'All companies need to be tech companies': Why AI and automation are now business essentials

AUTOMATION software firm UiPath now has about 4,000 employees, ten times more than in 2019.

However, the size of its finance department has remained the same.

"The finance team is way happier today than in 2019," says Robert Enslin, co-chief executive of UiPath. "We run our entire company on AI (artificial intelligence) and automation, which has reduced a lot of their workload.

"Companies need to think about how to apply AI and automation to all parts of their business. All companies need to be tech companies."

Enslin is on a mission to spread the benefits of AI-powered automation to C-suites worldwide as he takes on the sole CEO role on February 1, 2024.

He is a big name in the technology sector, having served as the former president of SAP and the president of Google Cloud, and spending the past 21 years helping businesses transition en masse to new technology infrastructures.

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Enslin moved to UiPath in 2022 after being convinced by UiPath co-founder Daniel Dines of the untapped opportunity to help companies become ultra-efficient.

Says Enslin: "The chief information officer's job is so hard to do because things are happening so fast." He adds that CIOs have to constantly deal with multiple software platforms and apps that are not well integrated, which in turn leads to huge inefficiencies in workflows.

This is where automation comes in.

AI and automation at work

Founded in 2005, UiPath is best known for its leadership in robotic process automation (RPA).

RPA involves designing and deploying software robots that handle repetitive and lower-value tasks, such as logging into apps, organising digital files, copying and inserting data into forms, and generating routine reports.

Automation has become prevalent across industries and, in recent years, UiPath has wielded new advances in generative AI to accelerate and amplify the power of their software robots.

To make his case, Enslin often demonstrates UiPath's Clipboard AI app to corporate clients.

"With Clipboard AI, you can quickly copy data from your Excel spreadsheet and populate it into a form on another screen," he says. "Clipboard AI was built using OpenAI's GPT 3.5. Our co-CEO Daniel Dines created this in 2021 because he felt that the whole movement around large language models was going to have meaning in the future."

The company recently launched UiPath Autopilot, an AI companion that can transform paper documents into apps with one click. Autopilot also includes Clipboard AI as part of its range of features.

UiPath is one of the few tech companies that conducts demos of its AI-powered automation tools during earnings calls.

"During our recent calls, we showcased how to generate automation for generative AI on the fly. For example, we keyed in 'Robert traveled to Mumbai. Please create an expense report.' Our software would then automatically script all the text prompts, and you just need to hit 'Run'," he explains.

In the same vein, UiPath now offers companies the ability to quickly automate tasks such as travel bookings and detecting fraudulent transactions. UiPath counts several Singapore government agencies and companies like Intel among its clients.

Intel worked with UiPath to automate the complex process of changing product codes for the shipment of its goods around the world. In just four months, Intel classified over 56,000 products with 99 per cent accuracy.

The company also mitigated significant trade compliance risks by reducing shipments on hold and global customs fees, saving hundreds of thousands of dollars. Intel achieved this by using a machine learning model and UiPath's AI tools to predict the correct codes required to move millions of goods.

In Singapore, the Singapore government's shared services department VITAL is embracing AI-powered automation to help human resource staff shortlist job candidates more rapidly, thereby allowing them to spend more time analysing qualified prospects.

End-to-end automation process

Enslin attributed the company's market momentum - its stock rising 102 per cent in 2023 - to the team's unique culture that is steeped in engineering curiosity.

He says: "When I joined UiPath, what blew my mind was how these engineers are thinking about AI and how it should fit into the company's strategy. They are really close to our customers and always test new ideas with them to make the projects better."

Enslin believes UiPath's end-to-end process for automation is their secret sauce, which the market is now responding to positively. Is he concerned about the likelihood of AI and automation destroying jobs? To Enslin, the tools have the potential to transform the nature of work.

He says: "I believe we will get to a point where we will only need to work a few hours a day, because mentally, that's all we can really cope with. Our work will be really decision-based; the facts will be coming at you, you'll only be making choices, but you don't have to do the grunt work.

"People will elevate how they work with the help of automation."