STEP 2: OPEN PROGRAMMING
Initially, when I started this in 2008, the automation tools we made, and those I knew from the competition, used their own programming language and computing environment. Beautiful environments, very visual and easy to use . However, the day I left the lab I discovered reality. An implementation – the largest in Spain to date in automation processes – revealed itself technically impossible . We made the tool compatible with all client applications before starting, how was this situation possible? I really suspected the problem, and was warning about it for a long time.
- You can hardly do things with these environments, the greater simplicity can be complicated, costly and even impossible challenges
- The utility of the environment is that it is nice to sell it better to the customer. That is, the decision maker, usually someone non-technical, take the bait and be caught with the developments source code in a proprietary and exclusive tool
Programming Robot Cartes in any standard environment is an advantage that very few can achieve.
I made several obvious and common sense decisions to get the project off the ground. Make in the robot the modifications to be able to use in robotized development processes any popular programming language (.Net, Visual basic, Delphi…) and support the implantation in the team members with computer training. It is obvious that all computer experts know how to program and should only learn the commands to control the robot.
If you develop it with a language in an invented environment, you limit yourself to its capacity. However .Net, Java, Visual basic, etc, are popular programming languages and very good, since they have been rolling 25 years and have hundreds of millions of development hours . For example, if you need a component to work with openoffice, sure that you find one to use from .Net. With non-standard environments these simplicity is a problem or even a stopper. If someone sells you an invented programming environment, I recommend that you say no, even if it appears in Gartner, and you call us.
With these changes the project was unlocked, was a success and became the benchmark of the process automation era in Spain, 5 years later remains as a benchmark. Personally, I was given the necessary confidence in my ability to create my own process automation company.
I can not finish this article without thanking José Antonio Jiménez for the trust he placed in me to straighten out a project that seemed impossible, and the professionalism of Mariano and the flexibility he gave me on several occasions. They were the butterfly effect that put the R to Robotic Process Automation and that created the company.