RPA is designed to reduce the effort involved in repetitive, simple tasks that can be handled by automation. As an enterprise solution, it has been gaining significant momentum recently. India is increasingly plugging the demand supply gap of skilled manpower, while Gartner has named RPA as the fastest-growing market in enterprise software. Enormous amounts of VC funding goes toward the leading RPA companies UiPath & Automation Anywhere as they bring the promise of the future of workplaces. Eager not to miss out, tech giants such as Microsoft and IBM have acquired Softomotive and WDG, respectively.
There is no doubt that RPA is booming all over the world, but is your organization prepared to adopt RPA as a part of digital transformation?
We’ve listed down a stage-wise guide to help your company move to RPA:
Stage 1: Preparing a firm ground for RPA
After you decide to pursue the automation strategy for your organization, it is essential to align the approach with the company’s overall goals. Get your workforce on board from different departments by educating them on RPA. To prepare for the next stage, it is crucial that the business leaders and IT Department work together to identify the processes and potential areas for automation. Based on the processes selected and the type of data to work with, choose a suitable RPA vendor.
Stage 2: Initial Deployment
The next step is to leverage RPA for implementing automation in your organization. With the help of RPA vendors and consultants, draft the scope for Proof Of Concept (POC) and the relevant success metrics. In this stage, it is essential to work on the preparation of data, integrations, and standardizing the file formats. While the pilot is running, document the workflows and the best practices.
Stage 3: Full-fledged Implementation
Once you see that the pilot has provided promising results, it is time for full-fledged RPA deployment. This is an indicator that your company is now ready to implement RPA in complex projects and workflows. Though RPA won’t be the solution for every problem in your organization, it will help you assess the existing processes and evaluate the need for additional Intelligent Automation solutions such as chatbots.
Stage 4: Expansion and Beyond
Take a broad look at your automation strategy and establish best practices for future deployments. You may have to revisit your existing processes to evaluate the deployed RPA and the potential need to re-engineer your business processes. In addition, put in efforts on improving employee training to better complement their work with RPA. Finally, expand RPA to potential business areas with the long-term view covering end-to-end processes.
Since the pandemic, there have been major changes in business operations. The emphasis on the shift to a remote workforce is now more than ever. What does this lead us to? Going forward, automation of business processes is likely to become even more critical for organizations. Bradsol can help you achieve the best results with RPA ensuring that the automation is repeatable and scalable as the processes become more complex in the long run.
