Feasibility and Priority: Identifying the Best Opportunities for Process Automation

In part two of this series, we focus on feasibility and priority when choosing the right processes to automate first, including what an RPA scorecard should have on it and how to determine RPA use case prioritization and ROI.

Part two in a series.

In the first part of our four-part robotic process automation series, we discussed Analysis and Ideation and the first areas to address: choosing a department for testing and establishing a process intake methodology.

In today’s overview, we will explain how to determine the feasibility and prioritization of potential business processes for automation.

Once you have established where you will begin testing your automation journey and set up a procedure to allow users to submit ideas for RPA projects, you then need a way to evaluate and assess an idea submission.

In the first part of our series, we referenced that not every business process is viable for automation and how those organizations that go into an RPA journey with that mindset tend to fail. That is why this second phase of the RPA use case process is so important.

Without a good way to assess and vet processes to automate, you could:

• End up with an overly complex process that takes more time and money to develop
• Automate a manual process that gives poor results because you need to improve it before determining viability for automation

In the rest of this blog, you’ll learn the importance of an RPA scorecard, return on investment (ROI) and prioritization when looking for processes to automate.

Creating an RPA Scorecard

An effective way to evaluate for business process automation is to use an RPA scorecard template. A scorecard will help you assess the viability of a process for automation based on a minimal amount of information. The initial score helps to eliminate those processes that you should not — or cannot — automate, thus reducing non-value-added work on the back-end when a scoring mechanism is not in place early in the assessment.

RPA scorecard templates will most likely vary from organization to organization based on the needs of the particular team involved and what data you need to collect as part of the input process.

At a minimum, however, include the following information to assist you during the creation of your RPA scorecard template:

• Process frequency
• Transaction volume
• Time per transaction
• Organizational impact – How many users will you impact if the process is automated?
• Number of systems and screens
• Input data (structured or unstructured)
• Complexity of business rules – Rules-based and, if so, level of complexity.
• Process, system and data reliability – Is the process prone to errors? Is there unreliable data? Are there many variations to achieve the same outcome?
• Service level agreements – Is the process held to specific SLAs?
• Process continuity – Does the process (or dependent systems) experience frequent changes or is it relatively stable?

The information you capture in your scorecard template should tie back to the data you want as part of your input form (discussed during the first phase of our series).

ROI and RPA Use Case Prioritization

Now that you have reviewed and assessed the current processes in the queue for feasibility, you can further assess for ROI and prioritize accordingly.

Keep in mind that the prioritization process will take place each time new processes come into the queue or at pre-defined frequencies. This step is necessary for the RPA use case prioritization procedure as you move process automations with a greater ROI or other critical operational impacts to the top of the development queue.

To ensure the prioritization procedure is effective, you must have a list or backlog of processes that have not only passed the assessment phase but also provide adequate ROI to support the need to automate it. Information you gathered from the initial input form, coupled with commentary and additional data developed during the assessment, will assist those in making decisions on where to place a process in the priority list.

A Bonus for This Process Prioritization Phase

Although you may not initially choose a business process as viable for automation, that doesn’t mean you cannot or should not address it later.

One of the bonuses that can come out of the assessment is gaining ideas on how to improve manual processes to make them more effective and efficient. In some cases, you will find there is no longer a need to automate a particular process. On the other hand, once you have made a process better, its ROI and other factors now make it more viable for automation — so, you can add it back into the queue for assessment.

Do not let all the data gathered through investigation and discussion go to waste. Use it to your advantage to continue to improve your department and your organization.

Further Benefits of RPA Use Case Prioritization

After you’ve effectively created your RPA scorecard template and determined ROI and prioritization, your team will avoid taking on use cases lacking value or with too much complexity. This rigorous assessment of feasibility opens your team up to more efficiency and greater success with an RPA use case process intake so you can be well on your way to adopting RPA permanently.

Conclusion

Join us on the next step in our RPA use case journey as we discuss the details of the Discover and Document phase, including key deliverables that will help drive the final phase of the overall process.

During this stage, we will begin to take a deeper dive into the business processes you deemed viable for process automation during the Feasibility and Priority phase to gather as much detail as possible about how your subject matter experts executes them. The greater the detail, the more effective and efficient your RPA development process will become.