For any RPA investment, the selection of tool itself is not that important for most enterprises (specifically, for the companies which are in their early stages of RPA journey), but the adoption of process maturity, process selection, and methodology and how it’d co-work with the user. Therefore, it is always important to do a quick need assessment before investing in Robotic Process Automation (RPA).
In this blog, we examine the key aspects that every organization should consider well before defining their RPA strategy and drafting an implementation roadmap.
1. Process Related Questions
The objective of RPA assessment is to examine the processes suitable for automation and document the end-to-end processes in sufficient detail to build an RPA pilot. As a part of the RPA Assessment, we analyze different transformation opportunities available for eliminating, simplifying, and standardizing a workflow before conducting automation.
Most of the time organizations get trapped into making an intuitive decision while ascertaining which processes are to be automated first. A suitable framework needs to be deployed to establish a fitment of a process for automation.
There are basic questions you need to ask when assessing a business process for an automation opportunity. These include the following:
- Is the process Highly Manual and Repetitive?
- Is the process Rules-based?
- Does the process have Standard, Readable Inputs?
- Does the process have Low Exception Rates?
- Does the process require Minor Automation or Deep System Changes?
2. What is the Time to Production? How Fast We Can Deploy.
It is important to understand that each process is unique. There is no single correct procedure to follow when launching RPA to production. Some processes can be more crucial than others and may require special attention.
Once the time to production estimate is done, you should receive time and appropriate personnel to monitor the initial launch period carefully to combat unexpected issues promptly.
3. Training Time & Role of Staff
We believe in building up your employees’ confidence in RPA by training them in advance which includes both technical training as well as leadership training. This blend of technical knowledge and human skills like communication, critical thinking, and problem-solving will help employees with their daily routine and give them more understanding of the technology.
The good part is RPA is not extremely intensive to implement and doesn’t require a lot of IT involvement. This means, your non-IT employees can quickly learn to use the templates to configure and even deploy bots.
4. What is the ROI?
While implementing any kind of automation, it’s crucial to analyze automation’s success. Always place importance on prioritizing the processes that will save time and lead to better ROI.
Any RPA technology that has the capability to reduce the costs of existing manual operations by 25-40% or more is a disruptive one. Robotic Process Automation is a precious asset in any enterprise’s digital journey and will have great results when used correctly.
“79% of enterprises said automation delivered time savings, 69% cited ‘improved business productivity’ as the key benefit of automation, 61% said automation regularly provides cost savings”, said a survey by Redwood Software.
Enterprises that will combine the power of RPA with an extensive set of other digital tools will realize the value a lot faster than others.
5. Conducting an Overall Preliminary Assessment
Building a pipeline for automation will remain a challenge even after a high-level business case for Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has been built and approved. Let’s go by them step by step:
– Starting with Easy, Low-volume, Non-critical Processes
Some processes are more suitable for automation than others. We believe, simpler processes should be considered first, and more complex activities should only be automated once companies are more familiar with RPA. RPA is best suited for automating operations that are highly definable and occur the same way repetitively.
On the flip side, embarking on an RPA journey can become an intimidating task when met with a lack of internal capability and extremely complicated processes. Your RPA assessment partner should be able to simplify this journey by quickly identifying the processes that would benefit from being automated and integrate RPA as an additional lever to drive efficiency and minimize costs.
– Checking the Fitment
This step involves understanding:
- Repetitive, structured processes
- Processes that leverage legacy apps & s/w tools
- Somewhat stable processes and applications
- Business case & Tool constraints
– Reengineering Needs Process Analysis
There are various valid reasons why process mapping, need analysis, and redesign work are important for an effective RPA implementation. If the existing business processes are overly complicated, unimportant steps can be get rid of before RPA is implemented.
RPA calls for the codification of business rules, but in several cases, business rules don’t get examined for many years and stop making sense in the current environment. Furthermore, an existing business can sometimes be turned into more-accurate and more-consistent algorithms for better, more-consistent decision-making.
RPA does have the potential to power new process designs. Smart companies will leverage this technology to enable new ways of performing crucial business activities.
– Conducting Feasibility Study of Individual Process Steps
When implemented correctly, RPA has many benefits including increased productivity, improved levels of quality, enhanced customer satisfaction and better governance and monitoring capabilities. However, before an organization embarks on its RPA journey, it is important to conduct a feasibility study to ensure that there is a real understanding within the organization of how much RPA will impact not only the processes, but also your teams, and that if your enterprise is ready to invest appropriately.
– Automating Fully Medium/Easy Processes then Partially Automating Hard Processes
It is best to start by creating a list of RPA solutions your business will need, its potential, and its impact on your business. Then arrange by effort and risk involved. Automation takes time as well as the resources; both of which will offer the desired Return on Investment (ROI) if you plan it correctly. Simpler processes can be automated first before automating complex processes.
Summing Up
Enterprises evaluating their RPA applicability should start by building a long-term strategy and involving key stakeholders from the business and technology team. They can focus on automating repetitive cross-functional, end-to-end processes across multiple stages and then gradually move onto processes that are difficult to automate.
Once an enterprise has thought over all the said challenges and obtained leadership buy-in, they should deploy a robust change management approach to engage employees all across the organization.
Conducting an RPA assessment beforehand will help an organization achieve the optimal technology solutions to meet the long-term objectives. To exploit the complete potential of RPA, companies need to view Robotic Process Automation as a crucial part of their strategic goal rather than a tactical one.
Why Evoke Technologies for Your RPA Assessment Needs?
Evoke Technologies provides the right talent, governance on delivering the appropriate assessment for the implementation of an RPA tool. We leverage a combination of technologies, such as ML and AI along with the best RPA tools to create smarter bots that will help enterprises make informed decisions. Additionally, we help to make strategic decisions such as conducting initial proof of concept (POC), implementing standards and supporting organizations in the change and business-readiness elements of RPA initiatives.
At Evoke Technologies, we believe that detecting process discovery shouldn’t be a long and time-consuming process. That is why we leverage intelligent Process Assessment Tools, such as Scorecard and Classification, to crunch the data, and deliver immediate results on process eligibility, complexity, ROI, and priority. This gives enterprises a complete blueprint of their processes, making it easier to recognize and analyze the most efficient paths to achieve operational excellence.
Ready to automate your business processes? Connect with our Automation Experts today!
