One of the benefits of an RPA program is that when it is architected and managed correctly, the financial plan for the program can be self-funding and self-sustaining. Once intelligent automation has been initiated, fledgling automation programs may struggle with how to achieve scale. There are several different skill sets needed throughout the automation lifecycle. Understanding and planning for them is critical. For example, ensuring that you are appropriately prepared to support your automations once they are in production is as important as successful development of the solutions was initially. Additionally, a development process must grow with your program, taking into consideration such items as development standards, reusables, and long-term sustainability. Finally, building an engine to continue to evaluate and prioritize a pipeline of future automations will help to ensure that your program continues to run smoothly as it grows.

At Machina, we address these challenges and others by focusing our entire company on intelligent automation and providing end-to-end services to our customers. We ensure that these services cover the full intelligent automation lifecycle, from advisory to implementation to operations and support, while also facilitating our customers’ ability to network with others who are facing similar challenges and maintaining tight partnerships with key leading vendors.

Is there a specific methodology that you follow to implement your solutions?

Yes, we have built a methodology for the implementation of automation solutions based on decades of experience implementing systems for the energy industry. This experience has been adapted to meet the needs of today’s real-world intelligent automation solutions and has been tested and proven through its use in our engagements and implementations. Our methodology and offerings support the full gambit of services needed by clients embarking on intelligent automation: advisory, implementation, operations, training, and optimization.

Could you share a client success story with us?

Yes. We will walk you through two such stories. First, we were engaged by a company that wanted our help in developing the core of what has become their center of excellence for RPA. We helped them strategize and define their programming standards, develop their design templates and their development approach, and identify the roles they need as well as defining the responsibilities for each. This support helped them jump start the establishment of their center of excellence and ensured that they launched their project effectively.

On a more traditional development project, we worked with a retail provider in Houston. The company wanted to automate several of their manual processes and prove that RPA could be successful in their business environment. We initiated the project by helping them prioritize and select the right processes to augment with a digital workforce component. This led to a POC and pilot for two of those processes. As an example of the results that can be achieved, one of these was a reconciliation related process. The process was originally run by five individuals but is now automated utilizing four UiPath robots. After automation, the process requires only part time human intervention to ensure the robots are functioning properly and to resolve any process exceptions that may arise from time to time.

What are Machina Automation’s future endeavors?

We have a few strategic initiatives planned for the future. While we will continue to focus on serving the energy industry, we will also be building more capabilities across the full lifecycle of our automation offering with our partners including UiPath, ABBYY and Enate. Alongside, we will also continue enhancing our support service offering to ensure that our clients have the long-term support they need to be successful. Finally, we will expand our global delivery model to provide additional cost flexibility and further improve our implementation and support capabilities.