Rolling Out Rpa Is Simpler Than You Think

RAJ CHAUDHURI, DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS, AMERICAN EXPRESS

The history of Robotic Process Automation (RPA), a term coined in early 2000, goes back to the 1990s, when screen scrapping technologies started to emerge as computing capabilities rapidly developed and people were exploring more efficient ways of getting the things done.

It was also a time where the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry expanded rapidly and as the initial euphoria of cost arbitrage started to dwindle, many of the leading Information Technology Enabled Services (ITES) firms started offering automation as a key value proposition. Soon enough RPA as a thought process started to integrate itself within the workflow.

However, the initial progress was checkered and gig companies were fast adopters simply because their core business model centred around digital/internet capabilities where business processes leveraged automation. As someone who has been pushing a ‘digital first’ approach in back office processing for the past few years, it has been an insightful experience going through the journey of embedding processes that were designed keeping a human in the centre of the process. Based on my experience, there are 5 key principles to keep in mind as one embarks on this journey:

• Define your ‘WHY’

It is particularly important for an organization to have clear, distinct and succinct articulation for the need to embark on an automation journey. It can be the common rationale of cost optimization or defining a long-term vision of being essential in the digital lives of their customers. It is crucial to ask key questions like – Does the customer benefit from this? Or how will this help organizational efficiency overall and will it allow us to do more with the same number of employees? Another key consideration will be employee experience. Frontline employees play a very significant role in the successful roll out of RPA and if they can relate to the WIFM (what’s in it for me), they will become strong change advocates down the road in later stages. The pitfall that one must avoid is to roll out RPA because everybody is doing it. • Envisage an organizational level roadmap

Once the WHY has been defined, the next critical step is to identify journeys that will be suitable for automation. Here an organizational view will greatly help in rolling out a cohesive strategy as the secret ingredient of automation is having seamless workflows. In a world of increasingly interconnected process design due to creation of Center of Excellence (COEs), significant process changes in one place can have upstream/downstream impacts and this may chip away at the net benefits. Thus, key stakeholders’ alignment across the entire E2E journey is almost mission critical

• Optimize before you automate

In many organizations, process journeys have been historically designed putting the human as the centrepiece and while this has worked brilliantly all these years, when replacing humans with a BOT, we risk the cognitive aspects of the process instantly. Thus reviewing & redesigning the process and making it RPA friendly is vital before building the code. One can define the process in 3 different ways i) E2E automation ii) Human in Loop iii) Assisted automation. The difference between the last two is that in a Human in Loop, the employee should step in only for a small part of the process before handing over the case to the BOT, whereas in an Assisted automation, the employee works most of the case and then passes it on the BOT for closure

• Collaboration is the key to success

It’s no surprise that collaboration is key in everything that we do. This fact has never been truer when it comes to RPA roll outs purely because of the number of different players across the entire process. Its starts with the Subject Matter experts making incredibly detailed process maps which includes all kinds of possible scenarios. Step-by-step commands to navigate systems including mentioning something as simple as ‘Press Enter’ is important as the code developer might not have thorough understanding and unless clearly articulated, might miss steps which will be only observed during testing. There are tools in the market today, which makes this somewhat easier. One learning that I can share is to have a ‘Translator’, someone who understands both spectrums leading to a much more accurate coding which then brings shorter testing timelines and faster roll outs of RPA. Robust testing is another important aspect before a full-blown roll out. Most chinks should be identified & ironed out at this stage. The fallout from inadequate testing can be enormous as the BOT will make the same mistake repeatedly thereby involving large volumes and the remediation of the same will be time and cost consuming.

“It is particularly important for an organization to have clear, distinct and succinct articulation for the need to embark on an automation journey”

• Stay on Course

Last but not the least is to stay on course. In the initial days of rolling out an automation journey, the roadblocks will be many and frequent. There will be a need for constant alignment & process simplifications (time consuming for many) leading one to question the need for doing this in the first place. However, as teams get conversant with the tools, things will eventually fall in place and subsequent roll outs happen much more efficiently. For me personally, each time there was a doubt in my mind, my Northern Stars were the ‘WHY’ and the organizational roadmap. Having a deep sense of commitment to larger objectives have always inspired me to explore ways to make automation a success story. After all success begets success

Contrary to what one may believe, the RPA journey is not necessarily arduous and can be successful if we are able to paint the future with exceptional clarity and simplicity to ensure all levels of the organization can understand and commit to the process.