Pathfinder Blog

 Now that you have a matured RPA practice, you can start building thought leadership and technical expertise showcase by contributing packages to Bot Store. Packages offer organizations maximum flexibility in the way they create reusable components that can be used across multiple bots. They are modular in that they can be updated independently, and maintain version controls in that upgrading a package doesn’t impact bots built off of a previous version of the same package. Here are some of the ways you can identify what are the packages to build: You have been building bots for a couple of years and you have identified features that would help multiple teams immensely but are not available out of the box, then it's a good use case to build. You want to build bots that automate specific enterprise applications, but there is no such specific package available and it’s currently being automated either using Recorder-Ca

As you now have exposure to building production-grade bots and automating a variety of use cases, you can explore contributing specific Bots to Bot Store. Gone are the days we built something for ourselves and thought we just want to keep it to ourselves as they are our USP (Unique selling point), however, what if we told you, there is a better way to build your brand by showcasing your expertise with the world and build competitive advantage online. Now you are curious to know how it can really help you by contributing to Bot Store, let’s look at some of the key benefits: Creates a Marketing funnelOnce you publish your bots on Bot Store, your work is seen by a lot of Automation Anywhere customers who look at the Bot Store for new automations to be built. When they download your bot, you will be notified with their email information, which you can use to follow up and understand how it's working for them and offer additional services to buil

Before you start automating any new use case related to a specific process or an application, you’ll want to know exactly what reusable assets you have at your disposal. Automation Anywhere’s Bot Store offers hundreds of pre-built bots and packages built by process automation and integration specialists. Leveraging Bot Store, developers can expect to accelerate their RPA development instead of having to build everything from scratch. Bot Store bots/packages are broken down by business process they serve, their categorization, and by the applications they engage with. Beyond being a location for downloading pre-built bots to include in bot builds, Bot Store is also an excellent place for automation ideas and to explore some of the “art of the possible” with RPA. Automation 360 platform is integrated with Bot Store, meaning, you can directly download the bots to the control room and start using it right away. Bot Store can help you in many way

 By now, you’ve hopefully built some familiarity with the Solution Patterns introduced in the Start phase. You’ve likely found that a good number of your use cases fit into one of those patterns, and your familiarity with the patterns has made the process of categorizing, documenting, and delivering automations a more streamlined process. We aren’t ditching those patterns. They are still valid and there are still plenty of new use cases that will come to you that will fit one of the patterns described. We are , however, going to explore a few new patterns so you can expand the types of automation opportunities that the team can take on. This isn't just for the sake of saying “there's different ones too!” Expansion into these new patterns represents a maturity in your use of the full capabilities of the Automation Anywhere platform and enables your automation practice to open up to new ways of thinking about how Automation Anywhere created automations can enable the various bu

One of the most appealing aspects of Automation 360 is that it's not programming-language-specific. You don't have to be an expert at any specific programming language to be able to build robust, high-impact automations, making for an easy-to-learn, approachable platform. That said, while learning about the capabilities of Automation 360, you may have noticed that it also enables developers to leverage several programming languages (Java, Python, JavaScript, .NET, etc) from within a bot by leveraging language-specific packages and a customizable package SDK. In this blog post, we'll take a look at why you may want to hold off on some of that functionality and when/where it makes sense. Out-of-the-Box Packages: Working with Interfaces Automation 360 offers a wide range of out-of-the-box packages designed to enable automation developers to automate with/on various interfaces. These available packages enable automation developers to automate on

 By this point in the journey for your Automation Practice, you’ve partnered with at least one new line of business for the delivery of new automations. Regardless of whether that delivery came by way of your core automation practice doing the design and delivery or you empowered this new line of business to be somewhat independent, the lessons learned and the momentum gained for the expansion of automation across your organization can empower the next leg of expansion within your organization. Let’s look at some keys to systematically scale your automation initiatives as you continue to expand. A Systematic Onboarding Approach Key to expanding your automation efforts to be organization-wide is systematically onboarding new “factories” to your automation practice. As you worked with onboarding your first few lines of business in the Accelerate phase, reflect back on the things that helped this onboardin

 With some successful deliveries attributed to your automation program and some grassroots evangelism efforts underway to communicate the value being delivered for the organization, it's time to explore delivering automations for a new functional area within the organization. As this is likely the first expansion of automation delivery outside of the automation center of excellence team, it will be vitally important to make this first delivery partnership successful, and set the stage for a systematic approach to scale as you move forward. Taking The Show On The Road Similarly to when your automation team got started with automation; identifying quick win processes, capturing and applying best practices, establishing a pattern for documentation and delivery, etc; it will be important that any newly-onboarded factory goes through some of those same steps, albeit enabled by the “lessons learned”

 The Vision for an Automation-First Company Culture Many of the lessons from this journey--from the production of bots, to a robust pipeline where anyone is encouraged to submit ideas, to the ongoing promotion and evangelism efforts--are designed to ultimately support an organization adopting an “Automation-First” company culture. An Automation-First company culture represents a shift for many organizations in the way that they view their processes, their people, and the platforms that they use daily. Knowing how an Automation-First organization views these assets can help set the stage for where your organization can go along its automation journey and can empower you with a vision for how the future of your organization’s digital transformation strategy can be empowered through the expanded adoption of automation.  Processes - Objectively looking at the processes that make up

 Once your automation program has "in orbit" (pun entirely intended) and ready to scale to that next level of your automation program growth. In this special Hyperscaling The Automation Journey series of #AAillustrates, we're diving into the proficiencies of automation programs that grow and scale - with our third session in the series: Scaling with Citizen Development. If you missed one of our previous sessions, we've got them all on the Hyperscaling The Automation Journey landing page - so be sure to check them out for additional content on growing and scaling your CoE. This session's focus is squarely looking at the experience of inviting business users (presumably with 0 background in computer science or information technology) to contribute to the automat

 Once your automation program has "taken flight" (pun entirely intended) - it can at times be challenging to know what exactly needs to be done to accelerate to that next level of your automation program maturity. In this special Hyperscaling The Automation Journey series of #AAillustrates, we're diving into the proficiencies of automation programs that grow and scale - with our second session in the series: 3 Growth Hacks to Accelerate Your Automation Program. If you missed session one, be sure to check out 3 Pitfalls Keeping Your Automation Program from Growing. Whether you've just stood up your first CoE, or you've been doing this for a few years - these 3 growth hacks can be the jet fue

 Everyone wants an automation program that scales in a sustainable and manageable way. In this series, we're going to be going through the tips and tricks you need to know to set up an automation program that is built for scale. Additionally, we'll share some actionable takeaways that you can get started with right away to ensure you're setting your program up to be successful.   Session 1: 3 Pitfalls Keeping Your Automation Program from Growing  Everyone gets started somewhere right? In this session, Micah Smith and Ma

 Everyone who starts an automation practice at their organization has the aspirations of growing and scaling that practice in a sustainable way - that can deliver meaningful benefit to their organization's digital transformation objectives. In this special Hyperscaling The Automation Journey series of #AAillustrates, we're diving into the proficiencies of automation programs that grow and scale - starting off with our first in the series: 3 Pitfalls Keeping Your Automation Program From Growing. Whether you've just stood up your first CoE, or you've been doing this for a few years - you won't want to miss our 3 common pitfalls - as we discuss the impacts they can have both on new and existing automation programs - as well as some actionable takeaways to get started with today - to promote sustained, scalable growth. Pitfall 1: Failing to Measure From the Start