- RPA specialists focusing on strategy enablement rather than just cutting manual hours.
- Bots now in use as ‘light‑touch’ integrators, including on M‑PESA platform.
- Vodacom citizen development programme now launched to drive RPA adoption and automation.
Vodacom and UiPath, a US‑based robotic process automation (RPA) specialist, provided further insights into their collaboration on automation, with Vodacom Group Executive and RPA evangelist Atenkosi (Ati) Ngubevana describing the South Africa‑based Group as “definitely ahead of the curve…at a global level” in terms of RPA deployment, and the meshing of the automation technology with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).
Speaking as part of a customer panel at the UiPath Investor Day on 27 September 2022, Ngubevana, who heads up the OpCo’s Digital Process Reengineering department and covers five African markets (South Africa, Mozambique, Lesotho, Tanzania, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo/DRC), described the triggers that prompted Vodacom to begin automating its operations in the first place. A primary driver was the need to “improve on our efficiencies because as time goes [by], we find that the top line is struggling”, she said.
She noted that while the initial focus had been on “trying to save manual hours”, this shifted quickly towards becoming an “enabler of strategy” because “our CFOs are telling us they can’t eat hours”.
“When we are dealing with the consumer business unit or Vodacom Business, their biggest pain point is to try and see to what extent they can fast‑track revenue enablement”, Ngubevana said. “We’ve now got bots that are assisting in fast‑tracking the creation of revenue”.
For example, the bots help the revenue assurance team track potential revenue leakage or fraud, or enable the network engineering team to keep a closer eye on network elements. “Our matrix of measurement is tightly linked to a particular business strategy or vertical strategy of business KPIs”, she added.
Ngubevana also described how the integration of RPA with AI and ML is adding more value to automation. “Machine learning becomes the brain capacity… [while] RPA becomes the unlimited hands that helps you execute on your work”, she said. “We’re playing an important role in operationalising artificial intelligence”.
People power
In April, Ashim Gupta, Chief Financial Officer at UiPath, noted that Vodacom had already deployed “135 unattended software robots” with the help of the vendor. The deployment, he claimed, had “delivered to date over 1.2 million hours saved, $1.3m [£1.1m/€1.3m] in opex savings, and $19.5m in revenue enablement” (Vodafonewatch, #206).
At the time, Gupta said the African operator’s next step was to launch an “organisation‑wide citizen development programme” to enable its workforce to “drive discovery, scale, and unleash frontline innovation”.
Ngubevana confirmed that this programme was launched about six months ago and currently includes about 60 people in the five markets within her remit. “We want our employees to be technology company employees by freeing up their capacity”, she said. “We are now using the citizen programme to be an enabler of that individual role transformation, and that’s been also going quite well”.
In terms of where UiPath RPA bots are being deployed, Ngubevana estimated that they are “still primarily on the user interface, maybe 70-30”.
However, she pointed to a growing trend towards using RPA bots as a “light‑touch integrator where the legacy systems wouldn’t have been able to integrate well with the newer kind of platforms”.
Here, she cited the increasing usage of bots within the flagship m‑money platform M‑PESA. “We have so many RPA UiPath RPA bots running on the platform to a point where even the product development team wants to be upskilled to have UiPath included in the product,” she said.
Founded in 2005 in Bucharest, Romania, UiPath is frequently listed as one of the top RPA providers on the market. For example, the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Robotic Process Automation Software 2021–2022 Vendor Assessment positioned the specialist in the ‘leaders’ category, highlighting its “broad and deep RPA capabilities, innovation, and market momentum”. However, the analysts also pointed to one challenge. They said UiPath’s pricing is “premium priced until customers approach a level of adoption that warrants an enterprise licence agreement”. IDC indicated that UiPath is of greatest value when RPA platforms “are a strategic part of an enterprise automation programme” and when customers “are planning to consolidate RPA under a single, standard offering. UiPath is also suitable for enterprise departmental use cases and for midmarket adoption”.
Deutsche Telekom on the same [Ui]path
Interest in UiPath is also evident within Deutsche Telekom. In April, for instance, Gupta indicated that UiPath had been working with T‑Mobile US for around two years, which aligns with when the US operator completed its merger with Sprint.
In a brief presentation during the UiPath Investor Day, Adel Al-Saleh, Chief Executive of T‑Systems, also noted that the enterprise services provider has been “tracking UiPath for many years now”.
“Our focus on automation within our digital offerings and digital agenda makes UiPath a very interesting partner for us to build partnership”, he added. “Bringing [T‑Systems and UiPath] together will offer compelling propositions to our clients and enable them in their digitalisation journey”.
