There are also RPA platforms designed to enable businesses to make their own custom-made bots. Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. plans to accelerate its use of RPA over the next several months, said Mike Maresca, the drugstore chain's global chief technology officer. The aim, he said, is to make operations more resilient to the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic, while adapting to changing customer needs, among other goals. Mr. Maresca said the company has already deployed bots in several business areas, including finance, human resources, supply chain and information technology, using an RPA platform developed by Automation Anywhere Inc. The bots have helped streamline time-intensive processes, enabling the company to handle a growing volume of online orders and customer queries about Covid-19, he said.

Agencies spend too much time doing manual work. One of the biggest time sucks? Max Cheprasov, now an exec at the Dentsu Aegis holding company level, recognized these inefficiencies while working at Dentsu agency iProspect starting in 2011. He set out to document and standardize processes while outsourcing inefficient tasks so that employees could focus more on strategic client work. Eventually, he brought artificial intelligence into the agency's workflows, specifically natural language processing and machine learning, which helped accelerate the ability to interpret data, derive insights and generate reports.