Aisera: The Next Generation For RPA (Robotic Process Automation)

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a fairly simple technology. Consider that it is only been until the past few years that the industry has moved to cloud-based approaches. 

As a result, there are startups that are springing up to push innovation. And one to keep an eye on is Aisera. The company is the first AI-driven service experience solution that automates operations and support for IT, Sales and Customer Service. Aisera is also backed by top-tier VCs and has strategic partners like Amazon’s AWS, Microsoft, Google, ServiceNow and Salesforce. 

The founder of this startup is Muddu Sudhakar, who is a veteran of Silicon Valley. He has held positions at EMC, VMware, Splunk and ServiceNow. He also has a Ph.D in computer science and owns more than 40 patents. 

So what is the vision and strategy at Aisera? Well, I had a chance to interview Sudhakar:

Taulli: What was the inspiration for the company?

Sudhakar: I formed Aisera to bring consumerization to enterprises across IT, help desk, customer service and other service-oriented domains (including call centers).

Enterprise users deserve better. They need advanced AI solutions ranging from virtual assistants to collaboration tools–that empower users by automating business workflows, tasks and actions which in turn deliver greater self-service but also improve productivity while driving down costs.

It’s increasingly important and evident now that businesses need to look at advanced technologies like Conversational RPA, especially during challenging times like this pandemic. This technology is a must-have and will enable enterprises to future-proof and scale as they transform their digital experience and business continuity strategies.

Taulli: What is conversational RPA?

Sudhakar: A good way to look at this is as a simple equation: AI + RPA = Conversational RPA. When you converge AI and RPA, you get Conversational RPA. AI provides a human-like dialogue interface for users providing similar consumer-like application experiences, like those of Alexa, Whatsapp, Instagram, and Snapchat. This simple natural human-like interface interacts and performs the duties, tasks, IT workflows, and business workflows. RPA is used to automate simple and complex workflows that are highly repetitive that are typical of back-office functions. Most of these should not require humans to manage, monitor or execute them.

Conversational RPA’s self-learning ability reduces the barrier for user adoption and lends itself to expediting complex challenges like cloud and application integrations, compliance, audit trail creation, and user experience analysis that require complex workflows. Conversational RPA supports new workflows, existing workflows and provides a way to customize workflows to meet business needs.

Taulli: Examples of how customers are using this? What have been the results?

Sudhakar: Enterprises are currently using Conversational RPA to improve both their employee and customer experience by integrating AI and RPA to solve their business challenges. With conversational RPA, customers are able to automate repetitive tasks like provisioning software and applications (Microsoft Office, Salesforce, Zoom, Adobe), automating cybersecurity-related IT requests (anti-virus, endpoint, phishing, credential harvesting) and procurement of software, hardware, and services.

Our customers have seen exceptionally good results in the areas of improving user experience, employee productivity, and decreasing costs. Our customers are achieving over 60% auto-resolutions and self-service for an improved experience, 70% improvements in user productivity, and overall average cost savings of 80%.

Taulli: What are the drivers for conversational RPA?

Sudhakar: Right now the world is going through a massive pandemic, where businesses are forced to operate with a remote workforce. They need to focus on executing business continuity plans and figure out how to scale support for users. It’s a priority to automate in order to provide a level of service and support for the ever-growing number of remote workers and consumers. And technologies like Conversational RPA will be essential for this.

Tom (@ttaulli) is the author of Artificial Intelligence Basics: A Non-Technical Introduction and The Robotic Process Automation Handbook: A Guide to Implementing RPA Systems.