UiPath Forward 2024: Day 1 Highlights

Published on in Robotic Process Automation by Cristian Ignat

The Future of Agentic and Robotic Automation

1. The Expansion of Automation

UiPath has identified 1 billion+ use cases for automation, expanding the surface area with Agents across multiple industries:

  • Customer Service: Handling customer inquiries, reducing response times, and providing 24/7 support.
  • Healthcare: Enabling diagnostics, patient management, and predictive health outcomes through automation.
  • Financial Services: Detecting fraud, automating trading, and providing personalized financial advice.
  • Human Resources: Automating recruitment, onboarding, and optimizing logistics in real-time.
  • Marketing: Personalizing campaigns, enhancing event engagement, and providing detailed attribution analysis.
  • Supply Chain: Managing inventory, predicting demand, and optimizing logistics in real-time.

Daniel Dines noted that while automating rule-based processes has been a focus for over a decade, the challenge has always been dealing with the unstructured parts of processes. With Generative AI (LLMs), the game has changed—now we can handle the 70-80% unstructured data that previously couldn’t be automated.

2. Agentic Automation: The Future is Both Agentic and Robotic

UiPath envisions the future as a combination of agentic (adaptive, creative) and robotic (structured, rule-based) automation. This balance is similar to how the human brain functions:

  • Left Brain (Robotic): Structured, logical, efficiency-oriented processes.
  • Right Brain (Agentic): Creative, intuitive, adaptive decision-making.

Daniel Dines emphasized that agentic AI is now unlocking the potential to handle complex, non-deterministic tasks. By combining LLMs, robots, and people, UiPath is creating “agents” that can work across enterprise applications, bridging the gap between structured and unstructured processes.

3. UiPath’s Vision: Leading with Agents, Robots, and People

UiPath aims to be the #1 platform that can orchestrate agents, robots, people, and models at scale:

  • Agents: Goal-based, dynamic decision-making engines that can handle complex tasks independently.
  • Robots: Rule-based systems that act predictably on deterministic decisions.
  • People: Involved in ethics-led, creative decisions when required.
  • Models (AI): Data-driven, probabilistic models that analyze and make decisions based on patterns.

Graham Sheldon pointed out that many enterprises have 175+ applications, and agents are critical for managing workflows across these systems. Agents can take specific actions based on the tools provided by UiPath’s platform, ensuring seamless workflow participation.

4. A Trillion-Dollar Industry

Daniel Dines described the future of automation as a trillion-dollar industry that has only begun to reach its potential, comparing it to “discovering fire.” With agentic automation, UiPath will lead the way by combining agents, robots, and people to handle any clerical process.

He emphasized that this is UiPath’s “second act”, positioning agentic automation as a rebirth for the company. The goal is to enable partners to scale with UiPath and help bring agentic automation to life.

5. Agentic Era: What’s Ahead

  • 20% incremental RPA growth driven by agentic AI advancements.
  • 1 billion usecases of agentic
  • $4 billion in potential software revenue driven by agentic automation by 2028.
  • $15 billion in agentic services expected by 2028.

Bronwyn Hastings highlighted that the agentic automation industry will surpass $4 billion by 2028, with UiPath being the top solution extension partner for SAP. This opens up vast opportunities for businesses to leverage agentic AI alongside UiPath’s technology.

6. IMPACT Program for Partners

IMPACT: UiPath’s commitment to Ignite, Mobilize, Propel, Accelerate, Craft deals, and Team-up with partners to scale agentic automation.

  • UiPath will provide funding, investment, education, and enablement to partners to ensure a smooth transition to agentic automation.

Daniel Dines emphasized that enabling partners is one of UiPath’s biggest priorities. He stated, “We never wanted to compete with our partners. We want to bring you business and collaborate closely.”

7. UiPath Platform Strengths

  • Best-in-class automation combining agents, robots, and people.
  • End-to-end agentic orchestration across applications and systems.
  • Cross-application, ecosystem-agnostic automation: agents can work with multiple enterprise applications, solving one of the biggest challenges in automation—authenticating and interacting with different systems.
  • Enterprise-grade accuracy and trust governance, ensuring secure, reliable, and flexible integrations.

Summary

The agentic era is officially here, bringing together the power of generative AI, robotic automation, and human input. UiPath is uniquely positioned to lead this shift by integrating agents, robots, people, and AI models into a seamless platform that will revolutionize enterprise processes. The future is bright, and UiPath is committed to collaborating with its partners to scale agentic automation and drive innovation forward.