Financial services software firm SS&C Technologies is preparing to integrate Blue Prism’s robotic process automation (RPA) suite into its business process management (BPM) platform.

SS&C, which acquired automation software developer Blue Prism in March, says it will push toward the next stage of RPA: the digital worker. A digital worker is a bot designed to perform specific tasks in collaboration with human workers. By combining the two functions of BPM and RPA, the company can increase its automations, according to Gautam Moorjani, general manager of intelligent automation solutions at SS&C. 

“The way RPA was used for many years was truly that task-based stuff that people thought of as ongoing — this piece of work that doesn’t require thinking,” Moorjani told Bank Automation News. “Now, there’s a natural extension that asks what are the other things that people are doing that could be automated.” 

Simple RPAs follow a set list of instructions to automate what many would dub “mindless tasks,” Moorjani said. All tasks can be translated into automation technologies, he added. 

Simple RPAs may not be enough 

SS&C’s BPM solution identifies and simplifies these overall processes. Simple RPAs are not enough to automate entire processes, Moorjani said. 

“It’s really about how to automate pieces of it to the human and digital worker to work together, thinking of the digital worker just as another employee,” he said. “You’re bringing it in, training it to do what people do, and setting them to work jointly with the human so that if the digital worker is not confident, it can turn to the human one.” 

As an example of how the two software tools could work together, Moorjani pointed to a recent use case where a client wanted to automate its life insurance and retirement groups. The company leveraged Blue Prism’s RPA and BPM to check death certificates electronically. 

RPA needs smart automation to stay relevant, according to a recent report from IT research firm Forrester, although the company predicted that RPA technology would become powered by artificial intelligence rather than BPM.  

“Simple RPA has become established but is no longer enough,” Jost Hoppermann, vice president, principal analyst at Forrester, previously told Bank Automation News.   

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