Reimagining Work with Automation Anywhere’s Mihir Shukla – Imagine Orlando 2025

Hey, everyone. We're back here with what I think is gonna be our highlight of our coverage of the Imagine Conference here for Automation Anywhere in, uh, beautiful Conrad Resort in Orlando. I want to introduce you to Mihir Shukla.

Meher is the CEO co-founder of Automation Anywhere. He's doing this 20 years, right. For a lot of you working, uh, watching this out there, you may not have even been working 20 years, let alone at one company, 20 years years At my age, I, I can relate, but Meha welcome to Text Drug tv.

Thanks for having Me. It's my pleasure. So let's start right off with that.

Yeah. 20 years ago. Yeah.

Talk about the vision 20 years ago. How's it, how's it changed? How's it stayed?

The same, how do, when you get outta bed every morning, what get what still gets you excited? Yeah. That, that's a great place to start.

Uh, from, from, from day one, today to today, the mission has been same. What has changed is along the way, we had to invent few technologies. Some technologies got better in the industry overall, and as a result, we are able to achieve our mission better and better every day.

And that mission was to reimagine how work happens. Prior to Automation Anywhere, I had a chance to do four different multi-billion dollar journey. And by the time I had seen a huge part of the world, and I saw a part of the world where 70% of knowledge workers were sitting in a cubicles and doing work that you felt weren't the human jobs.

And they could do so much better if you unleash human potential. And I grew up in a small town in India, and from my own experience, I knew that talent is evenly distributed. Opportunity is not.

And the opportunity that was made available to me made many things possible for me. So I didn't have to read a book to know that. Mm-hmm.

It is my own life's experience, lived experience. So the goal was to invent a set of technologies that take computers to the next level in how automation and AI can do things. And in doing so, the biggest bigger vision was could we reallocate intellectual capacity of the planet to more worthy causes?

What if we don't have to process invoices and claims and few other things? Could we be doing something more exciting, more fulfilling with our lives? And, uh, so with that objective, we started, and 20 years, more than 20 years later, here we are.

Uh, I, I get up every day. And how often you get to real help, help relocate intellectual property. Absolutely.

Capacity of the plant. You know, I always say almost not multi-billion, unfortunately, but I've done four or five, uh, venture startups founded, co-founded. And I, I firmly believe that every founder in their heart Yeah.

Believes that in some way what they're doing is making the world better. The vision you've enunciated here. This, this is in a small way, this is in a big way.

Yeah. Right. Free us up from doing these repetitive, I wanna call 'em low value.

Yeah. Or they're not low value. You know, we, we interviewed one of your customers from a light net, a a light, I believe they're here.

Yeah. These are people who are processing people's benefits. Yeah.

Medical benefits, health claims. Yeah. Mission critical life and death.

That's right. They're doing so much with automation. Yeah.

And, and, and automation Anywhere to speed that up, to allow people to go do higher value things. And these claims can just get processed automatically. We've all been there.

You submit a doctor's bill and you gotta wait. Yeah. 30, 45, 60 days for it to go through.

Not with automation. Now, of course, this past year you've been in business as long as I have. This is sort of a, a high watermark.

A a a threshold year where we're starting to see Yeah. Maybe people's visions for what AI can be Yes. Become real.

Yes. This whole new thing. Uh, a AG agentic process information.

Yes. A PA Yes. Talk about how that's fundamentally changed.

R-P-A-B-P-A and all of that. Yeah. And how it, frankly, it's fundamentally changed your company.

Yeah. Um, so, so the in general, my view, uh, having done technologies for many years is that technologies take a huge step change. So if you look at last many years, what we have been able to do is use, uh, RPA robotic process automation, document automation and, uh, task mining and various other capabilities as part of the automation platform.

What all of these CAP capabilities were able to do combined is they were often able to automate 40% of the processes, but the other 60%, uh, were left, uh, uh, still manual. Suddenly, with the power of generative AI coming in, you were now able to take 40, what was 40%, sometimes all the way to a hundred percent or 80%. So just a one new ingredient, completely chain the value proposition of what is now possible, not by itself, but in combination of everything else that existed before.

And when you add this ingredient, it changes the game. To me, it's almost like if you, for people who are into cars, you know, they sell that STP, I dunno if you're familiar, STP gas added it of you added to your gasoline and it boosted the octane. That's Right.

That's right. That's a good one. Good.

That's, that to me is what we've done here. You already had gasoline. Yeah.

But we just put in some extra octane that takes this thing off. And, and it's an important, it's an important, it, it, it, the, we can't underemphasize how important that is. Right.

This is this game changing kind of stuff, but yet there's more weight, there's more. Right. We, people are talking about artificial general intelligence.

Yes. And I'm not here saying it's gonna be next year or five years or whatever. I, I'm, I don't play that yet.

Okay. Yeah. But you don't have to get that big a GI, if you will.

Yeah, yeah. To have an a GI sort of, uh, influence in what you are doing. Yeah.

Talk about that. The, the, I am I'm with you there. I'm not a big fan of word a GI by itself, because it's an abstract concept with, you have no idea what what that even means.

But I think if you define a general intelligence in context of specific purpose, so for example, if you had, uh, if you, if you, if you're an intelligence for a self-driving car, the, the, it's, it's very, very clear that this car have enough intelligence to drive itself, yes or no. Right? So similarly, what we are focused on is that can we develop enough general intelligence to do, do vast amount of work as we call it, for a knowledge worker?

So can we give, uh, one of our, uh, one of our software, uh, uh, uh, mortgage applications to process and claims to process and supply chain and tax and audits and vendors, and a vast amount of these things that can, you just give it to the system and it has enough understanding of how to do this now in define that way it looks possible to achieve it. And we recently announced that we took a for a step closer to it, towards it. And it is amazing to see how fast that is moving.

And, um, you, you, you, you're never sure, but it, that, that day looks closer now than it looked a few years ago. It's, it's not, I I say the same thing about quantum. When I first started talking about quantum computing, I said, I'm not gonna be alive.

Yeah. By the time, but all of a sudden mm-hmm. I, I would not be surprised if quantum's here in 2028 or 2029 even.

Yeah. I think it's the same thing. Same thing here.

Yeah. Same thing. It it all of a sudden that horizon's gotten a lot.

Yeah. Close, closer. That's correct.

So, Meha, you know, we're sitting here at this conference, beautiful conference center. You could feel an excitement when you go down by the, the, uh, stages and in the area. For you, what are the big stories for imagine this year?

What, what's the big message? I think this year, as you said, was very pivotal for us, and we announced three huge, uh, uh, uh, announcement, uh, that moves the category significantly forward. The first one was an announcement to a, a significantly expanded, uh, agent tick process automation platform.

It's one unique element among about a hundred other features. That unique element is a process reasoning engine. Yes.

It's a very powerful capability in it. It, it, it works the way enterprises needed to work, which is in context of my enterprise, in context of my past information, in context of regulatory environment, reason what I should do at this point in time. And that process reasoning engine is what every enterprise's needs.

And it, it, it is the engine that will power all enterprise processes. And we announced the capability of how far this reasoning engine has come and how transformative it'll be for work. The second announcement we made was an availability of agent solutions.

Uh, these solutions are not like your typical solutions and applications that you see that earlier. We have seen for, uh, 20, 30 years. We frankly don't like some of them because you have to often do 20 clicks to get something done, and it feel like they're designed for an era 20 years ago.

I think there is an opportunity here to reimagine how, how this work gets done. It can, can you have a solution or application that is agent first case, autonomous first, and design with a very different mindset. So today we announced four different solutions and many more to follow, including many would be offered by our partners.

So, um, we are looking forward to how that transforms the industry and accelerates the journey. Um, the third announcement we made is about a very unique set of capabilities in most cutting edge of the products and our services and partner services to create a offering called Autonomous Enterprise. Now, this is, this is designed not, not necessarily for every customer, but we have customers who come to us and say, I want to get to this vision of how, how future, how, how, what future of the work is.

And I wanna get to a point where 70% of all my current work is either fully autonomous or assisted. Give me a choice to get there in the fastest way possible. I don't want to take the longer route I want to, I, I wanna take a flight and get there.

And so we, we, we, we offered with our partners a uh, combining many capabilities and, uh, we take this to those customers to take the extra journey even faster to those other three announcements. Excellent. Two more areas I wanted to touch on with you.

One is, as, as, as we enter this age of Ag Agent ai. Yeah. You know, we've seen announcements from Salesforce and, and ServiceNow and, and even some of the big hyperscalers Yeah.

Everyone recognizes that we're gonna be deploying multiple agents, maybe dozens if not more. Sure. This makes for chaos, right?

Yeah. We you need an orchestrator. You need, you need a, a commander, a master agent.

Yeah. Everyone has their own name for this. Yeah.

Now I know, uh, automation Anywhere recognizes this. You're also working with an orchestrator type of layer Yeah. Strategy.

Yeah. Would you expand on, without getting too far in the weeds Yeah. But would you expand on the need for the orchestrator Yeah.

And why you think your company is, is in the, a good place to be the provider? Yeah. I think it is important.

You, you mentioned that there will be many, many agents, but in our view, there are three types of agents. Uh, the, the first type is personal productivity agents. And maybe many of the viewers understand that they're using one thing or the other.

Today, the second types of agents are, we call captive agents. They're specific to certain application platforms like Salesforce and ServiceNow and others. And there will be many others.

But the third type of agents you call the super agent or the commander agent, that is the truck. That is the power, that is where the power lies. And Automation Anywhere is going to own that piece, uh, to orchestrate the, all the, all different types of agents across multiple application and making sure work gets done end to end.

Uh, it is important for our, for our vision to, to, to, to realize is that we have to break silos. We have been working in the way since a post World War II era where everything is in siloed. And that is, that is how, that is why the work is as, uh, ineffective and boring as it has been.

Uh, there is an opportunity to change it with Automation Anywhere, orchestration, power, and some of our inherent capabilities. And, uh, we, we showcase that imagine an ability to perform and orchestrate this work almost at a speed that you can give a command to and can work happen at that p that that pace. And yes, it is possible for work to happen at that pace if you use automation.

Excellent. And, and that the announcements from Imagine this available now or coming soon, or, Uh, e every single thing we showcased, we, we was actual product, we showcased it. Uh, many, most of them are generally available.

Uh, couple of, uh, capabilities will be available, generally available soon, but they were all available in beta and customers had a chance to play with it. And, uh, that, that was very gratifying to see as well. Another area I wanted to touch on with, you know, I speak to a lot of CEOs, big companies, startup companies, everybody wants to be a platform.

No one wants to be a product anymore. Products aren't good enough. All of a sudden I gotta be a platform.

Yeah. But you need products that work on a platform. Yeah.

Why is Automation Anywhere the platform? You know, you hear talking that as many customers, there are partners here and, and you know, people who are doing products that work in automation area, the professional services that work with it. Talk to me about the vision for the platform.

Yeah, I think I, what wanted do is make sure I mentioned this earlier, but we, we, we are, we, we are the best in class platform company and always have been. But I mentioned earlier that we are, we have announced many solutions and many more to come. So on top of being the best in class platform company that it can use, we are now this new era of Agent Tick solutions that a business can use to, so make sure we are serving our customers IT and business both through two different, uh, offerings.

Um, uh, if you, if you think about, uh, for for a minute, think three or five years out, because sometimes you can debate, uh, you know, future in three months or six, but it is probably all of us could agree what it looks like. Multi R Multi r the work is not going to happen the way it happens today. You are going to use, in my view, multiple LLM providers.

Yes. Because no one provider can provide you everything. It's perfect.

Right. You are going to orchestrate work across multiple applications. You are going to lead, go to the world that is as autonomous as possible and reduce reliance on manual processes.

That's a goal we can all agree on. Right? Agreed.

You could de depend how much, but as far as you can go, you are going to do that. Um, and, and, and, and, and, and you are going to need something that can execute mission critical processes. This is not about, uh, summarizing email.

That that's, that's not what everybody, you, you process mortgages and claims and supply chain and you assemble planes with hundred thousand parts and mm-hmm. These are, these are important complex work and you, you are going to need some help in doing this in a complex world with, uh, if you just mention this, if you just think about this four or five things and need to orchestrate this work, you're gonna need something for it. And that's something is Automation Anywhere and it's available today.

Perfect. There you go. I love it.

Last question. 'cause I know you have to leave. I appreciate your time.

Spend two days here talking Yeah. To customers, product, other partners, analysts press, boil it down. What are you hearing from them?

What, what's your take back from these people that you're gonna turn around and say, okay, this, this is where we may wanna double down. This is where we may have to change something. What, you know, based upon the feedback, what, what have, what have you learned?

I, I think couple of things. One is that they are very excited about the products that they are using today. And as a CEO of a product company, that's the first thing I want to hear.

That we are delighting our customers and meeting their needs. Uh, when they heard our new vision and where we are going, they are super excited. They can't wait to try it.

Uh, they, they can see the possibilities. And, you know, I've seen this every year where customers, uh, innovation capability is just unbelievable. They, they can, they can use this product in a way that you have never imagined.

And they make a difference in the world we live in, in a way that, that, that, that is so gratifying for us to see. So to, to, to, to interact and collaborate with these customers across 18 different industries, some of the largest companies, uh, on the planet. And we can't wait to see what they will, will make of it.

Uh, one of the key challenge is how to, uh, how, how, how to, how to help everybody understand the potential of it and how to, how to bring this to life in every department, in every function, in hundreds of different problems that the organization has to solve and how can AI transform it. And so our goal is to help together with us and our partners to help customers do that better every day. Fantastic.

Meher, thank you so much. We appreciate you taking the time to talk with our audience. Continued success with Automation Anywhere.

Can't wait for next year's imagine, but I have a feeling between now and then there's gonna be a lot happening and going on, and it'll be interesting to look at this next year. Yeah. In light of what is to come.

Uh, thanks for taking the time to talk to us. Pleasure. Uh, I'll mention one thing, Alan.

The, in a technology space, uh, ever since I've started my career, the technology always takes longer than you expected and sometimes lot longer to achieve the vision that you said, it Just take longer than the hype. That's correct. Right.

The hype is always out in front of it. What is unusual about the, what we are up to right now with Agent Tick process automation is, it is take, it is happening faster than we have imagined. I've never seen anything week by week, week by week, day by day.

And this is unusual even for us, for all. Imagine the Customer. Yeah.

Oh, I, I, I can't can you imagine, because if we have a few more minutes. Yeah. But it's one of the biggest things, and I discussed this with the, with the a few people here today, there's still the human element here.

And the human element here is trust. Yes. If the human can't trust what this agent ai or general AI or any of 'em we're gonna do, they're not gonna let it do.

Yes. Right. And we're at this kind of awkward stage where humans are still learning to trust Yeah.

What the AI's doing. Yeah. And so we're almost pulling the reins back saying it's going too fast.

I don't trust it yet. Yes. But once we trust this, yes.

But the trust has to be earned. So one of the things we observed is we, we, we, we let our customers observe how it is doing it and put human in the loop where, where they, they have a chance to validate it. Mm-hmm.

Often what we observe is that after a person observes it for let's say three days, they get bored because this thing keeps doing the same thing again and again. And it's not as much fun. And Sometimes boring's good.

Yeah. But so very soon. So if one person might, after watching three days say, you know what?

I trust this thing, let's move on. Somebody might say, I'll watch it for three months and then I'll trust everybody does it at their own place. Right.

It is important for technology to earn that trust. Absolutely. That's a great way to end this.

Thank you. Thank you. Hey, I hope you've enjoyed our coverage for Imagine, uh, 2025 here in Orlando.

Many thanks to Automation Anywhere for having us here. We'll be continuing this story throughout the year. 'cause these are, this is, this is where it's at right now, right?

This is where the rubber meets the road with ai, agentic, ai, and everything else. This is Alan Shimel. We're out.

Thank you.