and related technologies but find it difficult to imagine the possibilities beyond their existing RPA operation. Our Automation First Immersion Labs simulate an experience of what lies ahead of automation; empowering our customers and partners to make informed decisions to advance to the next level of their business strategy.”

Described by UIPath’s chief product officer as “the ideal playground for customers and partners to rapidly develop new business ideas”, the lab is essentially a space for companies to explore “the art of the possible” of RPA for their business.

With the lab currently located in Bucharest in Romania, similar facilities are due to be established in London, New York, Seattle and Tokyo throughout 2019.

Inspired by the labs operated by Google and Microsoft, in the immersion lab, participants have the chance to experience an automation-first workplace, demonstrating how attended and unattended automation works. The lab has been built with pre-installed and ready-to-use showcases involving emerging technologies from the UiPath partner ecosystem.

Head of robotics at UiPath Boris Krumrey believes that experiencing what automation can offer can trigger an “automation-first” mindset in colleagues: “How can we get the automation-first thought into something really practical that customers can experience? What we’re trying to do in the lab is invite our customers and show them the cases and give them a feel of what it really means.”

The lab is designed to mimic an automation-first workplace, set up to demonstrate some of UiPath’s artificial intelligence offerings. The company believes that it is vital for organisations to “thoroughly assess opportunities, test different scenarios and plan ahead”, and so have created a physical space to do this.

The technologies on show demonstrate how everyday office tasks can benefit from AI. Skymind, an AI deep learning system that can be set up to scan CVs, shows how recruitment can be streamlined by shortlisting suitable candidates from hundreds of applications.

Intelligent optical character recognition means that companies can use AI to process hand-written documents, such as invoices, which would’ve previously required human input.

UiPath also shows how chatbots can be used to simplify office communications, able to handle administrative tasks such as recording holiday leave requests and using machine learning to handle more complex queries.

It also showcased the differences between unattended and attended AI, and how the two combined could help achieve the company’s goal of providing every employee with their own AI assistant.

Image courtesy of UIPath

Krumrey explains that as well as pre-configured demos, companies have the option of working with UiPath to design and implement software to match their individual needs as a business through testing the technology using their own data. He believes that this provides a more authentic experience:

“In this area you see so many Mickey Mouse demos but for customers they will not look underneath to understand how you configure it, how you get it running, and how do you really apply it?”

In a standard service, a customer and their team would be shown various demos to demonstrate and would then discuss the next steps of implementing the technology. Immersion workshops allow customers to bring their own data, such as OCR documents or invoices, to test the technology.

Alternatively, immersion events are available for customers who want to invite all their stakeholders and all their automation leads and discuss the technology.

However, instead of UI Path taking the lead, the company also offers co-innovation projects, inviting organisations to come up with their own AI use cases.

Krumrey believes that it is important to listen to those who will be using the end product when the technology is in development: “If customers want to try something but they are not sure, we can develop a prototype as long as the output will be something that we can later on share in our marketplace.”

Ultimately, UiPath wants to offer companies the tools to build their own immersion labs: “We want to build our own lab to show our own employees how inspiring it can be. So we will offer a service of how to build their own lab and provide ready-to-use content that our partners can use in their own labs.”

But what will the impact of the technology be? Chief evangelist Guy Kirkwood explains that the aim of the technology is not to reduce staff numbers, but free up workers from boring and repetitive tasks and make use of their other skills.

In his words, “Organisations that started automation three years ago or two and a half years ago went into it with business cases predicated on job cuts. On headcount reduction. And they’re all wrong. Because that isn’t what happens. What happens is once you put in the automation, the value of the human capital, the value of the people in the organisations is much higher than these companies think.”

“It allows organisations to use their people more effectively, and it allows organisations to use their existing technology… it allows them to move their people up the value chain rather than replace them.”

Ultimately, he believes that the immersion labs can demonstrate the potential for organisations to use AI to improve employees working lives: “If we can bring joy back into work, that’s what we’re aiming for.”