Harry Nicholson has spent over 20 years at Blue Turtle Technologies, South Africa’s leading enterprise technology management company, experiencing firsthand the change in the ECM landscape and rise of intelligent automation. With expertise implementing digital transformation within large and medium-sized enterprises throughout Southern Africa, we chatted with Harry about the “automation era,” the rise of Hyperautomation, and what he’s hearing from clients in the field. Check out part 1 of our interview below.
Can you tell us a little about your own career to date and how you first became involved in enterprise technology?
I have seen the change in the Enterprise Content Management [ECM] landscape unfold and continue to watch the automation space avidly. As Product Manager for Automation, I am able to broaden my expertise with new savvy automation technologies to help drive an autonomous digital strategy within our client base. My passion is to ensure my customers are implementing and adopting leading-edge technologies successfully and maintaining that relationship as the organisations grow.
Automation is an exciting area to be involved with. The incorporation of AI and Machine Learning platforms with automated solutions is shaking up the existing enterprise landscape.
As we drove out our Hyperautomation strategies at Blue Turtle, the one element that we were very interested in was cognitive capture. After watching legacy OCR technologies scramble to incorporate automation into their stacks, Hyperscience piqued our interest; having just tripled their customer base within the insurance and financial sector in 12 months and the focus on Machine Learning-driven automation and accuracy. After engaging Hyperscience, we knew that Intelligent Document Processing [IDP] was going to change immensely and that Hyperscience is the game changer.
What trends are you seeing across the automation landscape right now?
We are seeing a swing in the automation space with the introduction of Hyperautomation and core focuses around AI and Machine Learning [ML] capabilities. Organisations have a tremendous amount of data being ingested. The data requires automated ways to process, manage, and extract valuable insights from it that can be used to deliver an enhanced customer experience. AI and ML platforms are becoming a critical piece that organisations are turning towards for the solution.
The other trend we are seeing is Cloud adoption. We can expect a lot of the top tier organisations moving towards some form of a multi-Cloud or hybrid Cloud architectural strategy. This brings a new level of complexity as we see companies attempting to move to a more digital, autonomous entity. Companies embarking on an automation journey are asking, “How do I save money on my existing IT landscape or within the Cloud?” or “How do we do things more efficiently but with tight security considerations built in?” – good questions that we help them think through.
What are the biggest concerns you’re hearing from clients right now?
The outlook is starting to change compared to where we were a few months ago at the start of the pandemic. As things have evolved, we’ve seen organisations turn to new technologies to assist them from a cost saving perspective or from an operational point of view. This is where I see clients looking at new platforms to improve their current way of doing things. Budgets have been cut and price sensitivity is at foreground of any conversation, so showing the value of a new technology becomes a primary focus.
But the light at the end of the tunnel is companies are putting plans into place to gear themselves up for when the pandemic is over, and this new way of working becomes the norm going forward.
Tell us more about Blue Turtle’s partnership with Hyperscience.
One of Blue Turtle’s core areas of focus is our digital offering, which provides our customers with effective and comprehensive automated solutions. Our partnership with Hyperscience allows us to onboard a next-generation Intelligent Document Processing solution for enterprises, bolstering Blue Turtle’s cognitive capture capabilities and enabling our customers to more accurately capture, classify and extract key customer data. Our clients are now able to transform manual document processes and increase output and productivity while minimising manual effort with exceptional accuracy rates.
Blue Turtle has extensive knowledge around ECM, RPA and Business Process Automation. Now, with Hyperscience, we are able to give our customers complete control over their data. Hyperscience’s proprietary Machine Learning technology provides the unique offering that legacy OCR platforms struggle to deliver, including the ability to automate the extraction of handwritten, cursive and machine-printed text with accuracy rates over 99%, with continuous learning occurring in the background.
For more expert insight from Harry, check out part 2!
