Following the hugely successful Robotic Process Automation (RPA) conference and Hackathon in 2019, the first of its kind in Sri Lanka, SLASSCOM (Sri Lanka Association for Software Services Companies) will hold the 2020 RPA online conference from December 9 to 11, with the entire week being designed as SLASSCOM RPA week.
The week will include training workshops, hackathon and award ceremonies, in conjunction with this event that will be conducted on an international scale. The aim of the conference is to create a sense of urgency for companies to adopt RPA to start doing things faster, better and cheaper and showcase Sri Lanka’s capability internationally.
“The thinking is quite simple – RPA enables the automation of repetitive process oriented rule based tasks, bringing with it a massive potential to achieve cost efficiencies, while facilitating human resources to focus on more knowledge intensive work,” says SLASSCOM Chairman Channa Manoharan.
“It’s still the early days for robotics in Sri Lanka, but several of our member companies have already acquired world class capability and implemented several successful projects not only within the IT / BPM companies but in several industries such as banking and finance and insurance,” says Jehan Perinpanaygam, SLASSCOM Finance Director and Board representative for the BPM Forum.
“This is a digital workforce that works uninterrupted, 24 x 7, and we are seeing a lot of mundane tasks being successful automated. RPA is best suited for large volume based processes and incorporates functional intelligence into an application called a “bot” which work on your computer and completes the designated tasks”
“Giving a further insight, Shanaka Fernando, SLASSCOM Forum Lead of the BPM Forum said “When it comes to RPA, it’s actually about merging technology and domain knowledge to develop software programmes that are able to follow standard and repetitive instructions.”
Clarifying the common question of humans being replaced or made redundant by such technologies, Shanaka explains that the use of bots translates into zero errors, zero interruptions, more volumes and scalability and therein more cost efficiencies and profits.
Through the pandemic, companies around the world have been cutting costs, but the general trend is for the majority of these firms to continue investments in automation and digitization. “Companies haven’t skimped on RPA budgets because it is the future,” says Rohith Pradeep, Conference Chair and Alternate Forum Head.
