The word “Process” within Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is very vital and utmost care must be taken and we must choose our process wisely. The correct selection of them determines the success or failure of the successful implementation of RPA. The observation is that RPA projects fail to meet return on investment (ROI) expectations only due to a wrong choice in process selection.
With so much hype surrounding RPA, customers or business leaders with limited knowledge of RPA often end up selecting the wrong one as part of their initial RPA implementation. The wrong choice of process does not provide them with the expected ROI, leaving them despondent. Looking at its lower ROI, even other business leaders tend to lose confidence in implementing RPA.
Choosing the process wisely, what does that mean? Let’s first understand your key purpose or objective while implementing RPA and what it is that you, as a business leader, want to achieve.
(a) Are you trying to introduce RPA just to reduce the number of employees?
(b) Do you hope to simplify or automate the process to increase productivity?
(c) Do you expect to automate only the complex process?
Before we can address these questions, let’s be clear on understanding what contributes to the wrong RPA process selection.
(a) If your process logic or business rules keep changing often with increasing regularity, then that process is not a good candidate for RPA process selection. New business rules mean a reconfiguration every time business rules or logic change.
(b) If your process depends on government or regulatory changes that keep changing frequently, then that process will also not deliver the optimal ROI when it comes to RPA implementation.
(c) If your process is low on data or if your selected process is one that is run only once in a given year (for example, annual employee review), then that process does not provide the best ROI results or equals saving man hours.
Before getting into the heart of the process, it would be ideal if we first do an initial process assessment and determine which process is the best fit for you based on the tips above.
To summarize: choose your process wisely for robotic process automation: those processes that are rules-based, stable, data-intensive, and where business rules do not change frequently.