Kryon recently launched the industry’s first cloud-based Full Cycle Automation-as-a-Service (FCAaaS) platform that's powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS). To dig in deeper and learn more about what the company is doing, VMblog spoke with the company's CTO, Shay Antebi.
VMblog: Can you give us a high-level overview of what Kryon
offers? And how are you different from others in the enterprise automation
space?
Shay Antebi: Kryon is a
trailblazer in the robotic process industry (RPA) industry. Our software-based
bots, powered by AI and machine learning, observe humans on the job, learn the
processes they perform, and identify which ones are best suited for automation.
Later on, business users can rapidly automate these processes for maximum
efficiency and productivity. There are two main types of business process
automation: bots that operate alongside employees on their workstations and
bots that operate in the background. The former, known as attended automation,
is similar to virtual assistants and helps employees execute their tasks or
guide them through complex processes. Unattended RPA, in contrast, runs
automation on a virtual machine, behind the scenes. Our technology enables
attended and unattended automation as well as hybrid automation, which is
essentially a combination of both, into a single solution. Most RPA providers
focus only on one or the other. Regardless of the automation type, as a result
of outsourcing mundane processes to bots, employees enjoy increased
productivity and process accuracy while focusing on human interaction and other
more rewarding business critical activities.
However, the most
significant way Kryon stands out among our competitors is our Process Discovery
tool. One of the biggest challenges end-users face with RPA is that it takes
too long to deploy bots and see value from it. Before Kryon, this was a manual
endeavor involving the hiring of professional consultants who would monitor the
workforce and identify the processes to automation. This method can cost
hundreds of thousands of dollars and take months to complete before the
automation can even get started. After all, the time and effort it takes to
uncover the manual business processes in an enterprise can make RPA an
extremely inefficient and costly undertaking. It's no wonder that only 8% of
automation projects ever reach a scale of 50+ robots.
Process Discovery is
a game-changer for any enterprise considering an investment in RPA because it
automates the discovery process - identifying which business processes are
prime targets for deploying automation. We were the first to market with
Process Discovery more than two years ago, and since then, every vendor has
been trying to copy it.
The faster
enterprises can get to actual RPA deployment, the more quickly they can see the
impact and realize their return on investment (ROI). Once they see that in
action, they want to automate more processes and scale up even more bots. So,
with Process Discovery, we sought to "automate the automation" in order to help
customers get to that implementation phase faster. With our newest version of
Full-Cycle Automation where we added real-time capabilities to our Process Discovery
solution, this has been reduced to minutes instead of days.
VMblog: What is Full-Cycle Automation and how is Kryon
delivering this as a service?
Antebi: Kryon's AI-based Full-Cycle
Automation Suite is the only solution that delivers Process Discovery,
analytics, and direct deployment to RPA in a single platform. The Kryon
platform sets a new standard for secure, scalable, cost-efficient automation
management and optimization. It's also among the most business-user friendly
platforms on the market. Using our patented visual recognition technology, the
platform combines advanced IMR and OCR capabilities to record and execute
processes on any application (including Citrix, web-based, legacy and desktop)
- without the need for integration (no connectors/API required). Our
enterprise-grade architecture enables fast and efficient scalability, by
providing quick deployment, reliability, and rapid response to change. Our
solution also offers the highest level of security through complete separation
of resources, so only authorized users can access or edit specific data.
Earlier this year, Forrester analysts evaluated the results that our customers
achieved using Full-Cycle Automation and determined that it can reach an ROI of
352% in just three years.
With the launch of Full-Cycle Automation as a standalone
cloud platform, Kryon takes this concept to an entirely new level, from
discovering and mapping processes through RPA deployment and productivity
optimization to continual analysis for superior results.
VMblog: What are the benefits of moving enterprise automation
to the cloud?
Antebi: With Full-Cycle
Automation becoming available in the AWS cloud, we can offer the full power of
Process Discovery, RPA, and performance analytics in a unified, easy-to-use
cloud-based platform. Cloud-based delivery also means that businesses can
eliminate the high costs of server infrastructure and associated maintenance.
Plus, users can be up and running within 24 hours without extensive technical
knowledge or RPA background. Organizations can quickly and easily scale up
automation bots on demand whenever capacity is needed, and even have the
valuable robots in production within three weeks. Overall, the cloud deployment
allows the customer to focus on automating their process instead of on
deploying solutions, this will propel any automation plans customers have.
VMblog: Has Kryon seen an increase in demand for RPA due to
the COVID-19 pandemic?
Antebi: Since February of
this year, we have received numerous calls from organizations that needed a way
to respond rapidly to the changes caused by the pandemic. The world is a
different place today and our customers need help to quickly shift the way work
gets done. Those who are not moving quickly enough to the new way of working
will suffer. That is where RPA comes in. Even before Coronavirus, RPA delivered
efficiency, productivity, but with the onslaught of the pandemic, the
automation of business-critical, time-consuming tasks is essential for
survival.
VMblog: What are some of the ways that businesses are
leveraging RPA that they were not doing before the pandemic?
Antebi: Before the pandemic,
organizations were interested in RPA to maximize efficiency. Today, in many
cases, it is about ensuring existence. Entire workflows have been disrupted.
More people than ever are working from home. How will businesses get through
this?
Data is our best
friend as we find our way out of this public health crisis, but the challenge
is, how do we apply structure to that data and share it quickly with those who
need it? RPA is poised to assist with this in myriad ways. One of the early
calls for help we received as the pandemic was just starting was from Maccabi
Healthcare Services, the largest nonprofit health maintenance organization
(HMO) in Israel, with 2.4 million members. Maccabi needed to automate the
process of uploading confidential COVID-19 patient test results to the Israeli
Ministry of Health, twice a day At the time, this was a manual process that
created weeks-long backlogs and a mass of human errors. Working closely with
Maccabi's CIO, our team automated the process within 48 hours. The rapid
uploading of critical and sensitive data to the Ministry of Health better
informs response decisions. We applied the same principle when we helped the
Brazilian Ministry of Health streamline what was a largely manual, error-prone,
and complex process of gathering and updating COVID-19 statistics. As you may
know, the virus outbreak is particularly widespread there.
We are also helping
banking and financial institutions deploy automation. Call centers in banks
everywhere around the world have experienced a massive increase in calls from
mortgage holders and credit cardholders who want to delay their payments. Bank
customers seeking to delay their mortgage payments can submit a request via the
bank's website. Kryon's Full-Cycle Automation solution receives the request
automatically, validates all the details, and matches the information with
multiple credit systems. Once the bot completes these processes, a bank agent
receives an initial approval of the customer's request and takes it from there.
For credit card payment deferrals, our solution processes requests submitted by
customers via self-service channels, pulling relevant customer data from
various applications and verifying each customer's eligibility for payment
postponement. If the requester is eligible, a bot sends an automated email and
an SMS notification to the customer with the new payment date, while also
updating it in the bank's CRM. In the case of non-eligibility, a robot creates
a case to be reviewed by a dedicated team of banking agents. This scenario
alone has shown a 70% reduction in average handling time per call, which
provides relief to the call center workers and bank agents as well as the
customer who needs the postponement.
VMblog: What's next for the RPA industry? What do you think
needs to happen to encourage widespread adoption of this technology?
Antebi: What we have seen so
far is only scratching the surface of what RPA can do. How has our
culture-at-large changed due to the coronavirus pandemic? Will some of these
changes in societies around the world become permanent? We have already seen
many large enterprises say they're going to a work-from-home model forever.
What kind of technology will be needed to support all of these remote workers?
Will we eventually return to life before COVID-19? Or, will we find a new way
to move forward? Either way, Kryon is ready to lead and help organizations
improve the future of work - whatever it looks like.
One of the barriers
to widespread RPA adoption is the worry that bots will replace humans and
render their jobs obsolete. Kryon has reset this discussion by providing the
tools and encouragement for anyone to learn how to become an RPA developer. The
way Kryon has developed its Full-Cycle Automation means that in an attended
automation situation, the human workers are always in control and the bot is
there to assist, make recommendations, and take on tasks that are delegated by
the human. Imagine what that technology could do for your remote workforce. My
vision of how RPA is used in the near-term is that humans, bots, and software
applications work together harmoniously, with humans sitting in the driver's
seat and offloading the tasks that drag them down.
Another major barrier
to widespread RPA is that enterprises struggle to find qualified RPA developers
that can lead an automation center of excellence. Kryon solves this challenge
in two ways. First, our software is low code by design. We believe that anyone
in an enterprise should be able to come up with a concept for automation.
Humans who are carrying out the time-intensive, mundane tasks at a business
know better than anyone what should be automated, so why not enable them to participate
in the process? And secondly, training services. Our
Kryon
Academy is training the next generation of RPA citizen developers.
Many of our students have their first automation deployment in the field in six
to eight weeks.
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About Shay Antebi
Shay Antebi is Chief Technology Officer at
Kryon Systems, a robotic process automation provider headquartered in Tel Aviv,
Israel. Over the course of his career, Antebi has led multiple large-scale
global transformations introducing teams to new, cutting-edge technologies and
methodologies. Shay previously served as the vice president of R&D and
Innovation at Amdocs (NASDAQ: DOX), where he was responsible for building
world-class services, and became the CTO for Amdocs Delivery, where he
spearheaded the technology for over 5,000 developers. rturing creativity to achieve the best results.