I guess my main curiosity is, given a) automations that are more useful / valuable / powerful require more sophisticated techniques and concepts (loops, sessions, states, etc.) and given b) that non-expert users typically don't have them, then how can we solve this problem?
I see the following options:
1) either (pro)users limit themselves to more trivial / simple automations that are useful enough, with the skills they have, but they can't do more and that's that
2) or there has to be some level of expert involvement (IT, freelancer, consultant, or an FTE hired by the department to do this kind of automation work) - so there needs to be some level of budget
3) there's some tool that makes it possible to deliver more complex scenarios without the (pro) user needing to understand those aforementioned concepts
I'd say the RPAs of the world fall into category 2) - requiring a lot of budget, thereby being limited to the very few highest RoI kind of use cases that can afford this budget.
I'd say many tools out there (including UIPath, Axiom, and many others) try to be 3) but end up being 1) or 2).
The problem seems to be not with the tool, but with the fundamental challenge of trying to do something more complex without the skill.
For the record, I'm not saying it is an unworthy endeavour, I just haven't seen any great examples that manage to crack this.
One exception: very domain specific topics. You mention Tableau - basically 'all' the user is doing with it is to slice and view and filter data (that has been connected by experts) in different ways. So the users aren't 'creating', the way they are when they are creating automations.
Thanks Virvar, may I follow up (and I am really just trying to understand here, not to criticise or advocate one way or another): From what you said, I understand that, essentially, 'the kind of steps or tasks that employees would want automated' are too small for someone central to bother to look at. So it's an issue of economics - it's not worth the attention and not worth the cost. I fully understand.
On the flipside, you yourself mentioned a) the skill level (loops) and b) maintenance and - dare I add - say governance / standards.
I guess it comes down to the tradeoff of [not having tasks automated because it's not worth it for 'the experts'] vs [having a prolific ungoverned set of automations deployed by users with insufficient skill level perform them (kind of like excel macros)].
So given the skill issue, and given that users struggle with things like loops etc. - does that mean that they'll basically just be able to implement 'trivial automations that don't involve complex paradigms'? Or how can non-technical people, fundamentally, crack it and develop more elaborate (and therefore more powerful) automations?
This is what I'm grappling with - I see so many no code tools out there, but at the end of the day, you can only do very limited, not so valuable, automations with them. Curious to learn your thoughts there.
Virvar - out of curiosity - why is it that you would like to let the users build those bots? Intuitively, users just don't have the skills, patience, the technical mindset, the understanding of the IT landscape (imagine some non-working SSO - which user is going to know how to get that to work!). Basically "what's wrong" with doing it 'the normal way' - which is to have an IT team (in-house or external like EY) do the work?