Top 10 RPA
Do’s & Don’ts
The race to find new innovative ways to increase productivity, boost efficiency while delivering the highest level of experience and satisfaction to customers is more relevant now than ever before. The 2020 pandemic has forced businesses to find new ways to unload all the bottlenecks and redundant tasks so they can focus on creating a strong foundation for faster growth. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is arguably the most valuable tool available within the broader set of automation technology platforms today.
RPA brings together people, processes, AI, machine learning, document analysis, case management and can easily leverage data from anywhere to drive business processes. RPA has given businesses unprecedented access to new possibilities that boost productivity, rapidly reduce cost, create efficiency and increase customer engagement and satisfaction.
As businesses rush to adopt RPA, the premature understanding of this technology has seen the emergence of many making costly mistakes when aiming to achieve the full potential of its benefits. As a result, some have initially failed to meet the forecasted automation potential, return on investment, which ultimately questions their strategy as a whole and causes them to second guess making RPA part of their budget.
DOs...
Start easy and select the right processes! Prioritize your processes by automation potential. These are the “Low Hanging Fruit” with the highest value. Identifying the processes that are unlikely to change over time and are highly manual, repetitive, and structured. This will allow you to understand the benefits of RPA and educate you on RPA best practices so it can deliver the highest initial return.
Test over and over before going live. Do thorough testing so you do not run into issues before going live. Going live prematurely will cause unnecessary delays and frustrations.
Understand the capability of RPA. Understand your software limitations. Many businesses trying to push the scope past RPA’s ability and over-complicate their projects which lead to slow returns.
Document your processes current and future requirements. Understanding your needs will ensure the maximum return from your RPA investment.
Monitor your automated processes. As processes are automated, new unseen issues will be discovered. Ensure you find the latest problems quickly through process analytics and try to resolve these issues as soon as they are discovered
Your automation strategy should be aligned with your business goals to maximize RPA’s capabilities.
Share automation ideas with your employees to provide insights and feedback to prospective automation opportunities.
Do not run all of your RPA projects at once. Prioritize the simple projects first and use this as your learning curve to plan and drive the success of the more complex projects.
Develop an automation strategy and leverage the savings from the initial automation projects to invest in future RPA opportunities.
Work with experts. Find the right implementation partner who will be there to support you for years to come. The correct implementation partner will ensure that the proper due diligence is followed, expectations are set, and your goals are met.
DON'Ts...
Don’t automate highly complex projects first. Working on a high volume process will slow down implementation and the learning curve. Start with the low hanging fruit so you can get comfortable. High complex tasks will be much easier and faster once you understand how best to prioritize your processes.
Do not automate everything at once. Start small and plan your future projects. Rushing or taking on too many projects often leads to major mistakes and frustration.
Do not implement a broken process. If your process is not currently working end to end, fix it first before applying automation. Don’t waste time and money by automating something that hasn’t been successfully done manually.
Don’t launch prematurely. Don’t go live until the process has been tested with all the “what if” solutions completed.
Don’t deploy and forget. Processes evolve and services change as your business grows. Maintaining and updating your RPA solutions is extremely important as your processes will change with the growth of your business.
RPA strategies that don’t align with your business goals, and are not a priority, will generally lead to the project being put off or forgotten.
Don’t expect projects to be 100% automated. RPA removes the mundane, high volume, and rule-based repetitive tasks but there are processes that require human intervention and approval. These triggers should be identified during the design stages.
Don’t put the knowledge onto someone that does not have invested interest in your business. They might not be working for you when you have technical issues, or your bots stop performing critical tasks. If you don’t understand what to do and where to go, business stops. Make sure you know what your options are if this happens.
Do not apply RPA to processes that take human judgment. If it requires a lot of human decision making it will not achieve a high return on investment. Ai and machine learning are the best fit for these processes.
Don’t choose a solution based on price! RPA is about the end solution and its ability to deliver efficiency and cost reduction. This will compound over time as your business grows so understand your automation goals and future requirements before making your decision. Make sure you do your homework to achieve a faster ROI.
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If you are looking to grow your business, RPA will give you the opportunity to focus your attention on what’s going to help you do just that. So why then have many businesses struggled to deliver a successful deployment? Why has RPA been misused and misunderstood? Why haven’t forecasted ROI’s become a reality? There are many reasons for this, but based on our years of experience, and talking to thousands of businesses, we have put together the top 10 RPA Do’s & Don’ts so you won’t make those mistakes in the future and your RPA journey will be a smooth one