How to achieve “Day One Value” with RPA
We are in the midst of the worst economic climate in the last 100 years. I have read reports, spoken to industry leaders, customers, and prospects. It is clear there is very limited spending going on everywhere. The problem can be traced in many directions but there is a collective sentiment of uncertainty everywhere you look.
The other unanimous feeling is that the world as we knew it before this worldwide crisis no longer exists and we are in a whole new period of human history and evolution. I wrote previously that this period we are in right now is one of evaluation and action in preparation for the 2nd wave of COVID-19. And through this process, there is an opportunity to ensure that any gaps regarding business continuity must be addressed.
Prior to this, most businesses had a a disaster plan addressing a timeline of 15-30 days without the functional parts of the business running.
With most “shelter in place” measures being in place for over 8 weeks that time period is ineffective. Most likely, many workers will remain remote until the end of this year and in some cases, permanently. The way we “do” work is changing and decisions need to be made soon.
Discussions about Automation are reaching an all time high. Businesses are examining their strategies on how to utilize the technology differently or are strategizing on how to implement it.
Moving to automation is no longer a choice but a necessity.
Businesses are preparing to automate many of their processes to minimize the impact of crises like the present one and to prepare for others that might occur going forward. These problems are circling like a buzzard overhead in an environment where capital is either nonexistent or frozen due to overall uncertainty.
So, what can be done?
Below are some approaches to tackle the need based on the existing climate.
- Find an experienced RPA Partner like CampTek Software to help guide your decisions. A SaaS (Software as a Service) model is preferred to provide support and alleviate the need to stage the environment, this dramatically speeds up the time of deployment. Properly creating a production-ready RPA environment is often overlooked as a necessity.
The failure to do this correctly can dramatically affect the success of any bot.
Spending resources standing up a COE (Center of Excellence) early on in your RPA journey leads to more cost and is labor intensive. There is no need to build an automation program from scratch if you can utilize a partner that can get you up and running quickly. In addition, a partner can provide Bot Support for the Bots that are in production. This will speed up the start time of the initiative immensely. Bots are portable so if at some point a more extensive architecture is needed, they can be moved.
- A couple things to keep in mind when choosing an RPA tool are scalablilty and reliability. While the leading tools in the market are reliable, not all can scale effectively. My general advice is to not get caught up in vendor selection. UiPath often comes out on top based on their approach to Enterprise level RPA. Precious time shouldn’t be wasted on evaluating which tool to use, since for the most part many of the functions are the same.
- Choose high value use cases that offer immediate ROI, whether it be from a staffing perspective and/or a performance metric. In this environment try to choose projects that generate at least 2x ROI in cost or gained revenue. We recently completed a Bot that saved over 1000+ hours a month in time spent managing the task. That’s the equivalent of over 6 FTE’s. The immediate ROI for this project was close to 6x in the first year alone. In year 2 and 3 the ROI was close 20x.
- Be smart about your choices. Recently it was found that 38% of RPA projects fail because of complexity. Ranging from bad process choices to get the “environment” setup to successfully run the bots.
Consider these 4 points and you will achieve “Day One Value” with every RPA initiative.
Peter S. Camp is the CTO and Founder of CampTek Software. He has been developing RPA Applications for over 15 years. For further questions, discussion or inquiry about CampTek Software Services, contact info@campteksoftware.com.
