3 Common Mistakes to Avoid on your Path to Digital Process Automation
As organizations go after the promise of a digital transformation, they realize that these efforts must go beyond just the development teams. Transformation demands more than just embracing new technology - organizations must transform critical business processes.
We all know this far too well - the software industry promises a revolutionary change and then fails to deliver. Too often organizations focus on a new approach - adopting BPM tools, implementing a bot, deploying AI - that may solve a tactical need but misses the mark on long-term transformation. Over the last few years, some harsh truths about RPA have come to light, despite the fact that 72% of all Fortune 1000 organizations have adopted some sort of process automation software:
- 30-50% of initial RPA projects fail
- Only 3% of bot deployments reach scale
- 63% of business leaders cite unsatisfactory implementation speed
It's up to business and IT leaders to cut through the noise and deliver real value. Digital process automation (DPA) goes beyond traditional BPM and RPA - it allows organizations to truly take an end-to-end approach to digital transformation. It's about using intelligence and design thinking to streamline processes and create better experiences for your employees and customers.
Learn more: Discover how Blueprint helps scale Digital Process Automation
Three common mistakes when pursuing digital process automation:
1. Automating the channel, not the journey
The pressure to be present has organizations focused on automating specific channels, like: chatbots, intelligent assistants, and call centers, rather than thinking about the entire customer journey. This leads to development teams building unique logic into each individual channel, isolating intelligence, and creating disconnected processes and silos.
This common mistake leads to customer experiences being inconsistent and frustrating. The organization wastes valuable development dollars building duplicate systems, rather than creating an experience that is needed by the customer.
2. Automating tasks, not processes
Deploying standalone bots may deliver results, but it won't transform the business. Standalone bots are hard to deploy - between managing expectations and manually updating business logic it's easy for bots to break and to lose efficiency. In addition, standalone bots are more focused on isolated tasks, so majority of the benefits of RPA are left on the table.
Task-centric bots create fragmentation. Automating individual tasks means you're losing sight of the desired outcome - customers come to a business because they want something, but when the process is tangled in a nest of systems and silos you're actually making it harder for them.
3. Allowing siloed automation, not end-to-end automation
Perhaps the most impactful mistake is automating processes and tasks within silos, not redesigning processes to streamline experiences from end-to-end. When customer journeys are not mapped end-to-end or are not connected to systems and processes that deliver outcomes this creates a gap between experiences and promises to customers and the ability to efficiently deliver.
To realize the potential of automation, it needs to be a part of a larger, connected system. By isolating the focus, organizations will not be able to successfully build a seamless digital channel experience or reduce operational costs.
Without end-to-end automation, silos will grow. This fractured design is expensive, and sometimes impossible to modify and scale. Automation needs to fit into your business processes and systems.
A new path for success
DPA delivers the technology and methodology necessary to redesign processes to support the needs of customers and employees in a digital world. To accelerate and realize success with DPA, it's necessary to rethink the processes around the outcomes customers seek and the experiences they demand. End-to-end automation and robotics can orchestrate work anywhere, anytime, while context is maintained.
Discover how Blueprint supports end-to-end automation by transforming information-intensive business processes, reduce manual work and errors, minimize cost, and improve the customer experience by downloading our Enterprise Automation Suite datasheet or watch our product overview video below: