Bots & Business

CFOs are right to look at RPA for bottom line reasons first—but practitioners speaking at last week’s CFO AX webinar on what’s on the digital transformation horizon for Finance teams revealed that automation is actually being influenced by a number of business and non-business factors.

UiPath announced it has joined the MuleSoft Technology Partner Program with the release of a MuleSoft Certified Connector for the UiPath Platform. MuleSoft Certified Connectors, accessible on MuleSoft’s Anypoint Exchange, are developed by MuleSoft’s partners and developer community and have been reviewed and certified by MuleSoft.

Leadership, for example by the CFO, is a critical element in successfully automating processes in organizations. RPA pioneer Asher Lake will be talking about this subject at UiPath Together 2022, the largest software event in the Benelux, to be held in a few weeks in Amsterdam. Rocking Robots talked to him about the lessons he learned in automating with RPA at, among others, KLM Air France. ‘It’s all about building a movement in your organization.’

Schlumberger announced it has expanded its global Innovation Factori network with the inauguration of a new center in Oslo, Norway.

A manufacturing company’s HR specialists save 85% of time previously spent on manual sick leave submissions – allowing them to focus on more valuable business tasks.

Robot sales in North America reached a record $2B in 2021 driven by urgent manufacturing challenges such as labor shortages, supply chain disruptions, and more. The U.S. robotics industry has proven exceptional at meeting demand, according to a report from HowToRobot.com, Gain & Co. and The Association for Advancing Automation (A3).

Universal Robots, the Danish producer of collaborative robots (cobots), has reported record Q1 revenue of USD 85m, 30% up on its 2021 Q1 revenue.

Deere & Company has formed a joint venture with GUSS Automation, provider of semi-autonomous orchard and vineyard sprayers. High-value crops (HVCs), such as orchards and vineyards, generate significantly higher value per acre than grains or oilseeds. The three primary high-value crop categories include bedded crops (vegetables and melons), vineyards (grapes and other berries), and orchard crops (almonds, citrus, olives, apples, etc.).

The UK is one of the front runners in automation. A lot of companies have moved beyond just RPA, and added technology such as process mining and AI to their business. This change has implications for the involvement of the CFO in IT investments. “The C suite has to not only buy into it even but champion it more than anything else, because they’ve paid for costly mistakes in the past already.”

Agility Robotics, manufacturer of robots designed to work alongside people in logistics and warehouse environments, has raised $150 million. This capital will be used to accelerate Agility’s R&D and scale its robot production.