Robotic Process Automation
Even if the term “robot” connotates an electromechanical machine that perform human
tasks, the meaning describes also software that performs repetitive tasks and dreary service
tasks to help humans to focus on more unstructured and interesting responsibilities.
There are three benefits for organisation that adopt RPA and implement robots to perform
certain processes:
- By developing a service automation strategy that is supported by top management
- By initiating effective processes that deliver value to customers and employees
- By building enterprise-wide skills and capabilities.
Developing a Service Automation Strategy
There are two players in this segment of the article. The businesses that have a short-term
orientation regarding the process automation to gain wins easily, and the long-term players
that incorporate RPA not for the immediate future but for the long run. The second category
turns out to achieve the best outcome form this implementation and the best ROI.
Service automation enables a broader business enterprise strategy
The best outcomes that any business can get is form finding an improvement area or a
problem and then come with the software as a solution. Not choosing a software and see
how it can impact the company.
The Associated Press (AP) – the company was losing money for several years, so they
decided to expand its news coverage and enhance the brand. The problem was that
employees spent to much time on writing boring news regarding finance related subjects and
their creativity was not explored while writing those articles. The firm implemented a software
to write the corporate earnings report and freed a lot of time for employees to make use of
their creativity.
Outcomes of the Associate Press after automation implementation:
- Happy employees
- No further costs
- More articles written
- Automation equivalent to three full time employees
- Jobs kept
Strategic service automation requires support from senior management
, The top managers play an important role in the adoption and implementation of automation
strategies. Without their considerations, it would be interpreted just as an experiment form
the IT department.
Example: Major European Gas and Electricity Provider – senior management adopted
automation to improve its service and control its operating costs to reduce the need for rate
increases. They implemented robots to generate utility bills and to automate 25% of the
operations performed by humans. They took over the clear and specific cases to generate
the bills and send the anomalies to a human to provide a much thorough work.
Service automation can deliver multiple benefits
Organizations can use service automation to generate multiple business benefits. Indeed,
we found that if companies focus entirely on cost savings, they run the risk of missing
opportunities to improve the customer experience and the satisfaction of their employees.
Organizations seeking to automate services have multiple sourcing options
It is important for organisations to be aware of all the RPA solutions available on the market
before choosing one to implement, and those options are:
- Insourcing: buying service automation software licenses directly from a service
automation provider.
- Insourcing and consulting: buying licenses directly from a service automation
provider and engage a consulting firm for services and configuration.
- Outsourcing with a traditional business process outsourcing (BPO) provider:
buying service automation as part of an integrated service delivered by a traditional
BPO provider
- Outsourcing with a new provider: buying service automation from a new
outsourcing provider that specializes in service automation.
- Cloud sourcing: buying service automation as a cloud service (still emerging).
Initiating Effective Automation Processes
After executives find the right strategy for automation processes, the best practice to
incorporate automation within the business is that the business operations team
should lead the project rather than the IT department. This is because they know
what processes should be automated and the team would not initiate unnecessary
implementations in the organisation. They should work hand in hand with the IT, but
the best outcome would result if they managed the change.
The success of a RPA implementation would depend on different management
sectors:
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