Across all industries, companies are facing intense pressure to increase their labor productivity, reduce their costs, and strengthen their customer experience. In order to achieve these goals, many organizations are turning to robotic process automation (RPA). Not surprisingly, as they begin their automation journey many companies have found common RPA obstacles. Challenges faced by companies during RPA implementation include ‘automation anxiety’, fragmented results, difficulty achieving global consistency, coping with the fast pace of transformation, and defining new responsibilities and accountabilities. A key to RPA success is finding ways to overcome these challenges. With experienced RPA resources and a proven approach those common challenges can be addressed in the following five steps:
1. Project preparation
The early stage of a RPA project is a critical time. Key actions at this stage include: designating ample time for setting expectations, developing a project timeline, and determining all of the participants’ roles and responsibilities. Through detailed preparation, you can address potential risks, barriers, and concerns at the onset of the project and avoid automation anxiety.
2. Use case identification and automation potential
Identify and prioritize potential use cases for automation. Ultimately, the goal is to select the use case candidate with the largest expected business impact. This approach secures buy-in from stakeholders and enables organizations to better understand the parameters for automatable processes.
3. Business case development
One way to manage the risk associated with fast implementations is to focus on the end results. By focusing a business case and ROI model on the selected RPA process, you gain a stronger understanding of the expected return at the end of the implementation. The business case links RPA to the company’s strategy while the ROI model provides reassurance that the investment will produce desirable results.
4. RPA preparation
A key to enabling successful RPA solutions is preparation. Identify and record both the automation and efficiency opportunities in the selected process. This ensures that the all stakeholders and project resources are aligned on the future state workflow. In addition, the creation of cost saving reports and capacity release information provides companies the tools and knowledge for smooth implementations.
