As artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotic process automation continue to gain steam when it comes to the automation of complex business processes, they are setting the stage for an agentic future.

This is because RPA is enabling the transition of manual and repetitive tasks into more autonomous and intelligent processes, fostering enhanced human creativity and problem-solving solutions, as evidenced by the PricewaterhouseCoopers International Ltd. research on banking, according to Amit Kumar (pictured, left), strategic sales and field chief information officer at UiPath Inc.

UiPath’s Amit Kumar and PwC’s Kevin Kroen talk to theCUBE about what to expect in an agentic future.

“This is a journey that we have lived with. Most of the banks who have been part of the survey, which is they first started with RPA, they scaled it to all the business units, to all their core processors,” Kumar said. “Then they started deploying intelligent document processing to take care of the unstructured data. They’re beginning to use new gen AI experiences like Autopilot and that bodes well for the agentic future that we are trying to paint for the financial service industry.”

Kumar and Kevin Kroen (right), partner, consulting, technology and transformation, hyperautomation leader at PwC, spoke with theCUBE Research’s Dave Vellante and co-host Rebecca Knight at UiPath Forward 2024, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed what ought to be done to set the ball rolling for an agentic future. (* Disclosure below.)

The connection between hyperautomation and an agentic future

Given that hyperautomation aims to boost operational efficiency, minimize human error and allow businesses to focus on more strategic and creative activities, the PwC research found out that it’s a major metric in the agentic future. This is because it leads to AI-powered decision-making, enhanced automation and boosted scalability, Kroen pointed out.

“What we found from the survey were two major themes that came out of it,” he stated. “One theme was around the fact that investments and what we’re calling hyperautomation, the collection of automation technologies, including RPA, are actually increasing. The second piece was, as banks are forming their generative AI investments, there’s definitely a lack of connection between their generative AI strategies and their hyperautomation strategies. As we think about the theme that we’ve heard throughout this conference on agentic automation, there’s a big opportunity to think about how hyperautomation really drives action and drives value for generative AI investments.”

Since the hyperautomation toolkit includes low code, intelligent document processing and AI integration, it paves the way for an agentic future. This is because hyperautomation creates more intelligent, adaptive and efficient systems by integrating multiple advanced technologies, as shown by the banking sector, according to Kroen.

“We chose banking because we thought that they were one of their early adopters and probably had the most amount of data and experiences to give a well-rounded view and other industries are a little bit laggard to this, and so this would hopefully somewhat predict how we’re seeing this in the future,” he said. “I think the interesting part is from a hyperautomation perspective, I think that’s true. I think if we flip to the generative AI agenda, one of the pieces of feedback we got pretty consistently through the interviews was that most banks are moving pretty cautiously with their generative AI strategies as they work through concerns on risk and governance.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE Research’s coverage of UiPath Forward 2024: 

(* Disclosure: UiPath Inc. and PricewaterhouseCoopers International Ltd. sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither UiPath, PwC nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE