https://www.londonstockexchange.com/stock/PRSM/blue-prism-group-plc/company-page
Anyone else in this stock? Another potential takeover of a UK company by US money. Timing my buy before the news broke was a bit of a fluke to be fair, and now scratching my head a bit to sell out now, or wait and see if it goes much higher.
I just hate Blue Prism or any other āRobotic Process Automationā or āIntelligent Automationā softwares. Thereās nothing robotic about them. Also thereās nothing intelligent about them. These types of companies are companies which put an interface onto a screen and click recording software. Theyāre terrible softwares. The only use case in my opinion is consultants going in to antiquated organisations or organisation overreliant on Excel and automating the process. Though the automation will break, and requires further investment to repair.
Give it a decade or so and let some of the older people retire. Once the younger generation with tech skills begin rising in the ranks these softwares will be dead.
Definitely not an investment for me.
You canāt put them all in 1 basket. Just check UiPath the leadear in RPA.
Ha I was looking at UIpath the other day and Xceptor.
The latter I have seen used to replace excel macros I had written, only to do the exact same thing. The sales pitch at work was it was a piece of software supported by an external party, unlike our vba macros.
My point was āwe wrote the VBA macros, and Microsoft supports Excel in which it runsā¦ how is that any different to us building the Xceptor code, and them maintaining the software, apart from additional costs?ā.
Needless to say they werenāt impressed with my view.
Iāve used them all. UIPath, Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism. I am the exact type I mentioned. I am (soon to be āwasā when I change jobs in 2 weeks) a consultant who works for a firm who implements these āsolutionsā. I also happen to be a data scientist.
These softwares will not survive a generation and Iāll be delighted to see them crash and burn.
It sickens your ā ā ā ā doesnāt it.
I think thatās what Iām getting at really. Like in most organisation youāll get one or two folk whoāll be versed in at least VBA who can automate away some trivial tasks. Yet, upper management donāt understand VBA and want the shiny screen recorder software like Blue Prism because of itās lovely UI. Iām seeing it in my current company, we are hiring more and more younger people who just so happen to be able to code. They may not code in their job, but they at least understand it. I truly feel once there is a bit of shuffle in upper management in the next decade and some of these guys/gals become the decision makers, that Blue Prism etc. will die out. There will be a larger tech understanding, a bigger appreciation for code like VBA etc. I cannot under any circumstances see these RPA companies surviving unless they pivot. I think they are pandering to a deficit in skills which will be soon filled.
I agree with that to a point, but some are adapting. Some are building an all in one tool that accepts input in multiple forms, can perform functions, and then spit out data in multiple formats. This is a bit more difficult to do in just VBA, but not impossible.
Some of the tools will remain, or become so embedded that the ongoing revenue will keep them going.
Low code/no code environments are certainly becoming more common place. Though if they begin to add additional functionality, they will risk entering a domain other competitors who are offering tools in data cleaning, analytics, predictive modelling etc. I think maybe Iām just grumpy is all. Coming from an AI background myself, when I hear the words 'Intelligent Automation, or āCognitive Servicesā, or even the term āRoboticā, I think it just rubs me up the wrong way. Maybe I need to be more open minded!
Agree most of them are nothing like it, they just use them as buzz words for marketing.
Things like my gripe with ChipAI and so on. Itās not AI at all!
Actually you know what, I worked as an AI researcher and if anybody saw my code and considered it in anyway intelligent, Iād highly question them, it was not pretty. I may be going off topic, but we are millllllllles away from generalised inteligence. A lot of people way smarter than I seem to think we will solve intelligence in this lifetime. Iām assuming they know something I donāt know, as I just canāt see it happening.
Tying it back to the original post though, if A.I. softwares will progress that far, I wonder where Blue Prism will sit? Will Microsoft/Amazon etc. eventually incorporate these kind of A.I./automation tools into their products?
If you use Microsoft Power BI, weāre already seeing it a little. It has a machine learning and text analysis offering built in. It also ārecordsā your steps used to process data before you visualise it, so in a sense this is automation.
The latest time I tried that it was too clunky, but may have moved on from there 
Anyhow looking back at this, will be interested to see how the bidding goes.
It has not 
It is still difficult and awkward to use. I only use it when I inherit other peopleās work.
