5 Steps to start your Automation journey.
Different surveys done by different bodies including the IRPAAI, for organizations ready for RPA (and other automation) implementations, throw up various challenges which stop these target organizations from embarking on the RPA[1] journey.
Some organizations continue to be cautious and are still wondering whether the hype is real. Some are unsure about the business case, while the cost and licensing models as they exist today aren’t necessarily clearly aligned to value. While, other organizations are worried about the impact that an implementation will have on its people.
Most organizations, could do with some guidance before the implementation journey. Here are the first five steps towards this journey.
Identifying automation opportunities
It is important to identify a set of processes which are perhaps resource consuming or the most intense in their business operations. Should you know the processes which are the most inefficient, but also resource consuming, you have your target. Along with, it will be necessary to educate the stakeholders on the impact of automation and keep them engaged through the pilot.
Preparing the business case
Without this, it is unlikely that the automation journey will commence or even your pilot will fly. You will need to determine what pain points you desire to alleviate, and which metrics you desire to improve. You can read this post for determining automation ROI.
Determining the Optimal Operating model
The organization will need to work differently, behaviourally as well as operationally. During the implementation and later. It will be important to determine what type of operating model you would want to work with, who runs the operations lines, who owns the resources, who provides business support, and who supports the robots etc.
Planning the roadmap
The first stop on the roadmap will be creating and executing the pilot. But, that is only the start. You have to plan out, to start with, who owns the roadmap? Should there be a Center of Excellence that you deploy which also plans the strategy (and writes the business case) for scale? There also is the conversation to be had with stakeholders on what will happen to the impacted resources and how they will need to be (reskilled and) redeployed.
Identifying Partners
There are many organizations in this space now, providing advice, consulting, products and services. You will, likely, need an organization which will provide a combination of these services or a combination of organizations which will do the job. Depending on the streams of automation, and the need for orchestration and your use of data will determine the type of products (or a combination) that you might need. The pricing models in the market aren’t stable or standard yet and you will need to play through these for your business case too. An implementation doesn’t really come that cheap.
The process of starting up, and implementing isn’t difficult (at least on paper), but surely does need careful consideration and handholding.
How aligned is your RPA journey to your enterprise strategy? Did you go through the required rigour before starting? Visit the 3nayan web site or write to us.
[1] For a minute, let me clarify that I am using automation and RPA synonymously in this blog piece.
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