UiPath FORWARD 5 was a resounding success, with partners, automation experts, and practitioners gathering to explore how automation accelerates human achievement and will continue moving forward.
Co-CEO Rob Enslin joined UiPath earlier this year, making this his first FORWARD conference. He brings a wealth of experience in the technology industry, having worked for prominent companies like SAP® and Google Cloud.
Rob helped kick off FORWARD 5 with the opening keynote, “Reboot and Reimagine Business Processes to Drive Automation-Fueled Business Outcomes.” He began by drawing parallels between those companies and the current UiPath opportunity:
“I’ve had the privilege of working at two great companies, SAP and Google, that were the defining technologies of their eras. Each enabled customers to drive costs down, drive productivity up, and drive innovation forward. To serve customers better, to grow faster, to deliver better business outcomes. And at UiPath, I get the chance to do it all again.”
Rob Enslin, Co-CEO, UiPath
Go big with automation
Rob went on to express his optimism for where automation is headed, saying “Like ERP [enterprise resource planning] in the ‘90s, the internet in the 2000s, and the cloud in the teens, automation is a game changer for this era.”
While robotic process automation (RPA) has helped individuals and companies delegate repetitive tasks to robots for years, this “new era” will be defined by automation being an engine of innovation.
Since joining UiPath, Rob explained that he’s had the privilege of meeting with over 100 customers from around the globe, as well as business and technology partners. These companies span industries such as healthcare, manufacturing, retail, and more.
Singapore unlocks automation’s potential
Rob shared an example from UiPath customer Changi Airport in Singapore, which is on the cusp of opening a massive new terminal. Rob explained that, by “thinking ‘automation first’,” they’ll be able to serve a stunning 50 million additional passengers per year without increasing headcount.
Elsewhere in Singapore, VITAL is the agency responsible for managing corporate shared services within the country’s Ministry of Finance. Citizen developers have been hard at work creating automations within the agency, and have improved productivity by 66%.
But the true power of automation can’t be realized in these separate functions. The Singapore government has taken automation to new heights by sharing knowledge across departments, enabling separate groups to learn from each other.
In total, the government employs over 100,000 people across 100 agencies, and plans to give each employee “instant access to standardized, ready-to-deploy robots and solutions.”
What both Changi Airport and VITAL have been able to achieve with automation has been remarkable, but the future looks even brighter as automation begins to spread across the entire government.
Uber, New York State, and UiPath
Rob went on to highlight more success stories, first with Uber. The ridesharing company told him that they predict “UiPath automation will deliver a 350% ROI in one year,” an incredible return in such a short time.
Then there was New York State, which found itself buried under a huge backlog of COVID relief claims. By employing automation, it was able to send out 1.2 million relief checks in just two weeks, while also identifying $12 billion in potential fraud.
Rob’s final customer story was about UiPath itself. As a rapidly growing company, being able to scale efficiently is necessary.
Within the UiPath Finance department, 25% of the workforce is now digital. And, since 2018, revenue has grown seven-fold, while headcount has only grown by 150%. In his words, “that’s scaling!”
Explore more ways we’re implementing and scaling automation in the UiPath Finance department.
Focusing on the “how”
Rob clarified that the real focus of those automation success stories is how they’re able to achieve such feats.
How can other organizations turn learnings into action, unleashing automation’s power throughout their companies? How can they turn automation into a “force multiplier for growth”?
After asking these questions to our most forward-thinking and successful customers, Rob noticed a common theme—they “go BIG with automation.”
For this group, automation isn’t just a tool they can use to automate tedious work. It’s part of their strategy, growth plans, and operating model.
“They’re successful at tapping into automation's power, because they recognize its power. And they unleash it everywhere.”
Rob Enslin, Co-CEO, UiPath
One of these forward-thinking companies is Italian insurance company Generali.
Generali
Generali is undergoing a massive three-year, $1 billion transformation to “grow customer value, boost innovation, and reduce costs.” Automation hasn’t been confined to just one department—they’ve automated over 1,000 processes across 40 business units, with each unit learning from the experience of the others.
The strategy is paying off.
To date, Generali has saved 80 million euros, and projects it will save 125 million euros per year going forward.
Rob summed up the stunning savings by saying “automation is a way that cutting-edge customers like Generali operate, and it’s also the way they innovate.”
Orange Spain
Rob welcomed Javier Castellanos, Robot Factory Head at Orange Spain, to the stage to talk about his company’s automation achievements.
Orange Spain is a telecommunications group with over 20 million customers and 6,000 employees. With this large of an organization, it became clear to them that automation could increase efficiency in a big way.
The organization recently launched a citizen developer program that’s been a resounding success. Last year, program participants were able to automate 300 processes, saving 100,000 internal work hours.
Other than this program, Orange Spain also has the group that Castellanos runs—the Robot Factory. This team focuses on more complicated, wide-ranging automation opportunities. And the robots created by the Robot Factory saved the company a staggering 40 million euros last year.
Castellanos gave a demo of Orange Spain’s Robot Factory site, which every employee has access to. Currently running automations can be viewed by department, region, or savings type, allowing everyone in the company to see what processes are being automated.
In total, Orange Spain currently has over 900 automations running, equating to over 38,000 hours saved per week. With 30 new robots coming online each week, the sky’s the limit for what they can achieve through automation.
EY
After highlighting successes at Generali and Orange Spain, Rob talked about the crucial function of UiPath partners, saying “one of our greatest strengths as a company overall is our partner ecosystem.”
He welcomed Hank Prybylski, Vice Chair of Transformation at EY, to the stage to talk about how automation fits into the company’s current transformation.
Prybylski began by stating the importance of transformation within EY and among its clients:
"Automation is central to transformation, and how we do that, and driving profitable growth for ourselves and for our clients. I can’t think of a better time to be talking about automation."
Hank Prybylski, Vice Chair of Transformation, EY
EY is both one of the largest UiPath partners and customers, and Rob asked Prybylski where his company gets the most value from automation.
Prybylski highlighted their tax platform as an area that benefits greatly from automation. EY both uses the UiPath Business Automation Platform internally and makes recommendations to its clients, helping tax professionals “remove the robot from themselves so they can focus on higher-value work.”
In its audit business, EY uses UiPath Process Mining to save time and improve the quality of its audits. According to Prybylski, “it’s recognized by our regulators everywhere. And if you think about it, an audit process is a great example for AI-enabled automation and workflow.”
Rob remarked that “At UiPath, we think of EY as one of the leaders in personal automation. That is, providing your people with automations to take on everyday tasks. But you didn’t start that way—where was the pivot?”
“We’re putting automation in the hands of every EY employee. We have 125,000 global users of UiPath today, and I believe that is just at the forefront of where we can go,” responded Prybylski.
Prybylski finished with a big announcement:
“We believe strongly that UiPath is the best automation platform available today, and that’s why we’ve chosen it as our core technology in that space. Building off of that, we want to announce that we’re elevating UiPath to our tier-one, top-alliance status. That is our highest-tier status, working with a select number of firms, and we’re super excited to co-invest for the future.”
Hank Prybylski, Vice Chair of Transformation, EY
Automation is the way of innovating
Rob closed his talk by emphasizing that, “if you go big with automation, if you embrace it as the way you operate, the way you innovate, automation will go big with you.”
The right technology foundation is critical for enabling these innovations. UiPath is committed to remaining the defining technology for enterprise automation.
Watch the full replay of Rob’s FORWARD 5 keynote.
You can also sign up for FORWARD 5 'The Best Bits' to receive the best of FORWARD 5 session recordings directly to your inbox.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.uipath.com/blog/product-and-updates/rob-enslin-keynote-forward-5-highlights
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