3 reasons why your RPA deployment will fail, and what to do about it
What are the true challenges of process automation
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a term that has dual meaning. It is both a technology and a methodology.
As a technology, its primary purpose is to automate business processes using software robots (or bots). This software sits alongside existing applications and is used to perform repetitive tasks by emulating human activities.
Mundane and repeatable steps like reading data or copying and pasting information into forms, are recorded using the software and then executed automatically as an ongoing routine. For the more nuanced uses of process automation, bots can be programmed to follow ‘fuzzy’ rules (if this, then that) and perform calculations with varying degrees of complexity.
As a methodology, the RPA framework is often seen as an advancement over basic scripts, workflows and macros; an initial step toward machine learning and automated intelligence.
The theory being, that the time saved through elimination of those repetitively dull tasks will free up your employees time to spend on more value adding cognitive tasks that rely on creativity, building relationships or intuition.
A small number of bots in your enterprise may offer some marginal gains in the form of faster processing time and reduction of manual work. Not to mention the value of improved quality; which cannot be underestimated as each increase will have a monetary value associated with it.
For example, in a typical organisation process automation is estimated to reduce accounting errors and reduce the amount of corrective rework by around 30%. A figure which translates to around 25,000 man hours, according to a recent Gartner report.
But the overall financial impact of this new technology will largely depend on an how well a programme of RPA can be welcomed into an organisation but here’s the thing; RPA is only ever supposed to be a temporary solution.
There’s a risk that businesses will use RPA as a fancy veneer for hiding the ugliness of an inefficient process and making a bad situation less bad will not provide a resolution to some of the long term changes that are needed.
Benefits will increase as adoption increases, but there are limits to what can be achieved without proper planning.
In the absence of enterprise-wide integration and governance, and in the excitement to get this automation implemented quickly, the likely result will be a scattering of many fragmented projects spread across the enterprise, offering middling benefits to the few early adopters.
3 major pitfalls to avoid
1. Focusing too much on roles and structure, rather than responsibilities
Business technology is becoming more accessible to those outside of traditional IT roles. Gartner reckon that more than 50% of technology spend over the next five years will move outside of core IT to business lines and other support functions.
This means that half of technology procured within an organisation will have moved out of IT by the end of 2024.
And in this rush, different sections within your organisation are posturing to establish roles and hierarchies within their organisation, rather than focusing on the responsibilities that are required.
Failing to appreciate this shift in thinking can be fatal to your programme, but embracing it can be extremely rewarding if done correctly.
- Make sure that you have the right governance and oversight in place.
- You’ll need a pipeline system for managing the demand and priority of automation requests.
- Steps will be needed to ensure the process flows are configured and tested properly.
- Finally, you’ll need to be able to monitor all of these bots to make sure that they’re firing on all cylinders.
2. Not aligning RPA initiatives with enterprise wide business process management activities
RPA is as much about business process management (BPM) as it is about technology, and there are many overlaps in between.
To build a bot you need to analyse your business processes and to do that, you need to understand what your processes are so that you can find the ones that offer the biggest benefit and the quickest ROI.
You can quickly deploy efficient, semi-automated solutions solutions while while longer-term transformation changes are hashed out and realised, but there’s always a risk that excitable leaders will want to carve out their own little RPA fiefdoms, instead of working to establish real governance and oversight.
3. Thinking that RPA is just like any other software or application and treating it in the same way
Business demand is always going to outpace the ability to deliver, and because of RPA’s ability to be deployed quickly, its being wrongly lauded as the panacea that will offer a remedy to ailing and inefficient processes.
With this in mind, however, managing the implementation of this technology using waterfall methodologies just isn’t going to cut it either. If you try to implement RPA using a framework that’s better suited to ERP, then most initiatives won’t even get off the ground.
Trim the fat and work out what you need as a minimum viable product, then try to implement following agile principles to deploy robots quickly.
I’d love to hear your opinion on this topic, about your experience in this area or anything you liked (or disliked) about the content.
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