About business robotization with Farida Roslovets and director of electro-neeek RPA company

Software robots are a powerful IT trend. Companies around the world are introducing digital employees instead of real people. The level of penetration into Russian business is also quite high.

We will discuss with Sergey the advantages and prospects of the RPA, how this technology differs from conventional automation, what social threats it poses, and we will also talk about conducting international business and working in the USA.

Hello everyone, I’m Farya. Somehow, at work, I conducted a survey about RPA, and noted that the world was divided into two parts: those who have heard about this or are interested in it, and those who do not want to accept reality and believe that this is all nonsense, that Selenium is enough BPMS, etc.

In this regard, I decided to talk with the gender of electroNeek (a manufacturer of an RPA platform with Russian roots) and, at least for myself, put all the points above and.

In addition to those stated in the title, we will also discuss why our developers are no worse than the Americans, how we differ from them, and how we push ourselves away. Of course, let's talk about money and salaries. Let’s figure out why, when you create your own business, you need to offer a service or product before you have it. Well, about Selenium will also be :)

Watch the full version of the interview (an hour and a little) on my YouTube channel, everything is very lively and interesting there, and in the first comment there are time codes.

Here, in a dry compressed form, I will give some points, creatively processed for the print format.

For reference:

RPA (Robotic Process Automation) - the robotization of business processes, this is when a one-to-one program performs what a person does using a monitor, keyboard and mouse. Globally, according to KPMG, the RPA market amounted to $ 271 million, $ 1,224 million is forecast by the year 21. It is known that more than 70% of large international ones already use RPA, and the number of search queries has increased 2.5 times in 5 years.

Faria:

- You once wrote to me in the comments to the video about the RPA that I said something wasn’t quite correct. Come on, right from the start, what was wrong there.

Sergey:

- The fact that you google about the Russian landscape was extremely superficial. You said that there is only UiPath, the “Center for Robotics and Artificial Intelligence” (CRI, now electroNeek) and NFP. I would like people to understand that there is not only one cool American brand with billions of dollars and two crazy Russian teams. In fact, there are a lot of companies that implement RPA.

- I see. Tell me how your company started.

- At the beginning of 2017, my future co-founder calls me and says: "A wave of robotization has begun in America, take a look." We immediately make a landing about the fact that we know how to make robots, of course, not knowing how to do them. In general, I recommend to everyone who begins to do their IT business: "fake it 'till you make it." Fake that you did it until you do it. It's hard, there is the last story with Theranos - they did not succeed. But we were able to: made a landing, sent applications, and we agreed with one of the major banks. They said that it sounds interesting, let's try, so we started looking for an RPA platform and ended up partnering with UiPath. At one time, we even acted as their largest integrator in Russia in the number of certified specialists.

“And when did it end?”

- We made a section on our website CRI with the landing of the new platform. Of course, there was no platform yet, but we started collecting leads, asking customers what they did not like about UiPath - and this became the basis of our own development. We did a small MVP, downloaded Roro (Free RPA Platform) from the github, put our logo on and so the first electroNeek appeared (now there is nothing from the github in electroNeek). It was the second level of fake, with which we started the pilot in the "Post of Russia". At this moment, we realized that it was not possible to do anything on the fake and began to do our development as it should. We have other clients: QIWI Bank, PIK group of companies, Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works, a number of other large customers, and because of this, UiPath withdrew our partner status. And we had no choice but to fully invest in our platform and start attracting investments.

- Do not you think that to all this hype around the RPA skepticism often arises in people, because, in fact, these are the same standard programmers who solve all the same well-known problems using classical programming languages?

“I understand what you're leading to.” Come on, I’ll answer why I think that RPA is not a hype, but in fact the future lies with this approach. IT now exists in all spheres of life, but there are not enough developers in the world, and business needs to solve problems constantly. Here is how, for example, can I help? I understand business processes, I can even write a script, but if they give me a development environment, I will close it and say, "Goodbye," because I'm not a programmer. At the same time, I made robots on UiPath, I do them on electroNeek, and I need this product to solve problems. So that I can write this automation, and at the same time I can read it and understand what it does. We help ordinary users automate their business processes.

- Who can make robots?

- We can take a junior who understands a little bit in business processes, knows how to code a little, and that’s all, he can do the coolest operations with CRM, with the web, text recognition, with desktop things, and quickly!

- Why then so little is heard about the RPA, since partners are everywhere, they are implementing everything ...

- Wait a couple of years and it will be very juicy right. Two years ago, these were the first crazy people, now we are already at the stage of early adopters and, I think, the first layer of RPA users will go next year ... Plus, we always stay on the back. Let's say we sold to one company in the USA. She expanded her business and instead of new people introduced robots, but did not want to make a public case out of it. We ask: "Why, sir, you don’t want to? It turned out to be fun, a real financial effect." And he replies: “If I tell everyone that I have robots, then I will not be able to take the same big price from my customers because they will not understand, because I spend less on robots. Therefore, I continue to set prices according to the old financial model and get the difference in revenue. "

- Does RPA implementation reduce a lot of expenses for business in general?

- We have not yet seen a single massive reduction under the RPA. We cut back on hiring, meaning fewer people are hiring.

- In what areas?

- This is all related to documents and finances, accouting, some kind of checks, internal audit and the like. They often implement it in Russia, because there is no money and I would like to spend less, while in America they consider how to increase efficiency.

- I read in one article: "It is assumed that RPA technology should replace the routine and increase the efficiency of the company." “Must replace the routine” - that is, it is an outright lie, a cover-up, because it is really just beneficial for the business to clean people up.

- Business is always beneficial to clean people. We are wonderful creatures, but very unstable systems. We are ill, we have our own opinion, we are distracted, in general, a lot of everything. Of course, for some routine operations, all our pluses are fucking unnecessary, you just need a stable system that works. And the replacement of people with automation did not begin with the RPA, it began a long time ago, and it will not end. You just need to get used to the fact that ineffective things of technology will be taken away. The problem is that now technology has begun to come out so quickly that people do not have time to relearn, this is of course a minus, you won’t stop it.

“So design robots to be above the system.”

- How much does the developer of RPA robots cost here and in the states?

- Junior for 50 tr probably here you can plant, 120 TR - there will be a good middle, and if the guys have worked in serious companies such as KPMG, they will require 200-250 tr And in America, such specialists receive 100-120 thousand dollars a year. Famine is great everywhere, both in Russia and in America.

- And if I’m June in the RPA, where should I develop further?

- You can be an Middle RPA. If the task is more serious, 2-3 people appear, then you need a team leader. In medium-sized businesses, there is a need to interact with users, an RPA analyst appears. If you have six robots, you need to manage them, the RPA architect appears. There is much to develop.

If you liked it, I invite you to view the full version .