The pandemic has triggered (or fast-tracked) the automation journeys of many global organizations. These market players have dug deep into their various processes and found areas that could be improved significantly when left to the power of computing, cloud technologies and artificial intelligence.

One such company is Spotify AB. The global audio streaming and media services provider embarked on its automation journey about 18 months ago — in the thick of the pandemic — and hasn’t looked back.

“Our journey began with trying to understand how we would tackle still wanting to upskill our employees despite the fact that we were in the middle of this kind of global crisis,” said Sidney Madison Prescott (pictured), global head of intelligent automation (RPA, AI, ML) at Spotify. “And so through that endeavor, we decided to actually split out our different automation capabilities into citizen developer and unattended automation, and we did all of this through a center of excellence.”

In addition to splitting its automation abilities, Spotify also honed in on its citizen developer community to train them on things like robotic process automation. Today, the program has scaled to include more than 100 citizen developers ensconced within a variety of mission-critical functions at Spotify itself, according to Prescott, who spoke with Dave Vellante and Lisa Martin, co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during UiPath’s Forward IV conference. They discussed how RPA is playing a role in helping both the employees and product development at Spotify, as well as the guidebook “Robotic Process Automation Using UiPath StudioX: A Citizen Developer’s Guide to Hyperautomation,” which Prescott co-authored. (* Disclosure below.)

StudioX, the changes it brought to Spotify and the book it birthed

In the midst of rippling job losses in the wake of the pandemic, Spotify identified upskilling as a path toward employee retention and long-term product innovation. UiPath’s StudioX software has been instrumental to this drive, according to Prescott.

StudioX is a mass-market software that provides a no-code environment where businesses of all sizes can automate their tasks. The resulting projects are then handled by robots situated in the cloud.

“I’m a big fan of StudioX, and so the book specifically focuses on StudioX,” said Prescott, referring to the guidebook she co-wrote with three others that focuses on demystifying many of the mental blocks associated with automation solutions like StudioX.

“It really introducing users to what is StudioX and how really teaching individuals how to upskill themselves,” she added. One of the primary goals of the book is to ease any fears users may have about walking through a platform like StudioX.

The training at Spotify usually involves taking citizen developers from novice level to being able to build tangible automation products, like AI bots, in a matter of five days. And the wave of upskilling at Spotify is also spurring welcome changes, like inclusiveness and women empowerment.

“I believe that our process automation specifically is an incredible driver of women and influencing more women to enter into STEM fields primarily because it is such an innovative technology. So whether they are a tax professional today, whether they are working within accounting, whether they’re working with an internal audit, they have the opportunity now to test the waters,” Prescott stated.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of UiPath’s Forward IV conference. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the UiPath’s Forward IV conference. Neither UiPath Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE