The potential for Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to eliminate mundane, repetitive tasks so enterprise talent can focus on higher-value deliverables is undeniable. As is the benefit of making those mundane tasks more reliable, faster, and with higher-quality results.
With such stark benefits, it’s hard not to become overzealous with automation, but jumping in blindly can pose significant consequences when trying to scale or evaluate your ROI. Large enterprises are still struggling to scale RPA (only 3% of bot deployments reach scale). The business processes they choose to automate may be part of the problem. Even though the opportunities and candidates for Robotic Process Automation are ample, the truth is, RPA isn’t right for every process. We’ve continually advocated that one of the keys to scaling RPA, is choosing the right processes to automate.
Below are ways to identify the optimal use cases for RPA at your organization, helping you to not only drive scale, but also time-to-value and your return on investment.
Completely understanding any process that you’re thinking about automating is paramount. That means fully understanding every step of the process, the process’s objective, and most importantly, its business context or how it fits into the big picture.
A common mistake many large enterprises make when implementing RPA is to hasten their approach and automate processes that are flawed to start with. A basic principle of process automation is that only clearly defined, standard, and precise processes are fit for automation. Most large organizations don’t have clearly defined, standard processes. If you take something as simple as processing an invoice, I’d wager there are several different ways your organization processes invoices. Automating the same process six times in six different ways is a waste of resources and will only add barriers in any attempt to scale. Understanding your processes is the first step to standardization and then optimization, which lends itself beautifully to automation.
If a process fits every element on that list, odds are it’s an excellent candidate to be automated. But even then, it’s important to do some due diligence and ensure the process is a right fit for RPA by posing some further questions:
It may seem simple, but asking these questions is fundamental to identifying the right processes to automate and set a foundation for scale.
Everyone has the same RPA objectives: to eliminate mundane, repetitive tasks so your workforce can focus on higher-value efforts, while making those mundane tasks more reliable, efficient, and with higher-quality results, to deliver business objectives and customer satisfaction.
To get there, it’s important to whittle down your objectives by being a bit more granular and again, asking some key questions:
When you’ve defined your RPA criteria and lower-scale objectives, then you can easily create a systematic framework to follow and evaluate any process that’s an automation candidate.
A combination of your RPA criteria and objectives gives you the qualifiers to validate any process that’s a candidate for automation and can be as simple as defining a checklist resembling the following:
You can also assign each item a weight, thereby providing a means for prioritization as soon as you’re ready to ramp up.
By the end of 2022, 72% of Fortune-1000 companies will have adopted some sort of business process automation. A good practice is to perform a benchmark test and understand which areas of the business other large organizations have realized value when automating processes.
In their analysis, this is where Gartner has seen the most traction for enterprises:
The potential for RPA is boundless, and that in itself can be an impediment in realizing the value of automation and scaling it, but defining your criteria, objectives, and a framework for success can be the differentiator between a shaky attempt and a solid implementation set for scale to realize the value of RPA and the return available.