RPA sets stage for agentic AI and enterprise oversight – News

Robotic process automation, or RPA, is evolving beyond repetitive task automation into a new era of agentic intelligence, where bots and agents work together to enable enterprise-scale automation strategy.

This next chapter builds on the foundation of RPA. It extends into judgment-based work that demands governance and oversight, according to Dana Forfa (pictured, left), vice president and global head of procurement, real estate and travel at UiPath Inc.

“I think something interesting is that what I’ve heard … is that a lot of people were concerned about technical debt with RPA,” she said. “Is RPA going away? My team has used RPA as the building blocks for agentic. Our agents are actually using our robots. We have just continued on the goodness that we’ve already built.”

Forfa, along with Hitesh Ramani (right), chief accounting officer and deputy chief financial officer of UiPath, spoke with theCUBE’s Dave Vellante and Rebecca Knight at UiPath Fusion, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, News Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed the evolution from RPA to agentic AI, the role of oversight in automation and how enterprises balance productivity with trust. (* Disclosure below.)

Scaling RPA with human oversight

Enterprises are moving beyond bots as simple doers to agents that recommend, guide and collaborate with humans in real time. The ability to combine these approaches enables new levels of productivity while freeing employees to focus on more strategic work, according to Forfa.

“We had a bot that would chase people at quarter close to complete the goods receipt process, rather than individuals following up all the time,” she said. “The difference now is that the agent is actually answering some of the questions the procurement buyer would’ve had to answer when Hitesh comes back and says, ‘Can you give me some more detail about this?’ My buyers are now freed up from answering those questions and can move on to be more strategic partners to the business, to add some more value, to negotiate some hard contracts themselves.”

The distinction between deterministic tasks handled by RPA and probabilistic tasks suited for agents underscores why human oversight is crucial. Balancing these approaches creates both efficiency and trust, Ramani explained.

“When I think about processes … an enterprise process has a part of the process which is deterministic in nature,” he said. “These are those mundane, repetitive tasks which does not require cognitive skills,” he added. “Those type of automations we can transform using automation, and the same process may have a portion of the sub-process which requires cognitive skills; that’s where agents come into play. In a probabilistic technology, you’ll always have an outcome, but you want to make sure there is [an] absolute governance and trust layer; you want to incorporate a human in the loop, and that’s where the orchestration comes into play.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of News’s and theCUBE’s coverage of UiPath Fusion:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for UiPath Fusion. Neither UiPath Inc., the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or News.)

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