It has been two years this week since I had a chance meeting with my school buddy at Uipath FORWARD 2018 in London. The theme was 'Accelerate Everything' and I was carrying my personal experiences of how robotic process automation (RPA) had started moving the needle on automation coverage. That personal catch up with Param Kahlon, Chief Product Officer (CPO) at UiPath, turned into a deep exchange of ideas. Kulpreet Singh, Managing Director of Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) at the time, threw in a great challenge: that we (at the time my employer was a global systems integrator) had not done enough to exploit the potential of RPA.

And he was spot on.

Back in 2018, the industry was still scratching the surface, but we were beginning to see very creative use cases of RPA. Not only in the originally intended space of business process automation (BPA) but all the way across operations, testing, and development.

During my conversations with Param and Kulpreet, UiPath co-founder and CEO Daniel Dines listened intently, while relishing his favorite dish at the counter. The FORWARD 2018 event had humility and sense of purpose written all over the event, and that sense of purpose made an impact on me.