Nikii (Hurzeler) Bond and Her Career as a Robotic Process Automation Developer

Nikii (Hurzeler) Bond is an RPA Dev for Change Healthcare where she develops robotic process automation solutions for Revenue Cycle Management applications for Change Healthcare RCM offices across the U.S.  This isn’t the career she started out in, but in a bold move of self-discovery, she was able to explore some professional options and find a field that makes her happy. 

Niki was kind enough to share some information about her career change, her day to day operations, and her thoughts on the industry, and RPA Dev as a professional path.

How did you learn about Robotic Process Automation (RPA)?

I felt “fine” but stagnant in my job as a Technical Business Analyst, so I reached out to my network of contacts, looking for something “new” or “different” that might be interesting to transition to. I got the same answer from a few people: try RPA. After that, I started reading about it.

Do you think RPA offers unique opportunities to women (compared to other emerging technologies)?

Hmm… I’m liking women for all technologies! Really. RPA is very community-oriented and globally-oriented. In many ways, it may appear “friendlier” than some other technologies. But if you want to try something, don’t let a perceived “lack of friendliness” be a barrier. Nothing brings colleagues and collaborators together like true shared interest in common work. If RPA is not calling to you, but something else is, there is a huge amount of opportunity across the board in tech. You should go for it and try what interests you. RPA needs those data scientists, cloud engineers, DBAs, dev ops, and other rock stars in the ecosystem to succeed. So, you’re helping us out either way! And you may just find in those other roles that you need a software robot someday to help make your life a little easier.

What types of training resources did you leverage to get started with RPA?

I’m a UiPath developer. I started with the free Community Edition download of UiPath Studio, their free Academy training and UiPath Orchestrator tenant, and their certifications (certifications plural, different paths are available). To complete my training, I heavily leveraged the awesome UiPath forum as well. (to loginerror and the other frequent contributors: thanks!!) I still use the forum almost every day.

I worked through my initial training with 5 other developers who had been hired in with me. We were able to support and help each other, which was invaluable.

I also attended a week of in-person training sponsored by my company. We were lucky enough to have Dillan Hackett and Mihai Dunareanu as our instructors. I was unlucky enough to have the flu for part of the week, but I still learned a lot.

What’s the favorite automation you’ve built?

The “ERA bot.” It “just” posts checks, but it does a good job. I wrote it quickly, yet it’s been stable, with an AE (Average Exception) rate of .2%, which is mostly unavoidable locking from the “seriously legacy” healthcare software it runs on. It processes 2,000-7,000 checks a day in a tight timeframe of a few hours, unscrambles garbled Microsoft Excel inputs from the business, coordinates 48 specific business exceptions, applies extensive business rules, branches multiple pathways by office, and generates a detailed complex daily report with prepared information for offshore, who pick up the heavier lifting with stubborn claim problems where the bot leaves off. It runs on 42 servers and 20+ robots and is just a smidge away from 1 million transactions. 

It’s my favorite because I learned everything writing it. If I was writing it today, I’d do everything differently. But I never would have improved without that first bot.

How has your career/life changed since you started learning RPA and creating automations?

I have become happier since working with RPA. I like to learn new things day after day so the pace of change with RPA is a plus for me. I’m eager to see the new things coming in the next few months. At the same time, I have decades of tech experience, and I use that knowledge every day; it’s not wasted. I like the code that I’m writing and the business problems I’m solving. I know that my team and the online and Atlanta communities are there if I need help or want to explore.

Is RPA open to both business and technical-oriented women alike?

Definitely! More than any tech trend you’ve encountered before, RPA needs both business and technical women alike. This is true both when you’re first starting out, and also as you progress and specialize. If you’re a “left brain/right brain” person then RPA was made for you. (I have hopped back and forth from Business Analyst to Dev in my past jobs.) But you’ll also find your niche as a committed customer-facing Business Analyst or infrastructure engineer. 

This year I’ve had a focus on using Microsoft Azure SQL and APIs with my bots, and I’ve just started delving into Orchestrator webhooks. Integrations with Azure Event Hub and an AI vision solution are on the horizon. But my days are also peppered with many business meetings with deep dives into legacy platforms and discussions of user pathways, security, and business priorities.

Roles in the SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle) have always involved some blend of business and technical skills; it’s a question of how much of each, not whether you need each. But RPA and intelligent automation (IA) enable you to solve business problems using technology relatively quickly, with a somewhat lighter lift. And RPA hooks or ties into everything -- all your other technology, applications, and data -- on a local server, a network, in the cloud, or on the Internet. So if you want to dive deeper into the technical side, you can. Or if you want to dive deeper into the business side, you can also do that.

Also, regardless of the platform you use, RPA lives in a structured framework that gives you a starting point -- whether you’re trying to evaluate and solicit automation opportunities, build a solution, or focus on operational maintenance and SLAs. There is plenty of room to go off-script, but if you’re stuck, you can leverage the standard RPA frameworks and methodologies to get back on track.

Not since OOP, web/mobile, and agile has there been such a comprehensive overhaul of the tools and practices for software development, applied to previously “out of reach” use cases or timeline targets. Since our industry is in flux, this is a great time to find your place and make your mark.

How can someone get started?

RPA software vendors go out of their way to remove barriers for developers to get started. You should leverage whatever RPA technology you have the easiest access to. Like learning Java vs C# vs Python, your skills will transfer to different types of RPA software.

Attend a lunch and learn at your job; a meetup, conference, or alumni presentation; or ask resources online for more information. I’m not just painting a rosy picture; it really is easy to get started. If you’ve ever learned a new software package or hacked out some web code you have the skills to succeed. If you’re already a skilled front end, data, LAMP, or especially Windows stack developer, you also have the skills to succeed.

I don’t want to make it sound like everything about learning RPA is easy. How would that be fun? There are definitely challenges. But you can work through them. And it’s such a great feeling when you’re past the last defect and the robot reaches steady state.

What advice would you give to other women thinking of getting started with learning RPA?

I encourage you to give RPA a try. For me, it’s been one of the few “revolutions” in my career where the hype is (mostly) real. Some of the business memes about specific RPA scenarios are far-fetched (digital worker for every human worker, bridging every business and technology divide, unrealistic no-money-down “0 to 60” scaling expectations); however, the real impact RPA is having is not. 

If you try it, in hindsight I think you will say later that RPA was the right decision. It may still be a little new and crazy now, but you will grow into it, faster than you think.

Thank you to Nikii (Hurzeler) Bond for sharing your story, and for empowering people everywhere to try new things, get out of their comfort zones, and find the career of their dreams.