Initiating successful Robotic Process Automation (RPA) deployment in three episodes…
Episode (1) – Understand what it is.
Think of RPA as a software bot that mimics user activity. Unless combined with more advanced technologies have little-no intelligence but to accomplish repetitive tasks that are highly predictable in nature.
Episode (2) – What benefit this technology can deliver?
Some research suggests the following benefits of RPA:
- Up to 40% efficiency gain in average transaction/task handing;
- Up to 80% of associated cost reduction; and
- Eliminates human error and works 24/7.
Key considerations that lead to the above benefits, you may want to understand first:
- Only highly repetitive tasks are commercially viable to automate;
- Intelligence required to complete the task is relatively low (i.e. task can be scripted); and
- Lack of integration is often what you want to bridge to achieve those benefit;
Episode (3) – How to understand if this is something worth exploiting? Before you rush into the purchase of boxes and licenses, you may want to:
- Understand what creates value in your industry and organization;
- Analyze key demand and types of task organization performs to create value across various functions; likely these are combination of your back and front office operations; Think number of transactions to complete and total resource requirement for a volume of one time period (e.g. month, year); Express your findings in potential FTE savings for the period and compare it with approximate investments needed;
- Do prototype/pilot to validate your assumptions; leverage #SikuliX #Workfusion open source solution or perhaps even #UiPath free license.
Hope this helps, happy to share more insights on the subject…