Blue Prism launches Automation Lifecycle Suite with added capabilities

Blue Prism has released its Automation Lifecycle Suite, with added capabilities designed to help businesses make the most out of their digital workforce.

The suite includes Automation Lifecycle Management (ALM), Process Assessment Tool (PAT), and Capture: Process Modeller, all of which aim to help businesses identify, deploy and scale automation, and reduce the typical planning and design time by 70%, according to the company.

Blue Prism Automation Lifecycle Management (ALM)

This is a set of tools that helps enterprises accelerate, manage and scale their automation projects.

Included are interfaces with guided wizards alongside pre-designed workflows, such as the Process Definition design, allowing business people to document the steps required to complete a business process.

Requirements critical for corporate governance, such as identifying those who can be assigned certain tasks and who have the authority to sign them off, are also pre-built into the system.

Blue Prism Process Assessment Tool (PAT)

This helps build a complete view of a business's automation pipeline with clear recommendations about how to deploy digital workers using the right processes, at the right time, anywhere in their business.

It can often be a struggle to expand from automating a few initial processes, to gain the real value that comes from automating multiple processes across an organisation, Blue Prism states.

As such, PAT provides customers the opportunity to further boost efficiency by providing cost-cutting and time saving information, ease of implementation scores and recommendations for prioritisation.

This prioritisation helps customers to use their digital workforce to deliver against their overall business goals and objectives, while ensuring a maximum ROI from automation projects.

Blue Prism Capture: Process Modeller

This functionality automates the manual tasks that go into mapping a business process before it can be automated.

Getting this work right is the foundation for the eventual success of any automation and typically involves mapping out the different steps of a process - gathering background documents, reviewing screenshots of an employee's computer screen, the number of keystrokes needed that show the various action in progress - that together becomes an eventual Process Definition Document (PDD), Blue Prism states.

Capture: Process Modeller uses AI and computer vision techniques to recognise and interpret these screenshots, videos and data, and consolidate them into a form that can then be checked and rearranged, as needed, by an analyst. The final outcome can then easily be exported in MS-Word or other software formats.

The time it takes from the initiation of process definition, to achieving sign-off of a PDD, can vary from days to weeks, depending on the availability of the individual in charge of the process.

Automating tasks is now accessible to anyone in the enterprise, reducing the time from process definition through PDD signoff to days, Blue Prism states.

Addressing a need

IDC Europe VP of AI and Intelligent Process Automation Practices Neil Ward-Dutton says, "Robotic Process Automation's (RPA) promise is all about speed and agility, but organisations can struggle to deliver at scale.

"Tools that help teams streamline and govern the lifecycle of automation delivery are crucial to delivering automation programs at scale with consistent quality, while keeping the core promise of RPA.

According to Blue Prism, research shows that 66% of IT decision makers globally have identified investment in automation as a priority post COVID-19 and the shift to remote working has enterprises looking to streamline processes and increase productivity.

However, just like deploying human workers effectively, it can take time to identify the best tasks for automation and to ensure greatest positive impact, Blue Prism states.

Blue Prism SVP of product strategy and management David Moore says, "Customers have told us that they often struggle to identify which processes they should automate, how to prioritise their automation journey, how to design and then how to manage their automation projects."

Moore says, "These offerings are all about improving operational agility. These tools will help new and existing Blue Prism customers determine the best step forward in their intelligent automation journey and ensure sustainable and efficient management of their automation process.

Available later this month via the Blue Prism Portal, these offerings support a holistic view of an organisation's potential automation pipeline, while maintaining the critical aspects of ensuring proper oversight and control of Blue Prism's Robotic Operating Model (ROM), the company states.