 Good afternoon, guys and gals. Welcome back to theCUBE, the leader in live tech coverage. Live day one of you, I path forward six from the MGM ground in lovely Las Vegas. I'm Lisa Martin, and I have a power panel with me as you can see. My guests are going to demystify how different starting points on the automation journey can really deliver a unified goal and what customers want, positive business outcomes at scale. Please welcome the panel to my right, Manas Arora, Director of Intelligent Automation at Cap Gemini. Gafor Sarang is here, Global Lead Digital Process Excellence and Intelligent Automation at CSL, and Leonard Arons, Senior Business Technology Consultant at NECO. Guys, it's great to have you. Thank you so much for joining us on this power panel, packed with content. Manas, I want to start with you. Cap's perspective, where should a zero right place to start? The business side, on the IT side, chicken and egg, what's going on? So I think there's no right answer for that. Every organization works in a different way, has a different structure, and a different way of operating. So in that particular sense, what we've typically seen is keeping certain principles in mind when any organization is looking to automate. Firstly, let's get to the history of automation. So history of automation, it was purely a point of proof of concepts, then it sort of evangelized to a hyperscale automation. Now we are actually living the hyper-automation phase, where AI, analytics, and robotics are coexisting together. So in today's scenario, I think it really doesn't matter where it starts. It really does matter how the principles are followed. A couple of them that I can definitely talk about is standardizing practices across the different life cycles. It has to work like a well-oiled engine. Like a complex automation implementation or a software implementation, it has different stages. Now whichever part of an organization or business unit or IT, whichever division is trying to do that, I think A, they need to have the right standard set. So the right standard of discovering an automation, the right standard of delivering an automation, testing an automation, and the right standard of actually managing the whole automation set that they've implemented. And I think the second most important factor today is creating a multi-skill center of excellence, because I think one of the days when automation alone could solve a lot of problems, in today's day, the organizations are looking for AI, analytics, and RPA to come together. And whenever we sort of also look at processes, there has to be a wider lens to observe the process, to understand the process, and to kind of fit the right technology and the best technology for it. That wider lens is key. And the great thing is we've got two customers here who, whether it's chicken or egg, started differently. Go for it, let's go to you at CSL, talk a little bit about where from an automation journey perspective, CSL started business side, or the IT side? I know it was one of them. Sure, yeah. For us, it was on the IT side. So as part of the ERP transformation we had a couple of years ago, we did a few automations to try and see how this works. And I think it was also, try it out in IND first, before you really take the technology to the business, because there was a lot of hesitation, in terms of is automation the right thing? Does it work? Does it not work? So I think once we kind of got over the initial, I would say it's starting small, but strong. So laying the right foundation, but starting really small with the pilot, and making people believe in automation does work. And I think that was really good for us. So we started with IND or IT, and then with my counterpart in Capgemin, Prashan Dambal, when he came on, we then created a roadmap to say, okay, how do we now move to the business? So that's where Ajayani started from. Love it. And then it's a piece chicken, your egg. Tell us a little bit about where Anika started. Yeah, well in our case it was a little different. We had a small implementation in place that was initiated by business. And it was maintenance heavy, so at some point IT stepped in and basically took it to the next level by making it accessible in a platform sense, so that also other business units could benefit from RPA as a platform, in a more generic sense, and just a once-off implementation, so to speak. So we actually made it more mature, you could say, but it was a joint effort. So business initiated it, and then IT basically helped out taking it to the next level. So Manas, as you said, it doesn't matter where you start. Having that strategic vision is key, but it sounds to me like two different perspectives, successfully implementing automation, delivering business outcomes, which we'll get to in a minute. Can you give us Manas kind of your recommendation for what does that high-level strategic vision, what should it be for organizations that are evaluating automation? As you said, start fast, start small, start fast. That's correct, absolutely. It is about starting small and starting the right way. What one thing that we also need to understand is the way the technology is now a hyperscaling, right? It's sort of a rapid movement that we've never seen, and it's unlike the older forms of technology which would impact only one area of a particular business. The technologies here now impact the whole organization, have a use case in every single part of the organization. Whether it's the front office, the middle office, or the back office of an organization, it has a considerable impact. And not alone that, it is becoming a key driver for organizations to save cost, improve customer experiences, improve employee experiences. So all in all, I think it's extremely important. And hence, having the right practices, again, is the key focus. Having the right strategy, having the right playbooks, the right templates, having the right ecosystem to exist, the right infrastructure. I think if the starting point is set right, typically the automation journey that we've seen with our customers is fairly smooth. However, if the initial bits are not very well organized, it kind of leads to several challenges which have to be. I want to ask you a follow up question, Manas. Since we've demonstrated, thanks to your customers here, that you can start on the IT side, the business side, they come together, they collaborate, there's a strategic vision. When you're in different customer conversations, do you, are you asked to provide guidance? Where should it start? In certain cases, yes. But most of the organization, two years back, yes, we would definitely want to ask and understand. But now I think organizations themselves know how the automation chart is flowing because most of the enterprises now have started adopting automation. So they are setting up a strategy. But yes, we play a role in fine tuning that strategy in terms of setting the best practices, in terms of augmenting any sort of work that they're trying to do and giving them the right guidance of how to get to the market or run this as a large program internally, so we provide that. So either the business folks are coming to you or the IT folks are coming to you? Both of them. Yes, both sides coming. Guffer, let's go to you. Talk a little bit about the progression of automation. You said it started with IT. I'd love to also get your perspectives on how the automation journey has, has it helped facilitate tighter collaboration between IT and the business folks? Talk a little bit about that. Yeah, I mean, definitely, you know, collaboration is a key, I would say, one of the key aspects, right? I mean, there are so many lessons learned for us. And I think one of the big things to answer your question is, what is the business value you're going after, right? We're not doing any automation for the sake of doing automations. We're doing automations to generate that business value. And I think one of the key things we did is to try and understand what the business problems are, where the pain points are, right? Work with the business and give set very realistic expectations on what, how automation can actually impact solve business problems. So I think that really, you know, kind of helped also alignment with stakeholders, you know, like I already mentioned, setting clear expectations and also, you know, ensuring that change management is the key, right, in this case, because you have the INT organization, you have business, you have some other stakeholders, ensuring you communicate before the project, during the project, after the project, so that everyone is on the same page. And once people know their roles and responsibilities, I think it becomes very easy to kind of go ahead and implement the project. So for us, as we progress from doing INT or IT automations to business automations, the business team started seeing the value because we engaged them right up front and, you know, kept them in the know-how, right from the beginning. The other good thing that we did is we, in short, we have automation champions in different business areas very early in the program. So what this did is this kind of gave us an extension of a team. The automation champions went to each of the business areas and spoke about automation. So they are the ones who kind of promoted the automation, brought in the ideas, you know, and almost became an extension of a team. I think that worked really well for us as well. So that strategic direction that you set from the outset of getting the right stakeholders involved, getting the automation advocates involved for the business, was that advice or recommendations that your partner Capgemini provided? How did you guys know how to do that? And I want to follow up and understand yours as well. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of learning from, you know, all our partners, right? UiPath is a partner, Capgemini. So definitely we got a lot of good direction. And to be honest, when we started a couple of years ago, there was trial and error as well. But I think one thing which everyone consistently said was to focus on value creation. This is why we are, right? This is why we exist and this is what we did with the COE. Value creation, that's a mic drop moment. Leonard, talk to us a little bit about the automation journey at NECO, starting on the business side. Give me a perspective of, was it a similar journey to what GoFore shared at CSL? Well, I hear the similarities. But I think we, well, having partnered with Capgemini for many years, they did advise a lot on where, which areas we should find use cases. So there's of course the traditional finance, HR, customer care. But the actual gathering of use cases and setting it up, that was mostly a joint effort together with Capgemini and Vent doing workshops, showing the benefits from other customers as well. And basically creating business cases together to get business on board. So it's, you could call it triangular, but it was, yeah. Say IT is the provider or the enabler and business then has to see the benefits and then come up with the use cases to automate. So it was mostly a joint effort, I would say. Can you share, sticking with you, Leonard, can you share a little bit about some of the positive business outcomes that NECO has achieved so far on the automation journey, where you are today? Well, I can't go into the specifics of any numbers, but of course there's the financial benefits. But I personally tend to look at the qualitative benefits. So reducing errors, but mostly employee satisfaction or employee happiness, because we automated quite a lot of manual labor, I would call it. So a lot of tedious tasks, repetitive bulk work, and that basically makes people happy because they, first of all, don't have to do that tedious work anymore, but second of all, they can put their skills to better use in different areas. So it makes people happy. And then of course the other benefits are reduced errors, increased data quality. So yeah, also from a compliance perspective, there's many benefits that we have reaped. I'm glad you brought up making people happy because the productivity outcome and impact can be huge across an organization. It can be huge for things like brand reputation, talent retention, talent attraction. So that's not, you say it's a qualitative outcome, but it's also incredibly impactful to the organization. I'm glad you brought that up. Share with us some of the business impacts that CSL has achieved so far, based on where you are in that automation journey. Sure, I think the two things which Lena touched upon as well, which you're just mentioning is the employee experience. And in our case, with CSL we have a plasma center, so donor experience, people who come to donate the plasma. So we're working, we're doing everything we can from an automation perspective to provide that experience to people, so it's not just about the numbers or saving the hours, but honestly, I look at automation and AI as actually the new frontier, right? Which helps to improve productivity, efficiency, save time to help people focus on the work that really matters to us. So I think for me that's where the benefit the business is. It's more the experience than just the saving of the hours. But business critical, the experience is absolutely business critical. Manas, I want to ask you a question. In the keynote this morning, one of the things that I loved is when it was packed with dramatic customer stories. I loved how, did you guys get a chance to see it? How they started off and boom, a big sound and then pencil light shines on the customer and they're kind of sharing their successes with UiPath and its partner ecosystem. But Manas, a lot of the talk this morning was it's AI plus automation, better together. How are you seeing that in the market from Capgemini's perspective? So I think from a Capgemini's perspective it is AI plus automation, plus analytics, plus generative AI. We typically categorize AI in three parts. One is AI for people. So something that helps people in their daily jobs, something like a language translation utility, very basic solutions, but then very effective for somebody's job in a daily run. Then we talk about AI for decisions, something that helps an organization take better decisions on the key important metrics, what they're trying to deliver, insights and data. So AI for decisions and then there's the AI for automation. So automation itself, we have to get back to the fundamentals that automation or robotics as we typically call it mimics the human actions. We still need semi-cognitive and cognitive to augment and think like a human in the cognitive sense. So I think that is where the effectiveness really comes to the table. Gopur, give us kind of a perspective on what's next for your automation journey? Where does AI fit in? It's not already. Where is hyper-automation on the roadmap? Thanks for asking that question. This is my most favorite topic to talk about. I mean, we are on a hyper-automation journey, right? It's not about RPA, it's not about AI, it's not about automation. It's a combination of all of these technologies that comes together to make these happen. And I think when we started a couple of years ago, we kind of started mastering RPA, which was a very big thing. I think we're in a good place there. We have a good demand and we've created that buzz in the organization and we're scaling. At the same time, we now started moving from just doing RPAs to intelligent automation, which is the next part in the hyper-automation journey. And this is where you do things like process mining, intelligent document processing, chatbots and so on and so forth. But again, this is where AI kind of starts coming in. So when you have automation and then you bring in AI, you are truly on the journey to hyper-automation. So this is where we are focusing on this year and with suddenly JNAI coming out and making that kind of an impact, obviously the focus is on implementing JNAI as well. So I would say starting with RPA, going to intelligent automation, bringing in AI in the mix, doing automation plus AI and then taking it all the way to cognitive. This is where the journey is, where we want to get to and I think we are somewhere in between in the vision. Can you comment just briefly before I throw it to Leonard about, you mentioned change management earlier and that's a hard process for any organization regardless of industry, people get comfortable. And I always like to say whether it's personal or professional, get comfortably uncomfortable to grow. How did you help facilitate that culture of embracing AI for good at CSL or have you yet? Or is that still in process? Yeah, I would say it's still in process for AI. This was the same process we went through for RPA because like I said, there were skepticism in terms of does automation really work, right? Everything started with the automation and now the next question in the queue is, does AI really work? Is it more harmful? Is it good for the organization? What are the guidelines? And I think jointly as an organization, we are seeking the answers to the questions with the partners, right? Capgemini, UiPath and we've heard so much today in the conference which I now will take back to the organization. So I think we are somewhere in there but we've learned the hard way in RPA. So I know exactly how you should now put change management in the heart of everything. Without change management, I don't see the program or AI being successful in any organization. Maybe it needs to be the core. Litter, take us out with really what's next for Enneco from an automation AI perspective. What do you see in the future? Well, we're obviously looking at AI just like everybody else. We're not implementing yet. We're still discovering where, how and also in what manner because there's a lot of, I don't know necessarily the word fear but of course it has a negative side or a negative annotation to it. So people are afraid of just applying it out of the box. So we're carefully looking at where to implement it, how to implement it, what target groups we're looking for where we can implement generative AI. But anywhere between AI and RPA, we're also looking at process mining, communications mining. So it's the whole, basically everything that's within the automation scope is currently undergoing vision and strategy. So yeah, we're definitely looking at the way forward but we're taking time to do it carefully. That's important, that's very important from a strategic lens perspective. Gentlemen, thank you so much for coming on theCUBE and really sharing that it can be chicken and egg. Yes, the answer is yes, or D, all of the above. The successes that you've had working with Capgemini UiPath on the IT-led side, on the business-led side, what you're doing with automation, where you're going. We're going to have to definitely follow these journeys closely but congratulations on what you've done, outstanding work. Thank you for joining us. Thank you very much. Thank you. For my guests, I'm Lisa Martin. You've been watching this power panel on looking at where should automation originate, IT or business, yes. Stick around, Rebecca Knight joins me and our next guests are here in just a minute. We'll be right back with you.