executive guide to automation · automation of ofﬁce tasks has just begun to transform entire...

Executive Guide to AutomationHow to get started and succeed with RPA

The Automation Imperative ..............................................................................................................1The automation of office work is changing entire industries. The results of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) are compelling and achievable. Large enterprises are seizing the opportunity to deploy RPA, and opportunity abounds for small and mid-sized businesses as well.

Begin the Automation Journey.........................................................................................................4RPA automates “swivel chair” or routine, rules-based office work. There are three classes of automation: RPA, Enhanced Automation, and Cognitive Automation, and most organizations begin the journey with RPA.

Focus on Increased Productivity ..................................................................................................... 7At the beginning of your initiative, think ahead about the implications of RPA for your people. Focusing on increasing productivity creates a more balanced approach than targeting lower costs as the primary objective for RPA.

Identify Opportunities for Automation..........................................................................................8Evaluate the potential of an RPA initiative for your business by looking for tasks that are highly repetitive, affect meaningful KPIs, and have an achievable scope based on your automation maturity level.

Implement RPA Effectively in 4 Stages.........................................................................................10Following a 4-stage process will help you get started and avoid common pitfalls. Some aspects of an RPA initiative may be different than other adoption frameworks.

Build an Automation Roadmap......................................................................................................13After the first few projects, you should have enough critical mass to plan end-to-end process automation projects. Map value chains and processes to create your automation roadmap.

Develop a Center of Excellence .....................................................................................................15Developing a Center of Excellence (CoE) is essential to scale RPA. Your CoE must centralize best practices and guide the company in the evolution of your automation program.

Measure Success................................................................................................................................16As you plan your automation initiative, consider both hard and soft metrics. Start with a compel-ling “showcase” success and begin to determine baseline measures for manual tasks. Include the metrics that matter most for your business.

About R-Path Automation .............................................................................................................. 20

Table of ContentsExecutive Guide to Automation

As organizations adopt RPA, a new normal is emerging. Automation is creating a greater divide between larger and smaller players in a market. Early adopters—typically the largest organizations—enjoy first-mover benefits: significantly better service levels and dramatically lower costs. Routine processes are faster and have fewer errors. In addition, employees are free to focus on more meaningful work, giving early adopters an edge in acquiring and managing talent. In short, organizations that engage RPA early disrupt their market and enter new markets with surprising speed.

Mid-market companies, not just large enterprises, can be early adopters

In a 2018 press release, Gartner noted that early adopters have been large enterprises, and these larger organizations will continue to invest in automation: “60 percent of organizations with a revenue of more than $1 billion will have deployed RPA tools by the end of the year. By the end of 2022, 85 percent of large and very large organizations will have deployed some form of RPA.”However, Gartner also expects rapid adoption of RPA for organizations of all sizes. This adoption makes sense for mid-market and small businesses that have fewer resources to meet cost challenges. For example, a community bank

©2019 R-Path Automation – All Rights Reservedwww.rpathautomation.com 1

The Automation Imperative

Work is changing. Automation of office tasks has just begun to transform entire industries. IT infrastructure gaps, combined with economic pressure to do more with less, force employees to work harder and put in longer hours to complete tasks manually. Inefficiencies prevail and morale suffers.

Robotic Process Automation or RPA is software that automates human work. Point-and-click, copy-paste, login-and-download are the sorts of activities performed by RPA.

45% to 50% of all tasks performed today can be automated with existing technology.

— McKinsey Global Institute

used RPA to handle new compliance requirements cost-effectively. If you are not yet considering automation, or if you’ve been putting it off, now is the time to explore its capabilities for your business.

Automating office work delivers results both compelling and achievable

According to Gartner, RPA software grew 63.1% in 2018, to $846 million, making it the fastest-growing segment of the global enterprise software market.

Why the fast growth? Gartner points to RPA’s, “…ability to integrate legacy systems is the key driver for RPA projects.” Essentially, office work is far too manual today, so many organizations are pursuing digital strategies to edge out competition, and there is a clear opportunity for automation. At the same time, RPA capabilities make automation possible in realistic situations with legacy yet mission-critical systems, with measurable improvement. This combination of latent demand for automation and flexibility in RPA solutions sparked the rush to automate.

This executive guide defines and articulates RPA as a business strategy, provides information and tools for getting started, and shares a proven approach for driving the widespread use of automation in your organization.

https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2018-11-13-gartner-says-worldwide-spending-on-robotic-process-automation-software-to-reach-680-million-in-2018

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2019/01/23/six-predictions-for-intelligent-automation-in-2019/#53ac058c3a3e

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2019/01/23/six-predictions-for-intelligent-automation-in-2019/#53ac058c3a3e

https://rpathautomation.com/b-rpaforcompliancecommunitybanking/

https://rpathautomation.com/





Flexibility of RPA Drives Growth

RPA technology and offerings achieved a remarkable fit with real-world problems, leading to relatively quick successes with compelling results.

HEALTH CARE

3,700+hours saved

250%return oninvestment

After deploying just four RPA projects, a health care organization saved 3,770 hours of manual effort related to EHR data entry and payer data reconciliation.

BANKING

2,700+hours saved

2 FTEcost savings

A community bank is on course to save 2,712 work hours in 2019 with projects launched or in development within the first six months of adopting RPA.

BUSINESS SERVICES

10,000+hours saved

90%+costreduction

A research firm saved over 10,000 hours by automating an entire process that collected data from online sources and then identified and reported changes every day.






https://rpathautomation.com/b-rpaforcompliancecommunitybanking/











Sources

McKinsey Global Institute, “The Future of work in America: People and places, today and tomorrow”

Gartner, “Gartner Says Worldwide Robotic Process Automation Software Market Grew 63% in 2018”

HFS Research, “RPA will reach $2.3bn next year and $4.3bn by 2022... as we revise our forecast upwards”

https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/future-of-work/the-future-of-work-in-america-people-and-places-today-and-tomorrow

https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2019-06-24-gartner-says-worldwide-robotic-process-automation-sof

https://www.horsesforsources.com/RPA-forecast-2016-2022_120118






Begin the Automation Journey

What is RPA (and what are “bots”)? An excerpt from the Gartner definition for Robotic Process Automation states:

“Robotic process automation (RPA) is a productivity tool that allows a user to configure one or more scripts (which some vendors refer to as ‘bots’) to activate specific keystrokes in an automated fashion. The result is that the bots can be used to mimic or emulate selected tasks (transaction steps) within an overall business or IT process.”

In other words, RPA is the automation of “swivel chair” work. RPA programs digital workers, or bots, to perform routine, rules-based tasks. If you can describe an activity in a way that anyone can perform it, then a bot can probably do it too.

If you can describe an activity in a way that anyone can perform it, then a bot can probably do it too.

The types of activities regularly performed by bots include opening and closing files, reading information, opening and closing applications (both Web-based and desktop), entering data, manipulating data, performing calculations, making if-then decisions, processing transactions, and detecting errors.






The three classes of automationThere are three classes of automation: Basic Automation, Enhanced Automation, and Cognitive Automation.

• RPA is part of Basic Automation, which uses deterministic automation to perform routine, rules-based tasks.

• Enhanced Automation adds more complexity, such as working with unstructured text and pattern recognition (e.g., intelligent document scanning, etc.).

• Cognitive Automation uses AI, machine learning, and big data to learn and therefore handle the most complex tasks which require adapting to new information.

https://www.gartner.com/en/information-technology/glossary/robotic-process-automation-rpa






Robotic Process Automation

Enhanced Process Automation

CognitiveAutomation

NaturalLanguage

ProcessingAdaptiveAlteration

Big DataAnalytics

Artificial Intelligence

Processing of Unstructured Data and Base

Knowledge

Machine Learning

Large-Scale Processing

WorkflowScreen Scraping

RulesEngine

1

2

3

2017 KPMG LLP, a Delaware limited liability partnership and the U.S. member firm of the KPMG network of indpendent member firms affiliated with KPMG International Cooperative (”KPMG International”), a Swiss entity. All rights reserved. The KPMG name and logo are registred trademarks or trademarks of KPMG International. NDPPS 666927

Classes of AutomationUnderstanding the different types of automation—courtesy of this KPMG model—can help you to create realistic plans for adopting automation within your business.

The types of activities regularly performed by bots include opening and closing files, reading information, opening and closing applications (both Web-based and desktop), entering data, manipulating data, performing calculations, making if-then decisions, processing transactions, and detecting errors.






The three classes of automationThere are three classes of automation: Basic Automation, Enhanced Automation, and Cognitive Automation.

• RPA is part of Basic Automation, which uses deterministic automation to perform routine, rules-based tasks.

• Enhanced Automation adds more complexity, such as working with unstructured text and pattern recognition (e.g., intelligent document scanning, etc.).

• Cognitive Automation uses AI, machine learning, and big data to learn and therefore handle the most complex tasks which require adapting to new information.

https://institutes.kpmg.us/government/articles/2017/demystifying-intelligent-automation.html

https://institutes.kpmg.us/government/articles/2017/demystifying-intelligent-automation.html


Identify Opportunities for Automation

How to evaluate RPA’s potential fitTo understand how RPA might impact your business, you need to first identify possible areas for operational improvement across your organization. One way to identify opportunities is to score tasks in three categories: repetitiveness, potential KPI improvements, and project scope. Let’s examine each category in turn.

1. Highly repetitive tasksRPA articles inevitably bring up “repetitiveness” as the primary characteristic of tasks and processes that should be automated. But what does repetitive mean, specifically? Here are some considerations:

• Paper to application and application to application—Data entry, whether entering information from paper forms and print outs or from one system to another, is a classic RPA use case. Onboarding new customers, processing invoices, and entering form information are all examples of data entry tasks.

• External systems checks—Checks of external systems or websites are common in many business activities, including gathering data for market intelligence, enhancing customer data with third-party data, meeting regulatory reporting requirements, or connecting systems across a supply chain.

• Comparisons of values and conditional checks—Ensuring that values match in more than one system or dataset reduces errors. Finance department tasks like bank account reconciliation and accounts payable are examples of this sort of comparison.

• Required steps and prescribed options—If a task or process has steps that are required—either by regulation, policy, or practice—then this activity may be appropriate for RPA. The steps should be the same or have limited variation each time that they are executed. If there are options in the process, each path should also have defined steps.


Focus on Increased Productivity

While automation has been affecting blue-collar work for decades, disciplines like RPA are beginning to affect white-collar work today. Savvy business lead-ers know that they need to be thinking ahead and considering the implications for both their operations and their people.

When it comes to implementing automation, people often make the leap that it leads to layoffs. Fortunately, that does not have to be the case. Let’s examine why.

• Automation replaces tasks, not jobs. Most of the immediate opportunity for automation lies in discrete tasks that still require people to perform parts of the overall process. Competitive intelligence collection can be automated, for example, but strategic planning is performed by people. Also, automation opportunities don’t neatly replace whole jobs. Automating bank account reconciliation may eliminate the need for a human to perform this task, but finance and accounting roles are not replaced in the process.

• Automation enables organizations and their teams to achieve more. Automation is not just about cost savings. Experience from blue-collar automation provides examples of leading companies realizing productivity gains rather than pure cost savings. At least one study suggests that the companies facing the first wave of office work automation are redeploying employees rather than replacing them in most situations.

Leaders should prepare their teams nowAutomation will absolutely play a role in the future of all white-collar work, and leaders that take the initiative to prepare their teams for this change now will undoubtedly have an edge in the years ahead. If you’re not sure where to begin, consider questions like the following:

• What tedious, repetitive tasks should you plan to automate, and which team members will be affected?

• What higher-order tasks or projects will you be able to assign to affected team members, and how can you effectively upskill them?

• How do you clearly communicate your automation strategy, and how do you ensure your team is engaged from the start?

Automation will eventually translate into workforce reductions. Work will change. That said, organizations that create new assignments that are designed explicitly for human talent—requiring creativity, imagination, judgment, and relationships—will contribute to a better work life for their people, improve employee engagement, and ultimately outperform their peers.

Beginning the automation journey with RPA

Most companies start with RPA and, if necessary, migrate to more sophisticated options over time. RPA tends to be more affordable and works with existing systems, reducing deployment risk.

In general, it’s only cost-effective to automate repetitive or time-consuming tasks. If something only takes a minute a month, it’s probably not worth automating. If it takes an hour or more a day, however, it probably is.

Companies might also automate a task to reduce quality problems or to mitigate issues with peak load. For example, if you have a seasonal business and a task only takes 30 minutes a week most of the year but takes four hours a day for two months, it might make sense to automate the task to mitigate the disruption to your business.

Existing operations benefit from RPA in these ways:

• RPA bots work with your existing infrastructure without requiring expensive and lengthy software upgrades or replacements.

• Bots work 24/7 and perform the task the same way every time, eliminating human error and ensuring that critical tasks are performed at optimal efficiency and quality.

• Bots can be trained to complete most tasks in weeks and cost only a small fraction of the current investment, so ROI is often achieved in a few months rather than years.

• People need to perform fewer tedious tasks, and they develop an automation-first mindset that improves operations over time.

With two types of employees, people and bots, new possibilities for efficient operations emergeOnce bots have been trained to complete a specified task, they become a virtual extension of your team. This, in turn, means that your colleagues have more time to engage work better aligned with their human potential; work that requires creativity, imagination, judgment, and relationships.

Of course, it’s important, imperative even, to consider how employees might react to automation and prepare to help them understand the benefits.

2. Meaningful KPI improvementsAnother category to consider is the expected upside in cost or time reductions, improved quality, top-line improvement, and/or increased customer satisfaction. Whether you choose revenue generation, customer service, or service delivery, certain processes are more important for your business, and there are examples available to help you benchmark expected returns. Keep in mind that big initial wins don’t necessarily come by automating whole processes.

3. Ideal project scopeThe last consideration is to take stock of your RPA readiness and select projects that are right-sized. A tactical project that improves the lives of employees is entirely appropriate for a pilot, when a primary objective is to garner support for RPA within your organization. In an early stage of RPA readiness, it can be disastrous to take on a large, complex process.

Consider these aspects of a project when assessing complexity:

• How many people does the process touch? Does the process span multiple people and divisions? Have you considered the human aspects of RPA adoption? How many systems are involved?

• How mission-critical is the process? Have you tackled easier tasks and processes before trying your most important process? Do you have the expertise and buy-in to handle a high-profile project?

• How hardened is the process? Do you really understand the process? Is the “happy path” scenario assumed when, in reality, exceptions are the norm?

As you get deeper into RPA, tactical wins lead to more complex optimizations that touch more of your organization. Selecting the right projects, particularly at the beginning, helps you to navigate to greater efficiencies to edge out competition and ultimately better serve your customers.

Implement RPA Effectively in 4 Stages

Once you have validated the potential of RPA for your business, you’re ready to begin your automation journey. To ensure success, however, you need to start small and build momentum. The following four–stage framework, refined in real-world implementations, will help you get started and avoid some common pitfalls.





























https://rpathautomation.com/b-rpamorethancostsavings/

https://rpathautomation.com/b-rpamorethancostsavings/

https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/future-of-work/skill-shift-automation-and-the-future-of-the-workforce

https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/future-of-work/skill-shift-automation-and-the-future-of-the-workforce



















to start looking at your business strategically. Instead of simply deciding which tasks can be automated, you need to zoom out and determine in what area of the business you need to see an improvement and identify how automation can help you achieve that goal.

This stage requires you to develop your capabilities further as you begin a digital transformation of your business. You’re connecting automatable and non–automatable tasks together into streamlined, end–to–end processes that positively move the needle.

The pitfalls some companies stumble into during this stage include:

• Starting here too quickly—Digital transformation is hard and often unsuccessful, and that’s even more likely when companies avoid the first two stages and miss the opportunity to rally their team around the goal. There is always resistance to change, but if you have all the right stakeholders on board, success is much more likely.

• Not establishing a Center of Excellence (CoE)—Companies that fail to establish a CoE and clear guidelines for bot governance find themselves stuck in a classic “too many cooks in the kitchen” scenario.

• Failing to document—A critical, first step in this stage is to model the process to be transformed. Many business leaders think they know how their businesses run, but few fully appreciate the level of customization and/or shortcuts that their teams exercise each day.

Stage 4 – Business TransformationBy this point, you’ve made dramatic improvements to your business, but there’s yet further to go! Where you were once constrained by what you’ve always done, it’s now time to ignite your team’s collective imagination and consider what’s possible.

You have a completely new set of capabilities in your organization, and your culture has fully adopted automation as the new norm. The question you need to ask is, “What can we do now that was never possible in the past?” Answering this question will help you chart a new course that may ultimately transform your business.


4BUSINESS TRANSFORMATIONUtilize technology to perform at a new level and transform your business

STAGE

3PROCESS AUTOMATIONUse automation to improve core processes that drive key business objectives

STAGE

2TASK AUTOMATIONBuild a core constituent of supporters and create a solid foundation for your RPA program

STAGE

1PILOTLow-cost, low-risk way to validate the concept and get everyone on board with automation

STAGE

THE 4 STAGES OF SUCCESSFUL IMPLEMENTATIONSThe 4 stages emphasize goals that are unique to automation versus other technology-based implementations. For example, the pilot stage emphasizes internal credibility over technology proof. Getting people on board early is paramount for success.

Stage 1 - PilotStart with an RPA pilot. The purpose of the pilot is not to prove the technology works—the evidence speaks for itself—but to establish credibility and help people become more comfortable with RPA within your organization. Executive stakeholders will want to see cost savings and data that can be used in building a business case. Employees will want firsthand experience with automation before they truly feel at ease with the concept. So, remember these objectives when you plan your pilot, and work hard to avoid these common mistakes:

• Starting too big—Some people feel that they need to automate the most complicated use case in order to validate the technology, but the reality is that this will send the project on a collision course with failure.

• Going cheap—Many automation platform providers will tell you that anyone can program a “bot,” and it’s tempting to rely solely on internal resources (e.g., your Excel guru). Unless you have an existing development team, however, you’ll be facing too many unknowns to deliver effective results. Find someone with experience to serve as your guide and help you get started.

Stage 2 - Task AutomationNow it’s time to grow your automation skillset by knocking out some low-hanging fruit. Once you’ve had a successful pilot, you’re ready to engage other obvious candidate projects for automation.

At this point, you have three, key objectives:

• Build a constituency of automation advocates within your organization

• Develop guidelines and best practices for bot governance

• Reduce hours spent on low–value work

The problems many organizations run into at this stage are:

• Declaring success too soon—Some companies go overboard with task automation and declare victory. They have delivered a robust ROI and feel like that’s all there is to automation. Unfortunately, they don’t realize how much opportunity they’re leaving on the table.

• Saving solely on paper—You’ve freed up 4,000 hours of work a year and don’t feel like any of that has translated into real, bottom–line savings.

Both issues stem from the fact that your automation efforts so far have been tactical. Intentionally so, but now it’s time to get strategic!

Stage 3 – Process AutomationThe first two stages are all about establishing your baseline understanding of the technology, developing your skills, and achieving some quick wins. Now it’s time to think bigger!

As any good process engineer will tell you, streamlining a task may have no impact on the actual throughput of the process. Instead, it will merely move the constraint from one part of the process to another. At this point, you need










Build an Automation Roadmap

As you move your business past Stage 2 — Task Automation and on to Stage 3 —Process Automation, you will likely need to take a more sophisticated approach to RPA planning in order to fully leverage its capabilities. Here are a few best practices for organizations starting to conduct end-to-end process planning.

Create a value chain map to prioritize and manage RPA rolloutA value chain map might best be described as an organizational chart for your processes. To create one, follow these steps:

• Map a high-level view of your business operations

• Determine the core versus support functions

• Evaluate cost, quality, importance, and variability to prioritize processes for automation

The sample value chain map below applies to a bank, but you can imagine a similar map for your business operations. While not shown, this map drills into each subprocess to outline step-by-step tasks that make up each process.

https://www2.deloitte.com/bg/en/pages/technology/articles/deloitte-global-rpa-survey-2018.html

























LOAN OPERATIONS

DEPOSIT OPERATIONS AUDITS AND CONTROLS

PHYSICAL CHECKS ACH GROUP WIRE PROCESSING

Commercial On-boarding

YachtOn-boarding

LoanMaintenance

Regulation E Management

Deposit RateManagement

Dormant AccountProcessing

Regulation DManagement

in-ClearingChecks

Remote DepositProcessing

BranchCapture ACH Origination ACH in-Clearing

ACH ReturnProcessing

Incoming Domestic IncomingInternational

Cash LetterReconciliation

MaintenanceVerification

Daily BranchSettlement

MonthlyReconciliations

ATM Switch

ACH In-Process

Abandoned Property

CommercialOn-boarding

Legal Processing

Cash Inventory

Outgoing Domestic OutgoingInternational

Check RDI’x

Loan Payoffs

ResidentialOn-boarding

InsuranceManagement

Line-of-Credit (LOC)On-boarding

Loan RateManagement

Swap/ParticipationPayments

Tax Payments

Annuity LoanOn-boarding

Loan PaymentProcessing

LSBO Remittances










Mapping processes helps create a prioritized backlog for automationCreating a map like this is straightforward but extremely valuable. Often the people doing the work have a very different view of the “as-is” process than you or your management team, so putting in the work to understand your processes now will help ensure successful automations later.

Once you have a common understanding of your processes, ask some key questions:

• Which processes have the most cost? Or the most people quality issues?

• Which processes are most important to our organization today? Which are going to be most important in the future as we continue to build our business?

• Which of these are highly variable, and therefore cause problems, either on a monthly cadence or seasonally?

• Which processes create core value? That is, which processes would cause an immediate emergency if they stopped for a day? Which processes are support activities that would not interrupt operations if they stopped for a day?

Mapping your processes does a couple things. First, it helps you plan your automation roadmap, or the strategy that drives the initiative. Second, it provides a backlog or repository of potential automation projects, the projects that still need to be done, and the extent of automation rollout within your organization.

Develop a Center of Excellence

Developing a Center of Excellence (CoE) is essential to scale RPA within your organization. The CoE must act as the central repository for best practices and guide the company in the evolution of your RPA program.

The CoE is responsible for all facets of the automation initiativeLarge enterprises often employ CoEs for a number of initiatives, but even smaller organizations benefit from an automation CoE, which coordinates projects and resources, serves as a repository for best practices and technical knowledge, and ensures that the organization uses a common set of metrics for automation projects. Refer to the graphic below for the specific responsibilities of a CoE.



Mapping processes helps create a prioritized backlog for automationCreating a map like this is straightforward but extremely valuable. Often the people doing the work have a very different view of the “as-is” process than you or your management team, so putting in the work to understand your processes now will help ensure successful automations later.

Once you have a common understanding of your processes, ask some key questions:

• Which processes have the most cost? Or the most people quality issues?

• Which processes are most important to our organization today? Which are going to be most important in the future as we continue to build our business?

• Which of these are highly variable, and therefore cause problems, either on a monthly cadence or seasonally?

• Which processes create core value? That is, which processes would cause an immediate emergency if they stopped for a day? Which processes are support activities that would not interrupt operations if they stopped for a day?

Mapping your processes does a couple things. First, it helps you plan your automation roadmap, or the strategy that drives the initiative. Second, it provides a backlog or repository of potential automation projects, the projects that still need to be done, and the extent of automation rollout within your organization.

Develop a Center of Excellence

Developing a Center of Excellence (CoE) is essential to scale RPA within your organization. The CoE must act as the central repository for best practices and guide the company in the evolution of your RPA program.

The CoE is responsible for all facets of the automation initiativeLarge enterprises often employ CoEs for a number of initiatives, but even smaller organizations benefit from an automation CoE, which coordinates projects and resources, serves as a repository for best practices and technical knowledge, and ensures that the organization uses a common set of metrics for automation projects. Refer to the graphic below for the specific responsibilities of a CoE.

AutomationInitiative

Assessprojects

Allocateresources

• Determine assessment criteria• Include corporate strategic direction• Manage approve/reject process

• Identify development resources, central and distributed• Prioritize projects to allocate resources• Align resource allocation with corporate strategic direction

Metrics& ROI

Capture metrics

Report program status & results

• Set metrics to monitor and assess the program• Capture metrics

• Create and distribute reports; create an automation dashboard

• Compare project ROI and use results to improve the program

Technology& Best

Practices

Evaluate technology

Promote best practices

• Facilitate technology evaluations, promote selected solutions, and track adoption

• Establish standards for code reviews, documentation, variable names, common modules, code re-use, error handling, and managing log files

• Set up maintenance best practices, including regular server reboots, error notifications, internal SLAs, and policies

• Ensure compliance with IT security protocols

Sources

HelpSystems, “The Business Leader’s Handbook for Building an Automation Center of Excellence”

https://www.helpsystems.com/resources/guides/business-leaders-guide-automation-center-of-excellence



Measure Success

An automation initiative is ultimately about results. The popularity of Robotic Process Automation is due, in part, to widespread and real successes. For example, Leslie Willcocks, professor of technology, work, and globalization at The London School of Economics and Political Science’s Department of Management, found an ROI between 30% and 200% in the first year in a review of 16 RPA projects.

The benefits of RPA go beyond hard numbers. According to Willcocks, “RPA takes the robot out of the human.” Advances in business operations can be dehumanizing; with RPA, however, the trend is reversed. RPA automates tedious and error-prone tasks so people can contribute in more meaningful ways.

As you plan your automation initiative, consider both hard ROI and soft benefits. We’ll outline two aspects of RPA metrics: 1. focusing on the initial stage, or “pilot” stage, to ensure that you have the fundamentals in place to help socialize automation throughout the organization, and 2. ensuring that you’ve considered all the ways that automation can improve operations and make a compelling case for change.

Start with a compelling “showcase” successThe first project or pilot should be a showcase success, or a project that helps you to share the concept of automation with people at all levels in the organization. The primary goal is to establish credibility and help people become more comfortable with RPA within your organization.

In considering your pilot project, focus on metrics for three, key audiences: senior leadership, peers, and the people directly affected by automation. Your leadership wants the showcase to deliver metrics that support a larger business case. Peers need to understand that adopting automation can help them achieve their department’s strategic objectives. The team members performing manual tasks need to experience improvements in their work life.

A showcase success is:

• A way to validate assumptions for investing in RPA

• Achievable, discrete, and relatively short in duration

• Referenceable throughout the organization

The showcase success helps tell a story about the sorts of work that can be automated and the benefits that the organization and employees see. Measuring improvement is an indispensable part of that story.

Set up baseline measures for manual tasksTo measure improvement, baseline measures for manual tasks need to be set up before you begin your pilot project. This advice may seem obvious; after all, you need to measure a baseline for any project, whether the showcase success or a later one. Stressing baseline measures at an early stage, however, will help develop the habit of measuring manual activities. Manual tasks are often overlooked as a cost of doing business rather than a set of activities that can be quantified.

For example, employees who enter sales orders from one system, like email, into the billing system know that this manual step happens. Others in the organization may not be aware of the time and effort involved. That’s why creating a flow chart for an existing process is a surprising and beneficial exercise; people often have very different perceptions of the actual activities performed.

Once your automation program is established, creating baseline measures will be easier. At this early stage, you may not have ready tools for quantifying a baseline. Begin early to state assumptions and rough estimates about costs, time, effort, output, etc. for tasks.

Include the metrics that matter most for your businessAfter successfully proving RPA in the pilot, you’ll want to prepare for a larger automation program. To select meaningful metrics for your program, consider both hard and soft benefits. You may get benefits in ways that you do not expect. Being prepared with meaningful metrics from multiple sources helps in quantifying and sharing these pleasant surprises.

Here are some common types of RPA benefits that can serve as a framework for creating your specific measures:

• Productivity—Divide units of output by units of input. How you determine these units depends on your business model and a solid understanding of the tasks and processes involved. For example, one bank uses RPA to sup-port growth. This growth is possible given the bank’s ability to onboard new customers faster.

• Cost savings—Of course, RPA creates efficiencies. Cost avoidance includes not hiring additional employees and not upgrading or replacing existing systems, in addition to the operating and capital costs that are reduced or eliminated with automation.

• Time savings—Time savings compares time spent per activity before and after automation as well as the duration of the overall activity or larger steps in the process. Note that while time saved is attractive because it can be measured, many organizations don’t necessarily “save” the costs associated with an employee’s salary; a job is not a task. However, some organizations value employee efficiency so much that they assign a financial value to time savings. In other situations, the time savings may have some other effect, like increased output or better customer service.

• Accuracy improvement—By eliminating human error from activities, you’ll inevitably see improved quality and/or reduced errors. Be sure to understand the current error rate, which can be elusive, and mitigate human error in setting up and maintaining automation. Streamlined compliance processes are a great example of improved accuracy. In some situations, ensuring compliance avoids fines or, for health care providers, accelerates the revenue cycle.

• Improved security—Unfortunately, people are the greatest vulnerability risk in a security framework. Automation removes much of this type of risk and provides controls that can be inspected easily. An InfoSec group may have measures in place that you can adopt to track how automation helps improve vulnerability assessment scores.

• Employee satisfaction—The immediate opportunities for RPA will be in replacing menial tasks that people do not want to perform. Consider how to incorporate the effects of automation on employee satisfaction scores.

• Customer satisfaction—Look for reduced wait times and other process improvements that directly affect the customer experience. If your organization tracks customer satisfaction regularly through mechanisms like an NPS score, try to identify improvements that might be attributed to faster service and fewer mistakes.

• Top-line improvement—Similarly, consider how automating certain tasks improves efficiencies in revenue generation and produces better margins.

• RPA adoption—While not a primary metric, it is helpful to track the spread of automation throughout your organization in order to understand the cumulative effect of the technology in improving your business.

As with any metrics initiative, align with Finance and/or the official metrics function(s) in your organization to ensure that your measures follow accepted definitions and data. Expanding the benefits of automation will be easier and more compelling when your terms are clear and aligned with company norms.

Incorporate data in decision-making as a practiceAs a final note, make sure that you include metrics in day-to-day automation decisions. When metrics are owned by your Center of Excellence and have executive support, your organization is more likely to make consistent, data-driven decisions. You will also be able to measure the effect of automation on corporate, department, and individual performance.

Sources

McKinsey Global Institute, “The value of robotic process automation”



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©2019 R-Path Automation – All Rights Reservedwww.rpathautomation.com 15©2019 R-Path Automation – All Rights Reservedwww.rpathautomation.com 15©2019 R-Path Automation – All Rights Reservedwww.rpathautomation.com

About R-Path AutomationR-Path Automation drives the widespread use of RPA by helping organizations—particularly SMBs—realize meaningful efficiencies with RPA at scale. We were our own first customer, so we know the power of automation. Our proven approach reduces risk by starting small, thinking strategically, and scaling fast. We partner with clients to right-size automation so that your initiative is attainable, meaningful, and successful.

https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/financial-services/our-insights/the-value-of-robotic-process-automation


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