Las Vegas, October 22, 2024 — The UiPath Forward + TechEd 2024 conference in Las Vegas brought together automation enthusiasts, industry leaders, and key decision-makers to explore the future of enterprise automation. The event set the stage for UiPath’s strategic direction, emphasizing agentic automation as the next evolution in combining AI agents, robots, and human expertise for end-to-end business transformation.
Here’s everything you need to know from this game-changing event:
A Vision for Agentic Automation by Daniel Dines
Daniel Dines, Founder and CEO of UiPath, opened the event with a keynote titled “The Future of Business: Robotic and Agentic”. He introduced agentic automation as the natural progression from UiPath’s roots in Robotic Process Automation (RPA). Dines highlighted that while traditional RPA has successfully handled rule-based, repetitive tasks, businesses today require more adaptable, AI-driven solutions to tackle complex and dynamic workflows.
“We’re advancing enterprise automation with agents, allowing customers to automate entire end-to-end processes and orchestrate workflows seamlessly,” Dines said. “The result is more substantial business outcomes, greater productivity, and more customer-facing direct benefits from automation.”
What is Agentic Automation?
Agentic automation combines robots and AI agents to automate tasks and processes that were previously too complex or dynamic for traditional RPA. Robots handle structured, rule-based tasks with high reliability, while AI agents—powered by advanced large language models (LLMs) and machine learning algorithms—adapt to changes, make real-time decisions, and manage unstructured scenarios.
This new approach extends the impact of automation across entire workflows, enabling businesses to unlock growth, empower employees to focus on higher-value tasks, and enhance efficiency through dynamic adaptability.
Real-World Success Stories: Transformative Impact Across Industries
During the event, UiPath presented several compelling case studies highlighting the transformative power of automation:
- USDA (United States Department of Agriculture): Empowered 120,000 employees with digital assistants, resulting in 551,000 hours reallocated to mission work and $36 million in cost avoidance. This success story underscores how strategic automation can free up resources for critical initiatives.
- Mayo Clinic: By streamlining the processing of patient records, Mayo Clinic was able to deliver insights faster, enhancing patient care and allowing medical professionals to spend more time at the bedside, improving the overall patient experience.
- Flutter Entertainment: As the owner of Betfair, Fanduel, and Paddy Power, Flutter leveraged AI and automation to optimize customer interactions and drive a 44-point increase in Net Promoter Score (NPS), illustrating the potential of automation to boost customer satisfaction.
Introducing Agent Builder™: Empowering Developers and Business Users
The event also saw the preview of Agent Builder™, a new low-code tool that enables developers and business users to create, evaluate, and publish agents on UiPath’s automation platform. Part of the UiPath Studio family, Agent Builder™ allows users to design agents from scratch or use pre-built templates from UiPath’s Agent Catalog, making it easier to automate new use cases and complex scenarios.
Graham Sheldon, Chief Product Officer at UiPath, explained, “Providing customers with the ability to build their own specialized agents in a simple, low-code integrated development environment or a pre-built template makes it easy for them to automate new use cases, avoid costs, and stay ahead of competitors.”
Autopilot for Everyone: Making AI Automation Accessible
UiPath also announced the launch of Autopilot for Everyone, a cross-platform conversational AI agent that empowers employees to interact with enterprise systems and automations using intuitive LLM-based prompts. With Autopilot, employees can:
- Obtain accurate business insights based on their organization’s data.
- Automate data entry using Clipboard AI to seamlessly extract and transfer information across applications.
- Access customizable prompts to perform tasks like analyzing documents, running automations, and updating systems.
Built on UiPath’s AI Trust Layer, Autopilot ensures security and compliance across platforms, making automation accessible to all employees, regardless of technical expertise.
“At UiPath, we believe strongly in the democratization of this type of technology because we’ve seen firsthand how valuable it is for our customers,” said Sheldon.
Collaborations and Key AI Integrations: Building a Trusted AI Ecosystem
UiPath announced new collaborations aimed at expanding the platform’s capabilities and enhancing customer outcomes:
- Integration with Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet: UiPath has integrated Claude 3.5 Sonnet to enhance key products like Autopilot for Everyone and Clipboard AI. This partnership enables faster, more accurate decision-making and task automation by leveraging advanced LLMs and specialized models for document understanding and data processing.
- Clipboard AI: UiPath’s Clipboard AI, recognized as one of TIME’s Best Inventions of 2023, automates the extraction and transfer of data across applications, reducing manual data entry and improving efficiency. This innovation has already shown substantial results in industries like healthcare and logistics, where handling large volumes of documentation is critical.
Agentic Orchestration: The Next Chapter of End-to-End Automation
Central to UiPath’s strategy is agentic orchestration, which enables the design, implementation, monitoring, and optimization of complex workflows involving agents, robots, and human expertise. Agentic orchestration addresses the challenges of integrating non-deterministic models into business-critical processes while ensuring compliance and predictability.
Maureen Fleming from IDC stated, “Agentic automation will rapidly become the primary mechanism to converge AI with rules-based technologies to automate and augment knowledge work. The combination of GenAI and AI agents represents the first time knowledge workers will meaningfully gain the benefits of business automation to help them do their jobs.”
Conclusion: The New Era of AI-Powered Business Transformation
The announcements at UiPath Forward + TechEd 2024 reflect UiPath’s commitment to shaping the future of enterprise automation. By combining AI agents, robots, and human-in-the-loop capabilities, UiPath is empowering businesses to achieve more substantial outcomes, unlock new growth opportunities, and enhance productivity.
With the launch of Agent Builder™, the expansion of Autopilot for Everyone, and new collaborations with leading AI firms, UiPath is paving the way for businesses to harness the full potential of agentic automation. As the company continues to innovate, the convergence of agentic and robotic automation is set to redefine how organizations approach business transformation.