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March 12, 2022

RPA & IA Live - SPEAKER SPOTLIGHT: The Mass RPA Migration

Courtesy of Blueprint Software Systems' Matthew Dodgson &  below is a transcript of his speaking session on 'The Mass RPA Migration: Why RPA Programs are Switching Vendors, The Challenges, and How to Overcome Them for Maximum Business Value' to Build a Thriving Enterprise that took place at the RPA & Intelligent Automation Live Virtual Conference.

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Session Information:

The Mass RPA Migration: Why RPA Programs are Switching Vendors, The Challenges, and How to Overcome Them for Maximum Business Value

To manually migrate single, medium complexity automation from one RPA platform into another can take 4-6 weeks and cost upwards of $10,000 in development costs. For organizations with more than 100 bots in production, this could mean millions in potential migration costs and months or even years of development time. But it doesn’t have to be that way!

Join Blueprint as we show you our RPA migration capabilities and answer your most pressing questions, including:

  • The trigger-points driving the decision to migrate automation portfolios
  • The benefits of migration to a new RPA platform
  • What does a migration plan look like
  • How to measure the success of an RPA migration

Session Transcript:

Two people from Blueprint Matthew Agnew is the director of Product Marketing At Blueprint Software Systems And is responsible for understanding the challenges businesses face when automating their processes and then articulating this knowledge to the rest of the Blueprint training team, that's the ultimate challenge. And a second, Matthew, it'll make it tricky questions. Matthew Dodgson is the Director of Solution Engineering, a Blueprint, and has developed a deep knowledge of what businesses need and when they want to improve. How they improve their RPA processes. And uses that knowledge to support enterprise clients around the world world. So, let me turn that over to Matthew and Matthew, and I will disappear and go quiet.

Gentlemen?

Thank you so much, Chris, and thank you for that fantastic introduction, like I'm going to have to ask Chris to come with me wherever I go and introduce me around the world. So Matt, are you doing this morning?

Blueprint imgNot bad, Matthew, how about you and thanks to Chris for the interviews.

Yeah, and we're like I said, well, you know, we'd like to confuse people here, where everyone at Blueprint is named Matthew. So it's confusing and easy. So it's called Blueprint, Ask for Matthew, you'll get somebody. So today, we're talking about RPA migration, as Chris mentioned, and it's a pretty interesting topic, and just a little bit of a view on us quickly. So we're blueprints were a software company that is built to help organizations improve how they automate. And today, we're going to be focusing on one of the more confusing aspects of RPA and really any intelligent automation initiative.

And that's moving from one platform to another.

So as I mentioned, I'm joined here by Ann, then our Director of Solution Engineering.

And today, we've got a really great, really great agenda for you today.

So we're going to be talking about, giving an overview of our understanding of RPA migration of what we've seen in the industry, and how other companies are facing this barriers. What's getting in the way, and how we can simplify this process with Blueprint give you a little bit of overview of what Blueprint been looking at to make this less of a challenge.

Nice.

So to start, and just to recap what Chris mentioned earlier. So migration.

Another term we've been, are platform replatforming, so moving from redeploying, so moving existing processes so automated processes from one RPA platform to another.

So this is something that's been, we've been running into quite a bit, and we've been seeing that. And I'm curious, so we'll start with Matt. Why do you think companies are looking to migrate RPA platforms?

A few of the, I mean, Chris mentioned a few of them where there's just the technology evolution.

Now, a lot of organizations have started on one platform when they first began their automation journey, not really knowing much.

And as they kinda grew into what automation meant for them, that their company, they, you know, decided, different technologies may suit the types of systems and applications and types of automations that they're building. So we see a lot from that, the technology side.

Sometimes, I, you know, I've seen it with quite a few folks, where they're trying to de risk their automation infrastructure, where they don't want to be dependent just on one platform. So they actually want to spread it across multiple platforms. So in some cases, they're not even replatforming, are actually just adding platforms and moving around. But those are, those are a few of the factors that I've seen.

Great. Matt, is there any more specific type things that you see? You know, we we know there's a lot of there's more and more RPA companies grow and create any more specific challenges that you've encountered.

Btog CTASpecific ones that we've seen, obviously there's been. I know there's a lot of turmoil in the automation space.

There's a lot of new technologies coming, a lot of old, one of older technology is changing, so a lot of it has been no.

As they, as these new technologies come up, people want to leverage them and take advantage of them and really leverage these newer technologies because the old ones are just not holding water. They're not not maintaining.

So that, you know, a lot of it is from a technology side. That seems to be, but the reality is the same automation practice, you're just trying to move into the platform.

Absolutely. And this is a really common issue with any technology that you're using, right, Something else comes along, you want to consider it there. So it's a pretty common thing. And things that we've been seeing. So there are a lot of benefits that companies, or even considering this, right. Because we've mentioned it is a fairly challenging thing. Or we're going to talk about that in a few moments here. But really, it's, it's kind of scary thing. You know, Chris really set the table for that. Where, once you're a one RPA platform, it can be pretty daunting to think about moving everything over to another. But there are a lot of really good benefits for doing that. You know, for moving your bots and your processes from one place to another one of the big ones we've seen as cost savings.

Of course, that's the big thing driver for everybody, if you believe that, there's cost savings and using another RPA tool.

What got it, another one that we've seen a lot in the industry, and this one speaks a little bit more specifically to Microsoft and Microsoft Power automate desktop. And that's companies that want to leverage their existing partnership.

So, if you're an organization really heavy on the micro side, you have a lot you work with, organizations, tools, Really familiar with Microsoft. It just makes sense that now, that power automate is evolving, that that'd be something that you would want to take advantage of and use, as well.

We all want to reach our goals faster. I can't think of anybody that says, now, let's slow down, We don't want to reach our goal too soon. Right?

So, we all wanna reach our goals faster and, of course, looking at other options, looking at consolidating your processes on one spot, or moving to a different platform can really help. And, of course, a leveraging, internally.

You have a specific developer that is really good at another platform, or you don't wanna get too caught into one, but that's another challenge.

I know we've seen, where it stops people for me to consider moving, where, you know, all of our skill sets are on this one platform, so why won't even look at another.

So I know that's something, but how kind of stealing a bit of the thunder from the next slide is, know, and I'll ask you met this again, you know, what? What do you see that's getting in the way? So what else is stopping people from making decision in the first place?

Yeah, so the migration on paper, like you said, the cost savings is one of the largest drivers that people tend to gravitate towards that just, hey, running our bots on platform. A is going to be cheaper than running our bots on the current automation platform we have.

But getting there is essentially you have a bridge at the crops. You have to get all your automations from one platform to another. And in many cases, the biggest challenge, essentially, you're rebuilding all of those automations from scratch.

And, I mean, there's a cost there.

And then, obviously, the skillset required to do that rebuilding, the automation space is very ripe with a lot of talent.

And a lot of people that have been highly specialized, on these different platforms, And it's something that, I know, a lot of technical folks are starting to become more skilled on multiple platforms, But, there's many folks, I know, that have multiple layers of, certification on. Something like Blue Prism platform.

And then, as they, as a company, wants to move to power, automate desktop, they have to re skill themselves on that.

So, it's, it's almost, you know, it becomes a skill set challenge to wear.

You have to have skilled developers, that, no two platform is very deep because they have to read automations from one platform to implement them in another.

Exactly. I completely agree.

And I think, Chris, again, for really setting the table, because, know, his attitude, and this topic really is common in the industry. Where it is a scary thing. And I think one of the things that we're coming to see, where it doesn't necessarily have to be that scary, these benefits are real. So you can see a lot of benefits. You can save money. So I think we want to reinsure people that you don't necessarily need to be so scared that you don't even consider looking at other platforms.

Like, we've definitely, I've talked to very large businesses that don't even consider it, because it's like, it's, you know, once you're here, why would you even want to move? But there are very, very real benefits. And it's really worth kind of getting over that initial hurdle. And just to kind of recap some of the barriers that we're talking about here. So, again, moving from one platform to another.

There's a couple of questions you should ask when you're thinking about doing this. So, a couple things that you should really, really make sure that you have a good understanding, solid grasp on before you really move into this process.

Email Graphic Virtual Conferences (4)-1And that is resource availability. This is one of the things that stops people from doing this right away. This is a very common stop sign early on in the process. Where it's, do, I even have the team to do this.

Don't even have the team to rebuild all of these bots and these automations in these processes. In this new system, They have to re learn a new system of them. They have to map everything over and they have to test it and check it, Do I have people available to do that? So what's the cost?

And one of the things that I always ask with that is not only what is the cost of that, but when you do have people doing that, what's not happening, Right? So, that definitely isn't really the core job. So what isn't getting done in your organization, when people are spending months moving existing bots over from another? That could set you back really years, if you think about it. So that's an important thing to be looking at.

Another one that we've talked about here, I'm not really covered really clearly skillset, Do you have the skills to understand two separate RPA platforms? Some of them are similar, but some of them are quite different, and moving things over from one. It's really, it's not just taking something and moving it over here. It's not like you're moving house, that's where you're just moving furniture from one place to another.

It's very complicated and difficult tasks with between some of these platforms. And you have to think, Do you have the skill set to do this? So that's another thing you should always ask yourself, and where can you get those skill sets? What is that going to cost to get those skill sets?

We'll be able to continue to leverage these skill sets moving forward, and importantly, time.

Again, ask yourself, what's not getting done when we're doing this. That's a really important one. How long do you think that's going to happen? You're very, very Large organizations. I heard an interesting stat the other day where very very large you know one of the biggest companies in the world really wanted to move some bas and it took them almost a year to migrate 15.

Bots and it's because again, it can be a complicated process and they have thousands and thousands of bots so that's another thing to ask yourself. How long it's going to take, and what's not happening when I'm doing this?

So in just a minute, I'm going to turn things over to Matt, and Matt is going to be walking us through how Blueprint is designed to help make this a lot easier. So blueprint. So we're a software company and we have a tool utility that's designed to really make this, not as much of the headache that we've kinda painted earlier, another painting what it is and we're going to be going through that in just a moment. But before we get into that, I just want to talk about our general approach to re platforming and migrating your bots from one spot to another.

So first, you want to analyze what you're looking at. So you need to have the ability to take all of your bots, all of your processes, your automated processes, and look at them holistically. So you have to look at all of them and plan.

A lot of times you're going to find, even before you start moving that, 25 to 30% of your bots are redundant.

There aren't even being used so that you don't need, you might find that another 10%, 15% of your bots, are really, really efficient, maybe very expensive.

We've heard stories where you can find that. A bot just from licensing alone the licensing that you need.

Licensing fees that you need for this bot to work could cost you $300,000 a year or so. We've heard these stories and it's important to analyze look at those things now because it's not just, Let's just move over it.

Let's get better Why we're doing this? So, of course, plan.

Let's look at what we're doing, and we want to do this in a very, very solid way that isn't going to setback the business.

one of the scary things when you think about this, too, is, are some of our bots going to be offline for a period of time? You can have bots that are very critical part of your customer journey that you don't want offline, So you have to think, How can I move my bots in iteration? So, these processes are grinding to a halt, and we don't have customers complain. So, that's a really important thing as well.

And then of course, all this has been done before we get to the actual migration. So actually moving things over and creating them in the new platform, so, that's our general approach. So analyze, plan, and migrate. And now I'm going to switch things over to Matt, and Matt is going to walk through how Blueprint can use those, that approach to make things go a little bit easier for you.

Perfect.

Oh, man, I just screen over to you.

All right. I will share my screen here.

Turley wants to find the right monitor. There we go.

Perfect.

Confirm, you can see everything.

MS: Awesome. So I want to obviously take you guys through an example of how we do this today Blueprint. And specifically, you know, we talked about a lot of different factors to consider a lot of the variables. And this is something that we're not trying to scare anyone.

Migration is something that hundreds of organizations are going through today, and hundreds more, are continuing to get to in the next, you know, daily and weekly.

So it's something, we're really about, understanding, What am I ... takes, understanding how you can control it and manage it, and not let it get out of hand and not assume you can just jump in and do it at the snap of a finger because it's a simple word migration, but there's a workstream and a workflow around it.

What you're seeing on your screen is Blueprint.

Blueprint is a web-based, cloud-hosted solution. They use it this idea of something.

We call Digital Blueprints to really translate and help us re-platform this automation and it helps us analyze that automation that we want to migrate, helps us plan that migration, and then it helps us actually do that migration.

Screenshot (4)Now, before we dive into things in too much detail, I'll give you a quick orientation. On the left here is this, explore, where we're gonna look at the, we're going to import and look at the automation that we want to migrate in. The middle here is where we're going to review this automation, review the numbers and the metrics before we actually do that migration. And then read this utility panel over here on the right where we're going to be able to see some extra details and nuances around that automation and some of the mapping that's being done.

So, today, I'm going to take you through an example of this automation anywhere bot that I have and I'm going to migrate it over to Microsoft Power Automate desktop.

This is one of just many scenarios where you're migrating from things like Blue Prism and Automation, anywhere in this case.

11 to some of the, you know, newer platforms like Power Automate, Desktop. And even you know, UI path is a very common one. We see a lot of folks migrating towards the right.

Now this particular bot generates reports that are extracted from Excel data, it's, I would call it a medium complexity, Bob. It's around 500 lines of code.

And if you were to take on this migration and sit down and say, hey, I want to migrate this today without any, you know, blueprint or any other approach. It's about a 4 or 5 week endeavor. And that's essentially because you're rebuilding the entire automation from scratch.

So let's actually show you how we, how we help manage and drive that life cycle when using Blueprint.

So with Blueprint what we do is we start by taking your existing automations and we import them in.

This essentially allows us to turn your automations into what we call digital blueprints.

Think of this like how we translate, you know, complicated items, we turn them into this kind of common, generic format.

This allows us to extract and understand your current automation in great detail, as you'll see as I'll show you here in a moment.

And then, it also helps us map and understand how we're going to transform that particular automation from one technology stack or one language of automation, anywhere over into a new platform in the power automate desktop world.

So here, actually, import it twice. That's fine. We'll look at it.

So here's the automation, we just pulled it. Now, what we've done is we've actually created a digital blueprint from that automation. It's ensures all the code and details in the original automation are captured and understood.

An importing process takes only a few minutes. So whether you're bringing a single bot or bringing in the entire stack, you're actually going to have that entire automation here.

But, before we actually go through and complete the migration, let's actually go into the dashboard and review this particular automation Because what we can do in Blueprint is we can actually take a deeper look at the actual automation itself.

In this particular case, we have actually, you know what I'll do, let's simplify. Let me delete the extra one that we have.

That's.

That's, now, we can look at this one, automation, so this one, automation is comprised of a number of processes. It has a certain number of steps, and variables and actions that are built-in. And what these digital blueprints do is they break down those automations into those kind of atomic elements, and they allow us to start getting a deeper understanding of what actually makes up the spot.

So, in this case here, this particular part has about, you know, 500 steps. It's broken up over three processes. You can see, there's actually some complexity that we indicate and give you some insight on for each of these processes So you can better understand them.

And it really helps, you understand, Not just the details of the bot, but how it's going to map, when I want to move it over into something like Microsoft Power, automate desktop. This particular automation has about a 97% mapping accuracy from automation. Anywhere over the power to my desktop.

And that's really to say that the commands that we're using an automation anywhere have equivalent commands, over empower them, a desktop, and then 97% of that bot is going to map.

Now, for the remaining 3%, that might not map, this is where blueprint actually gives you the deep, the ability to go deeper and actually print out a detailed report that will itemized every single line of code and we'll tell you what's going to map. what's not going to map. So you can actually plan and better understand exactly the work that's going to be needed to complete this bot and complete this automation. Once you're over in Microsoft's Power automate desktop.

But before I actually do the migration, let me give you a quick look.

In terms of what an actual digital Blueprint looks like, this is the digital blueprint for this particular process flow.

It helps us visualize the automation, logic and structure. And it's broken down as a set of processes and steps.

And every step in that particular automation.

Like this one here on the message box is not only captured, but it's also map and understood. With something we call our common object model.

This is kind of an RPA generic language or kind of an automation dialect that we've built out in Blueprint, common language of the repository of language elements that are found across all the matriarchy platforms.

And because this common language is not only mapped from the automation we're pulling in, but where we want to go, it acts as a sort of RPA translator.

Blueprint imgSo instead of spending weeks reading through the code, trying to understand how it might map to UI path, how many steps are in there, what text commands are in their blueprint, has done. All of this analysis automatically, like simply importing the bot and creating a digital blueprint.

And this is part of that analyze and plan stages that are so important when it comes to actually doing a migration, because it really helps you understand what you're migrating. When you want to talk about resource availability, time. It's skill set.

Those factors, you can't really answer that question until you really answer the question of, well, what is the bot we're migrating? What do they look like? How are they comprise? And what sort of skill sets are we going to need?

Now that we've actually reviewed the imported by, we've turned into a digital blueprint. We're ready to actually migrated over to Microsoft Power, automate desktop.

And that's a very simple process.

We simply export this entire automation over to power, automate desktop as a single flow. This will grab in the automation anywhere world, it'll grab all the ATM exe files that are included in that particular automation.

It'll package them up and it'll actually send it directly into Microsoft Power automate desktop, creating a single flow and power to my desktop for all of those different ATM X files and individual task bots that we had over in automation anywhere.

So now that that's actually sent over, let's pull up the automation over here in power automate desktop and have a look.

All right, so here is the automation. We just export it.

Now, for those who aren't familiar with Power DB desktop, and this may be new. I'll give you a quick orientation, explain.

But essentially, the entire automation that we had from AA automation anywhere, that was turned into a digital blueprint has now been directly export it over and converted into power, automate desktop commands, flow structure, and sub flows, meaning all of that logic.

All of the details in how that bought runs, and the different sub calls it's making, are all packaged in here. And you'll notice all of the individual steps, that one, for example, display Message, command, or the message box, again, we were just looking at, over in Blueprint, is, right here, over in power to me desktop. So, this is the translation that's happening when we actually do the migration.

But it's also worth noting it's not just the individual automation structure, and the command, and the commands themselves, which are incredibly important.

It's also all of the flow variables, all of the logic, any UI element or selectors have also been converted.

So this migration is very deep, and it's very comforting to make sure that as an organization that's going through these replatforming initiatives, that you're really focused and you're focusing your resources on where it's needed.

Which, in this case, is going to be that 3% of steps and commands that aren't covered in power to me desktop. And so, that's where, as a developer, you'll focus. You'll even notice there's little messages in here, like to-do's, that call it specific areas that you're gonna need to dive into.

So, let me just take a step back, why is all this important?

Well, it means that we can migrate these automations in a fraction of the time.

Manual migration of this automation would have taken weeks, because essentially we'd have to rewrite it from scratch.

Less than five minutes here. You've seen me take an automation anywhere, process, and migrated into power, automate desktop.

Giving it, now providing a developer all the details they need to take this migrated automation and have it up and running in a matter of days into production, as opposed to the months or weeks it would normally take.

And this is the big shift that we've been helping organizations go through.

It says they looked at these migration initiatives, these replatforming efforts, and they're staring.

You know, Matthew, I can mention that one company that took a year to do 15 automations because Knative rebuild every automation from scratch.

This is helping customers and helping organizations that citizen development teams have distributed. You know, lines of business that are doing their own automations. All follow the same steps and practices around how can migrate effectively. as we migrate efficiently, and more importantly, how can we get it done in a meaningful time? So that we're not paying for two licenses, at the same time, we can actually get this done, what we have to renew our contract with the previous arcade.

So this is what we wanted to take you guys through today, And the last thing I'll leave you with is within Blueprint, we're showing you an example of ... and migration.

But these digital blueprints, or something that organizations are using, not just to drive a replatforming migration, but also be able to start cataloging, consolidating their RPA platforms across, You know, the different lines of business to create a single record of all the different automations they have, whether they're building automations, whether they're re-using automations, or if they're even, for example, starting to develop the entire process repository across different lines of business.

So, while Migration is a, is a project that you may be taking on, one of the things that Blueprint is helping organizations, organizations do. It's not just re platform, but also help to really start to understand the processes that are automated across the organization. And even the processes they are working to automate as they do things like process discovery, task capture, and so forth.

That's everything we wanted to cover today.

So I will pass it back to Matthew for any wrap up or conversation points that he had.

Email Graphic Virtual Conferences (4)-1Yeah, that's fantastic, Matt. So, just a quick reminder, here, we do have some time for questions, so please submit your questions. As Chris mentioned, we'll be getting to those in just a moment.

And I just wanted to say, that's why we talked about how Blueprint can help make this smoother.

We hope that going over this entire process makes you not as scared of the concept of migration If, if that's something you're looking at. Because it is a very valuable thing right now, So as we mentioned, there's lots of benefits to it, and as I've talked to, many, many people that just kinda were fine, right, that don't even want to approach it, because they just see it so daunting, It doesn't have to be.

So, just wanted to make sure that that's clear for everybody.

And, yeah, so, Chris, we'll turn it back over to you. I am just going to tell you, I stood next to you guys at a booth, not too long ago, right, your company at a booth mm, and because I was so worried about my book, I didn't focus on what you guys were doing. This is the first time I've seen your full.

Where were you three years ago when I needed?

I mean, this is I always say there's several fantastic things about I mean, this is what happens when you get process and innovation geeks in one place, right? I'm thinking about the Saturn five rocket launch the Apollo projects. I don't know if you guys realize this, but they destroyed all the plans for the Saturn five rockets, so They can't rebuild the Saturn five rockets. And it costs like $50 billion to make these things right.

Well, no one on this call has a $50 billion automation problem.

But a lot of people on this call are going to need to know how to transform and evolve going forward in the future.

Right? I mean, that's NASA didn't get it right. And you guys just did. So, that is, is actually really cool. I do have a couple of questions.

Actually, I have two more questions and we have time, I would ask anybody on the call, I know that, Matt and Matt would both respond to any question you send them so hopefully they can, they can find you in the LinkedIn connections. or if he's got the e-mails directly for you, we can do that as well.

All right. So let me start with one, I was a question that was near and dear to my heart from, from Bill in Oregon. In your experience, how transportable our RPA skill sets between platforms?

Good question. So. Not to go too far down the rabbit hole and I will keep myself on the ramble. The ramble meter down here.

But the ERP platform has a different approach, and we're seeing different categories to, just to give you kind of my perspective. And what I've seen in the industry. Blue, Prism has a very specific architecture and skillset structure, that it uses UI path, a little bit deeper and developer automation, anywhere in power. automate desktop, have a lot more similarities than the others.

So, for example, when we see organizations transforming from A to power automate desktop, we've seen those resources have an easier time scaling up on our enemy desktop. Because it has a lot of transparency and similarity to automation. Anywhere.

Going from Blue Prism, or going from Blue Prism to like a UI path, very different, almost oil and water, where there's, there's a different depth you have to go into.

And it's not to say, know, developers actually have an amazing capacity to learn these things. It's really learning the grammar and terminology and the syntax of those new technology.

So, it's definitely not something that is consistent across all the RPA platforms. But there's a common learning path.

And what we've been trying to do is, they can even give people, some directions saying, you don't have to be a UI path, black belt to actually complete.

This migration will highlight the specific lines of code that you have to go and work on, just go and learn how to do, you know, how to do a soap call and UI path, which isn't really used anymore. So, you have to figure out how to change that to a different type of call.

Those are the types of things that we've seen early five.

Know, that that's very helpful. I'm hopefully Bill agrees with that William. Sorry, agrees with that what I'm hearing as we listen to the questions in this ecosystem of what's going on.

There are people Yeah, there's always people have fantasize that it's all going to be simple, right? We're going to implement all this stuff, and it's going to run like a Swiss watch for the rest of your charity, which by the way, you still have to service Swiss watches, right?

What I'm hearing is this is a really useful tool to get from point A to point B, but it's also an incredibly important tool going back to the Saturn five rocket. What if you need to rebuild the thing? You need to know what it looks like.

And you have a plan, right? So, that's, it's clear to me, the investment, the long term investment and automation is never going to stop. It's not like a one-time thing.

You're going to need to have a cadre of people who really know what they're doing, just as you do in any other IT solution. Right? You don't absolutely. You know, launch an ERP and then not have experts to know how to work with it.

Although I did work for a couple of companies who make a lot of money, helping people with that.

Alright. A couple more questions for you.

So here's like a mid-flight question, what are some of the challenges that you see in the middle of this migration exercise? So you've talked a lot in that, you know, getting people over the hump of the idea and then now they're mid-flight. Right? The enthusiasm partner, they got over that another, but what about those challenges?

So there's, I mean, Matthew, I can feel free to chime with it with what you've seen. We actually, interestingly enough, we've engaged with a lot of customers who are mid-flight through migration.

So we sometimes come in midway through and say, Hey, this is a lot more than you thought. So a lot of the migration challenges that organizations face today, that don't have Blueprint, Or they've jumped in to migration.

They, Hey, we gotta get off of Blue Prism by June because we don't want to renew give you an example. So they jump in, they start doing it, and very quickly, they open the box. And they're like, Whoa! This is like a Mary Poppins, personal fun that we have to unpack.

And I don't want to go into the layers of whether they built the bots or even they add them outsourced and built through vendors.

But very quickly, it slows down to a grinding halt. So what we come in and we, again, focused on this idea of analyze, plan, and migrate.

Easiest way to migrate efficiently is to make sure you understand what you're migrating, and you have a plan for how you're going to migrate each spot, and that might mean prioritizing which ones are going to be the hairiest. Which ones are the low hanging fruit. We can get done quickly. Maybe we can't get them all migrated before. We renew, and we can drop our renewals down from 100 baht runners to 50 bought runners. So it's really giving organizations these different levers and most importantly, giving them visibility.

So, when you talk about being Mid-flight, if you're mid-flight, no migration, we can definitely help.

For our customers who are doing migrations and their mid-flight, what they're finding is they're now able to really start tuning and becoming more efficient and more predictive on how consistent their migration efforts are.

Screenshot (4)We have one big customer that's doing a couple thousand migrations off of a power automate desktop, and they're doing it through a citizen developer program.

So what they've actually started to do, is they started to have these waves of training, and these waves of enablement for the citizen developers saying, Hey, this is your migration path. This is how you migrate it. So, it's just allows them to more be more consistent in how they are migrating, and how their bots are actually moving over and they're not kind of facing this.

Slow down.

this drudgery that happens, mid-flight when you don't have, you know, a plan or an approach, long winded answer, but I hope that helps Another. Yes, sorry. I'm just going to jump in to another quick challenge, that we've seen, that's worth discussing.

So, when people are doing this manually, they've noticed people are finding that the quality of the process is dipping, and a lot of that's been, because, there's been a big focus on speed. So, And a lot of times, you know, And you know, It's What's the old model, you know? when they say, you know, good, fast, cheap, pick two.

So, I know what they're doing this are finding that the process is, you know, there's more errors in it. It's there, it's not working as smoothly as it did before when you do it. For clarification, are you referring to the process that the bot is running? Or the process of making the migration process that the bot is running. So, taking the the process and moving it from platforms, but we're finding the right. Yeah.

There's a bit of a different quality once they've moved it over to, say, power automate desktop, because again, the focus was on speed and not necessarily the quality of it. Again, you could be a little bit lost in translation.

So, some more errors, things like that you just set up. Another great question from. From William I. Clearly, Williams got got his hands deepen this stuff, Right? His question is, how sensitive to developer X is a great question?

How sensitive to developer eccentricities in the existing bots, are your migration tools, and what is the effect of non-standard bott building in the existing bots on automating migration between platform? And other, I love the word Eccentricities, if they did a crappy job with the bot, how does your tool handle that. I think that's a good question.

Yes, so I'll let Matt Matt, I'll let you get the technical answer.

I just want to get real quick a setup that I heard of somebody a developer said that they use the word magical to describe the process that we use because there's times where, for example, I know, that selectors can be finicky thing that tends to move over fairly smoothly within blueprints. So, I've heard just, and this is me from a non technical approach, just hearing that developers finicky developers lot of times. They're surprised with how well things move over. So, I'll let you give your technical yet.

Automation is, is a no.

It's definitely one.

You see a lot of Eccentricities, and you see the human element with how developers have Bildt automations.

And, for the most part, no one's being malicious and how they built up. Sometimes, you see someone using automation.

You just wrap a bunch of soap calls, and it's like, OK, that's one way to do that. What we've been able to do, and, largely, what we've focused on are, you know, and now I want to say good practice.

It's really more using automations to do tedious tasks, and that's really the focus is there's simple things, these automations are designed to do and complex automations don't necessarily do complex operations, they do just more simple operations to achieve a longer set of steps.

And so what we found is when we get accent eccentricities that show up in how someone's built-in automation that may be.

And Blue Prism is a perfect example where you can do anything you want in Blue Prism.

Violating every logic constructive, you know, looping and automation structure, we actually clean that up when we import them in.

So this idea of a Digital Blueprint kind of creates a level playing field and that's one of the things we've been trying to promote is as you import them into Digital Blueprint, we will sanitize it to turn into a common framework that will transport that will actually move over.

We're starting to go deeper to look for, maybe, particular development patterns that you don't want to be looking for. Maybe you don't want passwords in there, if you want to make sure things are named consistently and more conventions. So that's kind of our next level of detail.

But in terms of eccentricities, we try to catch those on, on the import and clean them up.

And then in some cases, what we've been doing with customers is, as we've been looking at the RPA state, the automations, they don't import. Those are the ones. They usually have some specific eccentricities where a bot wasn't built correctly.

So those will be wants to clean up before we can try to do the migration.

So the human element is definitely something we consider. And it's definitely something that the factor and it's part of the migration experience but the fact is, you know about those eccentric automations before you try to migrate them. That's probably the key element in that.

Yeah, yeah. I love.

It's really strange. I'm in this chair role, right? I'm supposed to be, you know orchestrated. I'm fascinated by what you guys are talking about. Because this is so useful. and so relevant. I sound like I'm a shill for Blueprint And, I don't mean that. I think of myself as a practitioner.

I, When I said, you know, Crappie automations, We all know that.

What one what looks crappy? Can be an innovation.

Someone finds a way to innovate things in a completely different way, and it becomes the new standard, but I think, you know, William's question was, how, how can you adapt?

and, if I were on this call listening into you, guys, I would say, I want to go deeper. I want to spend more. I know you'll respond to that, if someone can take them through the details.

Alright, so, I've got a couple other questions, and this is kind of the Saturn five question, other than the time savings, which you clearly demonstrated that. And I can the tedium of rewriting these things is just horrible. Not to mention the human error or getting them wrong, right. So, the time savings is huge.

What other benefits would you describe for having this blue blueprint is the name of your company, but if you had an electronic, you have this, like, this is what our automation is, what other benefits would you associate with that?

Yeah, and I'll start here. And, Matthew, feel free to chime in, as well.

But the digital blueprints are interesting for our customers because this idea, and you mentioned the Saturn five rocket, and I love that analogy, a lot of time, we pour blood, sweat, and tears into building something. In this case, we're building an automated process.

All of the intellectual property, and tribal knowledge that goes into building that process, essentially, gets baked into the code.

It's baked and it's kind of locked into this one format.

These digital blueprints are allowing organizations to kind of reclaim these assets and pull them out of this sort of specific technical technology box that only certain people understand, and it puts it in the generic format of a Digital Blueprint that A, we can get better insight on. So I've had customers that send me an automation, and in 10 minutes, I can tell them more about that path. And they know today, just from the number of steps that a system that works with, because we can actually pop the hood and actually analyze it.

So that that insight has been huge, and that's a huge value. But then, there's a snowball effect that happens here, when you think about your automation programs.

Well, when we're building, you know, let's say, we've acquired a company. They have a bunch of automations. Well, they have something for accounts payable. We're trying to build that automation and accounts payable.

Wouldn't it be great if we could re-use that? Oh, they built it, blue, Prism, and we're using UI Path.

Well, the beauty of a Digital Blueprint is you pull in that automation from accounts payable. You now have a framework.

You can export over to UI Path or you can just take that digital blueprint and start to modify Radon Blueprint and you get a half built bot that's over in UI path within a couple of days. And now you're building out an automation from an automation that already exists. So, the ability to re-use these automation is the ability to have insight.

It just gives your organization's a better velocity on driving consistent automation, throughput, and a condition automation program.

So I want to, there I am, I'm back in my job, selling this stuff to companies all over the world, right?

I would say two things you guys have done. There are many things you've done two things to answer to this, to this person's question.

one, you are going to keep every RPA company on their toes.

They're not gonna get complacent with a bunch of entrenched garbage that you can't, you know, because the transition costs are so extreme, right? You're going to keep everyone on their toes, which is fantastic.

And so that's that's a huge plus, and you, you've given company's nimbleness and what they can do with this stuff going forward, right? It's just, so, anyway, I'm sounding a little bit too much to ask the tough questions like. So, what are your biggest disasters to go in there right now? Alright. Well, look, we're, I got, I think I've got time for one more. Let me see if I got another question to answer on the list.

It's a little, there's a lot of questions, but a little thin bar, I think, I think I'm good Or defective.

OK, I've got one more.

We talked about that. Covered that one.

OK, so, your thoughts on transition, and, uh, and a big phrase that comes up, The citizen developer, right?

Now, I don't know how far that's going to go, or not go. But what are your thoughts of using the complementary or non complementary aspects of what you do with the citizen developer world?

Yeah, so, I mean, we have the benefit of having a few customers that are actually actually have a citizen developer program.

one, I mentioned, has gone from A to power automate desktop.

So the interesting thing for us is, again, how do we give a consistent approach in a consistent process?

So I think that's one of the things that citizen development movements are often challenged with is how do you empower your organization, empower the technical, technically savvy people in your organization to be independent in how they build their bots and how they manage their bots. Or in like this, in the case of this company, the citizen developers own the migration of their own bots because the co doesn't have the bandwidth to do that.

And so what this has allowed, what we're seeing, is it's allowing companies a way to help a re platform.

Be, just even start to consolidate, and all the fact is a process hub.

Start to act as a way to consolidate all the automation. So they can either use things or if someone's building into automation, they can go and look through what's already built. What can I borrow from?

So, these are some of the practices, as you start to get into things like citizen development, it really enable and empower that program because, yes, these people need to be technically savvy on building automations.

but so much of automation is just an extension of process of understanding a process and automating a process.

So, having a hub of process to start from, creates a much bigger accelerator and a much more consistent value driver and time to value.

Multiplier.

Sorry, I think citizen developer. It's, it's uh, it's almost a problem and the fact or it's an easy sounding word in how people say it says, some developer and they get excited.

Yeah. I've been in the IT space in the tech space for a long time, and I, at one point, was kind of a citizen developer myself, and it's very difficult. You know, I haven't, I've tried to use power automate to just solve very small things. And it works for a minute and it doesn't you need more way more help than you think.

And it's so it's to Matt's point you really do need a program around it. You can't just say, here are some tools, some developers, go use this and make your life better. Right, You have to have a program around it.

I love this. I was in six Sigma, Lean six Sigma for years and they would say, oh yeah, everybody will be a green belt all over the business.

Well, those people all had real jobs, Right? They didn't have time to go fixing the process.

They were responsible for, you know, getting loans to the business or whatever. Anyway, look, we are. We're running out of time here. We're going to start again, at the top there. I want to thank you guys both.

If this was just the three of us, and I was just listening to you guys, I know you wouldn't take the time just to talk to me, but maybe you would.

This was fantastic. It was very useful.

Now, this is like the nuts and bolts stuff, guys. This is, you know, if you think of this whole RPA and intelligent automation, this is a critical wrench. It's like saying your metric and your standard tools are all going to work on whatever car you bought. That's a really important point. Right? So, hopefully, for those of you who have any touch of the stuff that's gonna get into the details, are you going to do a transition? This has been useful. Our next topic with Mark Jason is going to be a very broad subject. It's about the investment opportunities and what's going on and a variety of very sophisticated types of technology. So hopefully today you're going to dip in and out of the high, the low, the tactical, the specific. Gentlemen, thank you very much for your time. Everybody logged back in on the, at the top of the hour for the next session. With Mark Jason. I will do an introduction for him briefly, and get him to go. Matt, Matt, thank you very much. It was great to have you both.

Thanks, Chris, thanks, Eric. Take care. Take care, everybody.

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About the Author

more - 2022-01-29T210840.860Matthew Dodgson,
Head of Global Solution Engineering,
Blueprint Software Systems.

I believe in delivering quality solutions to customers that drive change and value for their organization. Cultivated through a background in customer service, quality assurance and software engineering I have seen first hand that the best solutions require dedication, passion and support from the whole team. 

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About the Author

more - 2022-01-29T210910.254Matthew Agnew,
Director of Product Marketing,
Blueprint Software Systems.

For over 10 years, I have been a go-to resource for sales, marketing, communications, and product management in the technology sector. I love tackling new challenges and using my creative background to help organizations thrive in new and innovative ways.

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