Enterprise Architects, along with technology and business executives drive the execution of digital strategies that include bringing emerging technologies to life. In my current role, I have been leading some of the digital transformations that include the automation and RPA practice. In organizations with mature automation CoEs, the teams continually engage with business units to evaluate ideas. Such outreach also requires an element of internal branding and marketing to position the offerings.

At a recent tech-conference, a speaker from a large organization was showcasing some of the ideas for marketing and outreach practiced by his team, which included giving their bots a "human touch," by naming them. His argument took a leaf out of the playbook followed by the tech oligopoly: giving humanized names and Avatars like Siri, Cortana and Alexa to digital assistants and Bots. This got me thinking about the pros-and-cons of ‘naming’ digital Bots.

The convention of naming Robots dates back to early science fiction genera. An entire generation of Star Wars fans fondly idolize robots like C3-PO, R2-D2 and BB-8. And of course the antics of cute animated Wall-E or Baymax have captured the attention of the next generation.

Designing humanoid Robots (link) continues to be the holy grail of industrial engineers and designers, and their antics captured in video clips regularly go ‘viral.’ Sophia, the humanoid robot from Hanson Robotics generated a lot of buzz when the traditional middle-eastern nation conferred her its Saudi Arabian citizenship, with the honor of the first robot ever to have a nationality. This move left many of us digerati scratching our heads: wondering if ‘she’ would ever walk up to a stern-faced border guard or immigration official to get her passport stamped?

The convention of naming bots seems to be evolving primarily for consumer facing digital assistants and ChatBots. Industrial Robots, on the other hand, are viewed as machines. They assist is a variety of industrial scenarios, including welding, painting, assembly, pick and place for printed circuit boards, packaging and labeling, palletizing, product inspection, and testing. The tech-giant Amazon reportedly runs a hundred-thousand Robots assisting workers in its warehouses around the globe. These Bots operate in industrial settings without much fanfare or ‘branding,’ and are tagged, labeled and managed as industrial machines and tools.

In the field of medicine too, robots are going beyond the headlines by assisting with complex but “minimally invasive” surgeries. (link) While some of them like the Robots from da Vinci Si Works are being named after the famous scientist, most are considered an extension of tools and gadgets in a hospital. Humans still regard the skills and knowledge of surgeons and doctors, and downplay the role of bots. Most of us would rather go to a reputed surgeon for a “robotic-assisted” hip replacement angioplasty than agree to have an unassisted robot - “Sandy” or “Bob” - perform such intrusive operations.

All this brings us back to naming RPA Bots

Robotic process automation has emerged as a popular technique for automating business process. RPA vendors have done a good job of positioning their toolkits along with momentum around digitization and artificial intelligence (AI). Articles in the business press have also done their bit in fueling this thinking –

“Hundreds of software robots work alongside human employees at companies such as Ernst & Young and Walmart Inc. where they’re saving employees millions of hours of time.” ( WSJ)

Well-designed RPA Robots supplement and substitute repetitive activities of human processors while seamlessly interfacing with IT systems and tools. Many of them are designed to work seamlessly in the background while some assist transaction processing in the foreground.

Mature Information Systems organizations have evolved a rigor in managing software and underlying hardware, the techniques of which are extending to management of RPA orchestrators and AI engines. Organizations that deploy and manage a large number of Bots need systematic ways to track and trace their activities; perhaps like Amazon manages hundreds of Robots in its warehouses.

After the first few Bots go live in your organization, there is bound to be a sense of achievement and anticipation of the possibilities ahead. This is also the time to plan and design to scale up. Unlike a real-life user, say Bob Jr, a simple RPA Bot designed to mimic his routine actions may not be able to pick-up the phone and call the IT support desk if the backend SAP system is down. It will be designed to generate an email or text alert to the support team.

When you have a hundred Bots in production, and Bob's Bot fails while doing a Master data update, would you want the Ops team getting a message saying “Bob's Bot is unable to access SAP”; or “MD_Bot_1144 failed while updating Customer master. Error code attached” ?

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