Siri, Google Home and Alexa are practically household staples, and similar technological transformations are becoming commonplace at work. But implementing RPA into the workplace isn’t a blanket solution.
Many organizations have implemented robotic process automation, or RPA, as a workplace tool. While it is not the solution for every automation need, RPA technology provides “robots” that can automate many activities.
Essentially, these bots act as human agents, performing rule-based, repetitive tasks with a higher degree of accuracy and speed compared to humans. With RPA implementation, users can program bots to click, type and interact with computers like we do, passing off routine tasks like filling out forms, entering data and reviewing reports to bots so they can focus on more complex tasks.
For example, let’s consider a large Midwestern bank that we partner with. By implementing robotics in their workplace, the bank reduced the time they spent on a portion of their loan review process from 20 minutes to six minutes per loan on average. Their use of RPA allows each loan reviewer to address tasks that require deeper understanding and higher expertise.
Similarly, by scheduling automated bots, we save 45 minutes each morning on our demand deposit account (DDA) balancing process on average. Instead of verifying balances and ensuring records match actual account activity, our employees have these reports waiting for them, allowing them to start their workday further along in the process and spend less time completing it overall.
What to Consider Before Pursuing RPA Implementation
Although your organization could benefit from robots in the workplace, RPA itself is not a solution. RPA only automates the processes you have. For automation to be successful for your organization, you must consider your current workplace environment:
1. Don’t automate a process that needs to be improved.
For example, if a manufacturing company has an order fulfillment process that often creates errors in packaging labeling and delays in shipping, automating that process would only create errors and delays faster.
Instead, evaluating the order fulfillment process to determine where the errors and delays are coming from will improve the process. After they make critical changes to the process, then they can automate it with RPA.
2. Examine your processes through the lens of business process management (BPM).
Business process management is a holistic approach that views an organization as the intersection of people, processes and technology. BPM helps businesses identify areas for improvement, streamline workflows, and achieve better results.
RPA is most effective when you implement it from a BPM perspective, which asks, “What can we do to improve our operations so we meet our goals and enhance our workplace environment for our employees?” A tool in the BPM toolbox, RPA improves processes from a technological perspective to ease your employees’ workload and achieve results more quickly.
Put simply, if you look through a BPM lens, you are not implementing RPA for the sake of touting new automation technology. Instead, you are introducing RPA strategically to optimize processes, assist your people, and improve your entire enterprise. Additionally, the BPM approach fuels a continuous improvement mindset, ensuring your organization keeps refining and enhancing its processes over time to achieve the most advantageous results.
3. Make room for governance.
As you consider more processes for automation, your organization must think about how to implement, prioritize and support these automations effectively. Because you can create and manage RPA bots outside of a traditional IT team (i.e., within an operations group), other teams within your organization need to understand how to use automation effectively.
Automation governance puts easily accessible and understandable steps in place, such as documentation, tracking, and communication practices, so automated processes run smoothly and integrate into your workplace seamlessly.
An automation playbook can provide best practices and guidelines to effectively manage changes, incidents and problems from the inception of automation to its deployment.
4. Develop an organizational change management (OCM) plan to communicate the changes RPA implementation will cause.
To manage the expectations of leadership and the teams impacted by automation, you must establish a well-thought-out, communicated and executed organizational change management plan.
OCM facilitates a smooth transition to change within your organization, implementing strategies for individuals and teams to adapt to new technologies like RPA. Empowering your employees to use transformative technology will improve their workplace experience and ensure the success of RPA implementation within your organization.
5. Assure your employees.
When an organization decides to include robots in the workplace, some employees might worry that RPA will edge them out – their expertise is under-consulted and undervalued to the point of downsizing.
However, in many cases, an RPA initiative can spark greater opportunities for your staff. Implementing robotics can eliminate mundane parts of their jobs, giving employees more time to take on new responsibilities and providing them with the opportunity to learn new skills that will benefit their team or larger organizational initiatives.
Final Thoughts
It is imperative to reflect on your organization’s strengths, goals and challenges so you can evaluate how implementing robotics will affect your workplace. RPA has the potential to transform your organization for the better, so long as you know what needs transforming.
Join enterprise automation experts to learn the benefits of combining complementary RPA and BPM software engines to help your organization save time and money.
