The adoption of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has accelerated globally, more so among enterprise finance teams. The need to automate has become more urgent since the pandemic, pushing the global economy under pressure with losses of trillions of dollars. Add to it the unavailability of employees, who are in lockdowns or quarantine, and businesses worldwide are actively looking at RPA to curtail losses. Read on to know more.
On the other hand, “30% to 50% of initial RPA projects fail1, unleashing innumerable risks,” resulting in organizations being stuck at the proof-of-concept stage, deploying fewer than ten bots2, and unable to leverage the benefits of scale. Specific patterns emerge if we take a closer look at why this happens.
Many enterprises mistake a proof-of-concept for being a micro-project. Therefore, they begin their RPA journey with a small, siloed implementation. Even when it succeeds, they continue the project-based approach, adding multiple RPA silos with quarter-wise budget allocation. The whole initiative never rises above the sum of these parts, if at all.
When projects are implemented in silos, the responsibility for their success is scattered among leaders of those functions at best. This limits the realization of value at an organizational level.
Implemented on a micro-scale within each function/department, the goals for RPA projects tend to be minuscule at best and non-existent at worst. This significantly limits the imagination of RPA’s possibilities itself. To say nothing of the goals achieved.
Any automation is only as successful as the process it automates. When an organization automates ‘as-is’ processes —often designed for past needs, non-standardized, branched out, idiosyncratic and even broken — the outcomes are naturally sub-optimal.
Most enterprises expect a new RPA solution to fit perfectly into their existing IT/ERP roadmap to avoid duplication. As a result, instead of looking at IT/ERP as complementary, leaders end up imagining RPA as conflicting with their existing initiatives, the friction that’s never really resolved.
As we can see from the patterns above, many of these are ‘implementation issues’ more than ‘RPA issues.’ The good news is that they are just as quickly resolved with an outcomes-driven BPM service provider, critical design thinking and process standardization.
Working with some of the world’s foremost enterprises and their finance teams, we at AssistEdge, have learned that ensuring extreme automation success begins with a clear vision. Finance leaders are best served when they start by:
- Identifying the organizational purpose of adopting RPA, most often this is achieving measurable productivity and efficiency gains
- Enabling future-driven ‘process vision’ documents, based on which automation is designed
- Making an enterprise-wide, upfront, multi-year commitment
- Having a central business sponsor who holds accountability for RPA success
- Setting aspirational targets and imagining possibilities
- Building productivity improvement scorecards for continuous visibility and improvement
- Seamless alignment with IT/ERP initiatives through project milestones included in the RPA program
Most importantly, choosing a BPM service provider who can deliver tangible efficiency gains, thanks to “beyond contractual commitment” clauses. Here’s why.
Most enterprises expect a new RPA solution to fit perfectly into their existing IT/ERP roadmap to avoid duplication. As a result, instead of looking at IT/ERP as complementary, leaders end up imagining RPA as conflicting with their existing initiatives, the friction that’s never really resolved.
As we can see from the patterns above, many of these are ‘implementation issues’ more than ‘RPA issues.’ The good news is that they are just as quickly resolved with an outcomes-driven BPM service provider, critical design thinking and process standardization.
Working with some of the world’s foremost enterprises and their finance teams, we at AssistEdge, have learned that ensuring extreme automation success begins with a clear vision. Finance leaders are best served when they start by:
- Identifying the organizational purpose of adopting RPA, most often this is achieving measurable productivity and efficiency gains
- Enabling future-driven ‘process vision’ documents, based on which automation is designed
- Making an enterprise-wide, upfront, multi-year commitment
- Having a central business sponsor who holds accountability for RPA success
- Setting aspirational targets and imagining possibilities
- Building productivity improvement scorecards for continuous visibility and improvement
- Seamless alignment with IT/ERP initiatives through project milestones included in the RPA program
Most importantly, choosing a BPM service provider who can deliver tangible efficiency gains, thanks to “beyond contractual commitment” clauses. Here’s why.
While excellence can be found in upstream automation done directly by clients, automation driven by BPM service providers brings components that can accelerate scale without compromising efficiency. Some features to look for are:
The fundamental tenet of automation is that it augments the human workforce. So, bots alone cannot deliver effective business processes. Organizations need an exception handling setup in which process specialists are empowered (through reskilling) to make necessary interventions at the right time. This seamless collaboration between the human workforce and RPA bots — what’s known as human-ware — improves process efficiency. A good BPM provider has a mindset geared towards the human-ware operating model and service delivery.
Traditional commercial models are built on time and effort, which doesn’t incentivize the service provider to look beyond the barebones of ‘contractual commitment.’ Ensuring extreme automation success depends on changing this paradigm. An excellent extreme automation provider will be eager to take on the risks of organization-wide initiatives in return for a fair share of gains, making it a win-win engagement for both them and the client.
The larger the RPA implementation, the more critical the granular details. To make the change effective at scale, organizations need a precise governance model with frequent updates of what is working and correct the course as necessary. An experienced RPA provider brings a tried-and-tested multi-tier governance from use case-level to program-level, ensuring success at every step.
Enterprise-wide, a multi-year implementation does not mean an up-in-the-air goal and project design—quite the contrary. A robust extreme automation initiative creates individual plans for each function/department that are easily achievable and contribute effectively to the overall vision. A good BPM partner will have frameworks to split the vision into use case factory (pipeline creation), development factory, testing factory, and support factory to ensure better throughput.
To scale efficiently and cost-effectively, enterprises need a robust cloud infrastructure. For any modern RPA vendor, this is a given.
Last is the monitoring and operations management piece of the puzzle. The RPA Operations Command Centre is like an Air Traffic Control Room. Like air traffic controllers directing aircraft through controlled airspace, the RPA support and monitoring team uses real-time robot traffic information to skillfully handle the bots on the operations floor through various applications and servers.
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Enterprise-wide initiatives are seldom for the short- or even medium-term. They are significant investments — of money, time and energy — which are expected to deliver results over the long term. To ensure this, enterprises need a futuristic approach to automation.
They must adopt human-ware thinking, building automation to work effortlessly with their human workforce, augmenting the overall process instead of merely automating the repetitive and mundane. They must rewire their approach to commercial exchanges, governance models and monitoring methodologies to elevate organizational outcomes.
Most importantly, they must choose a BPM service provider who aligns with this futuristic approach, has a proven record of delivering digital transformation and can be a true partner in this journey.
Disclaimer Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the respective institutions or funding agencies
