The Start of your Organization’s Transformation

As you embark on your automation journey with an RPA partner there are several things to consider to maximize your benefits:

1. Vision 
2. Organization 
3. Governance & Pipeline 
4. Delivery Methodology 
5. Technology 
6. People 
7. Service Model  

Vision

How does RPA fit in to your organizations overall vision and strategy? Automation is introduced through various entry points. The two most common entry points I have seen automation introduced through are specific business units or IT from the C-suite. Regardless of the entry point, how automation fits in or aligns with the overall corporate vision will dictate the level of support for the program. Ideally, automation will be included as a part of the overall corporate vision and strategy.

Organization

Your existing organizational structure will inform how you set up your RPA program. Some organizations want one centralized RPA CoE (Center of Excellence) that builds and supports all automations for the entire organization, others find that a Federated model fits their organization better.  Your RPA partner can help you sort through pros and cons of each structure.

Governance & Pipeline

Ok – you’re going to automate… now what? Governance & pipeline defines how you find processes to automate, how you vet those processes for suitability, and how you prioritize the process candidates (your backlog).

Delivery Methodology

Delivery methodology really speaks to quality. Defining your organizations standards and best practices with your RPA partner and enforcing them will ensure that you have high-quality, resilient, stable, easy to support automations. Without a clear method, your organization will be left with automations that look like spaghetti and will constantly break. Your RPA partner should be able to guide you through this. If they can’t, choose another partner immediately.

Technology

If you are investing in automating processes, it’s safe to assume that you are not thinking about using automations for the short term. I expect the goal is to replace the existing workflow permanently, so your platform should be built to scale and grow along with your automation program. This is not the time to skimp or take short-cuts! Do it right the first time and you will eliminate unnecessary technical debt.

People

Once you have decided on the structure that aligns best with your organization, you will want to start looking at building your RPA team. Typical roles include Business Analysts (BA), Developers, Testers (Quality Assurance), and Production Support. There are a variety of approaches to staffing. Sometimes, the RPA team sits with the business and in other scenarios, they sit with IT. I have seen (and have been) in roles where team members wear multiple hats. For example, a developer could concurrently do the work of a BA, QA, and prod support. Crossover can be beneficial, but if you are maintaining a secure environment, setting up segregated duties may be necessary for security purposes.

Service Model

Now that you’ve got an automation into production and the bot is working away, how do you support it? What happens if there is a break? What does the business do? Your service model is going to answer all of the in-production questions and will answer what happens if issues should arise.

It is likely that you can find many answers to the above points within your existing organization. Having an experienced RPA partner will enable you to address the rest of the points and will ensure that your RPA program is a success!

Have questions or need more information? Contact our team or email Carrie directly at [email protected].