Five minutes with Blue Prism’s Shail Khiyara

Automation is about augmenting—not replacing—talent said Blue Prism chief customer officer and AIIA Advisory Board member, Shail Khiyara

Shail Khiyara is quick to acknowledge that he began his career in the tech sector at “the most awful time”. The year was 2000 and the dotcom bubble was at its absolute height in the US. Nine months later the bubble burst. Khiyara’s career, on the other hand, was just taking off.

A citizen of the world, Khiyara was born in India, raised in Bahrain, lived in London and now calls San Francisco home.

His is a story of digital transformation—from early days studying structural engineering to his current role as a leader of the organization pioneering global robotic process automation. “It’s a far cry from buildings and bridges,” Khiyara adds.

This month, as we welcome Khiyara as a member of the Artificial Intelligence and Intelligent Automation Advisory Board, he shares his top insights on the current state of intelligent automation…

AI is still largely undefined

In Khiyara’s own words, a lack of definition for AI is contributing to the growing fear across industries.

“I don’t have a good definition for AI because I think it’s such an overused word these days. I think it varies so dramatically between each region and each sector that it’s near impossible to define.”

Europe is leading the charge

In his role as chief customer officer at Blue Prism, Khiyara spends a lot of time speaking to people and organizations all over the world. But it’s in Northern Europe that AI is most advanced, he said.

“AI adoption is happening at a faster pace in Europe than America,” he observes. “We’re starting to see the emergence of AI across Asia Pacific too—and that will continue to grow.”

Automation means augmenting—not replacing—talent

According to Khiyara, a digitally transformed enterprise can “significantly improve customer interaction and experience, identify new revenue streams and maintain an edge in a highly competitive market where this is still a shortage of talent”. 

Read more: How algorithms and human journalists will need to work together

“We’re finding many customers are reskilling people in their organizations to move away form the mundane tasks they’ve been doing to embrace this new world of automation robots and humans,” he said.

“It is about talent augmentation and not talent replacement.”

Culture can help or hinder success

“Driving the cultural shift in your organization—or not driving that shift—is one of the biggest barriers when it comes to transforming yourself,” Khiyara said.

“It’s the people in the organization that drive strategy and execution of that strategy.”

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