The bot builders: Students lead Nichols into the age of automation

by Susan Veshi

Nick Kolodziejczak took his first accounting class in high school, and he liked it enough but, more importantly he says, “It was one of the few classes they offered that I could see leading to a good job.” But the more courses he took, the less interested he became, and by the time he was a sophomore at Nichols College, he began questioning whether the field was a good fit for him. He was at that crossroads when Professor Bryant Richards invited him to participate in a research associate internship in the spring of 2021 on something called RPA — Robotic Process Automation. Not considering himself particularly tech-savvy, Kolodziejczak was skeptical, but remembers Richards saying, “Trust me, this is the wave of the future.”

“I’ve been working with him since February, and I love it!” says Kolodziejczak, now a junior. He is among a handful of students who have pioneered RPA at Nichols, creating “bots” to solve business problems. The skills and real-world experience they are gaining have markedly altered the trajectories of their careers and are giving Nichols a competitive foothold in preparing students for the burgeoning automation economy.

Before you conjure images of the Terminator and r2d2, know that the bots Nichols students are building do not have a physical form or human characteristics. These are software bots, designed with a set of instructions to perform a task, usually one that is routine or repetitive. For instance, bots can be used to copy and paste journal entries into a general ledger or collect data from the web or other digitized format and compile it in a usable structure, like an Excel spreadsheet, for analysis and reporting.

“The easiest way I explain it to people is I create a computer process to reduce the repetitive tasks of a job that a person really shouldn’t have to do, that a computer should be able to do anyway,” says Christopher Haverty ’21, who has been hooked on RPA since also taking the internship last spring. He has developed dozens of bots. He programmed one to identify which Nichols professors have or have not uploaded their syllabus to the college’s course management system, and he is working with the Mohegan Sun Casino on one that ensures check requests have the appropriate approvals — jobs typically requiring a manual process now made more efficient and reliable.

Haverty and Kolodziejczak, along with fellow pioneer Jacob Ortega, are quick to point out that RPA is not intended to replace jobs, but to help people work smarter. “Most RPA tools are not capable of making decisions, but it can simplify data gathering and processing to help humans make better decisions based on data.” Kolodziejczak offers, “It saves people brain space.”

With its ability to perform tedious and rules-based tasks, RPA has transformed the accounting industry — PwC surveys state that 73 percent of all internal processes can be automated. It was at the urging of firms like PwC and Deloitte that prompted Richards, associate professor of accounting and finance, to investigate further. “We were hearing from big accounting firms that RPA is something they’re training their folks to understand and use now, and if students learn how to do this, it would be very useful to them in their careers,” he says.

The college became part of the UiPath Academic Alliance, which gave students access to free software, and by 2019, started to introduce RPA into the undergraduate accounting curriculum.

“We found quickly that this technology was a great fit at Nichols,” says Richards. “Our students loved it and became successful at it. Within weeks they were building bots and by the end of the semester they were designing automated solutions for small accounting firms, large banks, and even Nichols.”

Providing consulting services to local business and nonprofit organizations took RPA education at Nichols to the next level. “Of the 80 U.S. colleges and universities within the UiPath Academic Alliance, few have expanded as quickly as Nichols into curriculum advances, student programming and consulting,” states Richards. “And there is currently no school that has a full circle deployment of automation tools to support training, education, and consulting.”

In 2020, Nichols entered another stratosphere when it partnered with NICE Ltd. to provide the software and pave the way for the Center for Intelligent Process Automation (CIPA). (See page 8.)

“The data science field is revolutionizing the business landscape, and we intend to be at the forefront of tech business and leadership education,” say Nichols President Glenn M. Sulmasy, JD, LL.M. “Bryant and our RPA students have laid an excellent foundation for my vision of ensuring that all students are exposed to this critical skill set.”

RPA software became the fastest growing segment of the global enterprise software market in 2019, according to NICE, with growth accelerating in 2020 when the pandemic forced organizations to abruptly change practices. The technology research and consulting company, Gartner, predicts that 90 percent of all large enterprises will adopt RPA in some form by 2022. And

McKinsey and Company says automation technologies, such as RPA, will have a potential economic impact of nearly $6.7 trillion by 2025.

“RPA is a game changer for Nichols,” says Fran Carlo ’90, vice president for global services at NICE, who was responsible for getting Nichols free resources and consultation. “The opportunity to learn about and be hands-on with a complimentary technology that truly solves business and operations problems will give students a competitive advantage in the job market and add significant value immediately in their careers.”

Amahl Williams ’02, a partner at the Reveal Group and founding advisor of CIPA, goes even further in saying, “We have created a scenario where Big 4 firms will come to Nichols to compete over talent,” he says, contending, “Our student capability is better than MIT’s now.”