Automation

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a relatively new technology that has already firmly claimed its spot in improving the productivity of organizations alongside tried and true methodologies such as lean and six sigma. We’ve put together a comprehensive list of  22 RPA benefits based on our many years of experience implementing RPA solutions with Financial Services, Insurance, Telecommunications and Healthcare clients.

1. Decreased costs.  Cost savings of approximately 80-90% can be achieved when a business process performed by an FTE is replaced by a software robot.

2. Freeing up staff for higher value tasks. Automation of repetitive and time-consuming processes frees up your staff to make a more value-add contribution.  For example, when assessing an insurance claim more time can be spent in the assessment as opposed to populating the same data into 5 various systems.

3. Increased employee engagement. When staff can focus on high-value tasks they often feel more invested in the work they are completing. When implementing RPA projects, we often see staff engaging in repetitive activities e.g. copying data between 10 different systems while completing a single customer request, with RPA they can serve an additional 3 clients instead.

4. Reduced operational risk. RPA reduces the rate of errors because robots make less mistakes. Avoiding purely human mistakes, such as those made while tired, or by deviating from the process, means a lower level of operational risk.

5. Reduced output variability. Robots are great at duplicating tasks consistently with little to no distinguishable variability. It ensures that similar tasks are handled in the same way e.g. underwriting for insurance policies is consistent across the same risk groups.

6. Reduced paper use/waste. RPA forces digitization as it requires that companies have the data and files being manipulated by software robots in a digital form. Work that in the past may have been done partly or in full on paper, by an FTE, can now be purely electronic.

7. Driving process improvement. In an automation project you often first analyze and then simplify (where possible) the processes to be automated, creating more manageable processes (for both people and machines). For example, if you have 10 different ways to set up a new client in your system, it would make sense to streamline this process first and then automate it.

8. Increased output. Automation allows for work to be done 24/7/365 without people fatigue, or quality variance. Often, customers want to interact with service providers outside of a 9-5 timeframe—on evenings and weekends—automation allows you to offer this level of service.

9. Higher speed and throughput. Customers receive expedited service as machines are able to process requests in real time. e.g. credit checks, etc.

10. Improved customer experience. By deploying RPA you free up expensive and high-value resources, FTEs, from more menial and repetitive tasks and put them back on the front line assisting your customers.

11. Improved internal service levels. With RPA things like internal reports can be delivered faster and without mistakes, new employees can be set-up very quickly, and even IT issues can be enormously accelerated.

12. Defined governance structures. RPA forces companies to define clear governance structures around IT applications by forcing organizations to agree on who owns each application. Leading to a clearer definition of access rights for each application, since robots, like humans, will need to use the same access.

13. RPA does not require substituting existing IT systems.  An RPA virtual workforce uses all the same systems your FTEs use. This is one of greatest advantages of RPA in comparison to other automation solutions. In the past, Business Process Management solutions and workflow management tools had to be integrated with each application they interacted with. RPA simply uses the existing systems in the way your FTEs would.

14. RPA is Scaleable. Being able to easily scale up or down your operations as needed ensures that companies can make adjustments based on seasonality. In the insurance sector, for example, a virtual workforce can be ramped up in order to process snow/hail claims in the winter, flooding in the summer, etc.

15. Virtual workforces are highly secure. Managing IT security for RPA robots is very simple as they do not change roles, leave the company, or retire. They also don’t hack your data.

16. Increased expertise in core domains. By automating simple tasks, your company can develop increased expertise in your core domains, such as developing more sophisticated fraud analysis, and/or creating more accurate underwriting algorithms.

17.  RPA eliminates customer pain points. A successfully implemented virtual workforce can enhance your customer’s experience and eliminate common customer pain points. For example, traditionally when processing a loan the customer has to fill out several forms, submit required documents. These are then sent for processing, review and approvals. The overall process can take several weeks, with multiple human touch-points, after which the customer gets a feedback on the status of their loan application. With RPA, a robot can take over the complete process, reducing turnaround time to a few days or less.

18. Impact is delivered quickly. From the moment when robots are in place – a matter of weeks – organizations start seeing benefits. The Burnie Group’s typical implementation timeline for RPA projects is approximately 8 weeks.

19. Improved capacity for SLA analysis. RPA solutions allow management to know the progress of SLAs in real time. Dashboards tracking the output of your virtual workforce address a frequent problem of operations and back-office managers – understanding where his/her team stands and how volumes are evolving.

20. High-quality processes and output. Similar to a recipe being created by a five-star cook, a robot’s decision making logic is designed by your best SMEs, ensuring high-quality output. Your SME transfer knowledge of best practices with the RPA team ensuring your virtual workforce is performing at the highest standard.

21. Better record keeping. Robots always document what they’ve done, not only leaving a clear audit and control track, but also allowing for easy recovery after unexpected shutdowns.

22. Being an innovator. RPA is a cutting edge technology that is dramatically changing back-office operations enabling greater innovation by freeing up human labour to focus on idea-generating.

While RPA has many benefits, there continues to be a clear need for humans in the workforce. The question is no longer which jobs will be replaced, but rather, what work will be redefined, and how? In the future, most processes will consist of a mix of human and machine labour. Nothing will be fully automated. Even at the most highly automated production plant you will see there are still humans working.

Automation allows for traditional jobs to become more fluid, ensuring more effective human labour. With freedom from high-volume, low complexity administrative work, humans can continue to drive and innovate in areas such as customer service, expertise-based tasks, the development of new products, etc.

This article is just a glance into the world of RPA topics – should you be interested in exploring RPA opportunities in your industries or want to understand how to apply or deploy RPA in your organization, please contact us for a free no-obligation discussion. We look forward to hearing from you.

Sources:

image: https://teachingphysics.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/tate-error-t-shirt-ben-newman.gif

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a relatively new technology that allows companies to drive significant efficiencies by enabling software robots to execute repetitive and often clerical activities normally performed by humans.

Efficiency is not the only benefit of RPA – it also allows for increased process quality, and eliminates errors that may result from manual work.

Furthermore, the use of RPA technology typically results in increased customer satisfaction, both internally and externally. For example, loan application processing times can be reduced from days to hours via automation, resulting in happier customers. And staff, who are often wary at the beginning of an RPA implementation, become supportive of the technology once it relieves them from dull, repetitive work, and allows them to focus on more interesting and challenging projects.

The path to reaping the benefits of RPA, however, can be riddled with many obstacles. If you are considering introducing RPA to your organization, these are seven common mistakes to avoid.

Mistake #1: Not engaging senior leadership

Every successful project begins with strong leadership. RPA initiatives are no exception, and we recommend securing strong leadership from both the business and IT sides of your organization.

Business leaders will champion the effort, build a business case, and ensure that necessary resources are available (e.g. investments, subject matter experts, etc.)

IT leaders must be involved early on because RPA relies both on IT infrastructure (e.g. servers) and access to various IT applications. IT leaders can help to quickly resolve any unexpected challenges along the way, such as issues with IT security policies, or IT infrastructure upgrades, etc.

Want additional support for your initiative? Engage with the Audit and Risk leaders within your organization. They will quickly grasp all the benefits that RPA offers them, such as auditable processes, reduction in operational risk (due to reduction in manual work), and improved security.

Mistake #2: Not choosing the right processes

It is easy to get into the trap of automating small and simple tasks that nobody wants to touch. The real benefits of RPA, however, lie in the end-to-end automation of processes that tie up significant human resources.

Examples of such processes are: credit decisions in banking, underwriting decisions in insurance, processing of account changes, or setting up new customers across various industries.

In order to generate tangible benefits from your RPA project, you need to think big. Ask yourself if the impact of your automation project can be measured through one of these KPIs:

• Revenue generation
• Cost reduction/efficiency increases
• Quality improvements
• Positive impact on audit, risk, and compliance

As an example, a global bank used RPA to reduce its loan processing times from several weeks to two hours, resulting in dramatic efficiency improvements and significant customer satisfaction uplifts.

Mistake #3: Automating broken processes

Though RPA can, in most cases, automate existing processes, it is recommended that you look critically at processes before automating them and streamline where possible. This results in simpler, cleaner decision logic for RPA bots, shorter RPA testing cycles and easier maintenance of automation solutions.

For example, if you plan to automate an onboarding process for new customers, but there are currently 20 different ways your organization can onboard them, it makes sense to determine which is the most effective and reliable process, and then automating that process.

Mistake #4: Not investing enough time to test your bots

RPA bots can handle various tasks so long as they are programmed to manage them. Taking the time to define the different parameters involved in each process and programming your robots to handle each of them will save you a lot of time in the future. The idea being that your expert staff should only have to deal with exceptional cases that your robots cannot process. In order to achieve this, you need to rely on extensive testing to ensure that the robots know their part of the work.

Don’t forget to involve your SMEs when defining these testing scenarios. It is an iterative approach, and there are sure to be scenarios that nobody in your organization anticipated in the development phase, so be sure to allow sufficient time for testing.

Mistake #5: Not showing benefits early on

If there is one thing that will motivate your leadership to continue investing in RPA, it is seeing benefits early on.

Our RPA deployment experience shows that 8-12 weeks is enough time to automate a select group of processes and push them live, allowing you to show tangible benefits within a 3-month period.

A quick demonstration of benefits will strengthen the position of the RPA sponsor in the organization, and encourage other business areas to get involved in your automation transformation. They will be eager to leverage this new technology to drive benefits in their areas.

If, however, you fail to demonstrate the benefits quickly, the position of the RPA sponsor will be weakened over time.

Mistake #6: Failing to communicate changes to your staff

The introduction of RPA in most organizations can also have a significant impact on people, often staff is unsure if, or how, they will be impacted by this initiative which leads to great uncertainty. When the implication of an RPA implementation to human resources is not anticipated as part of an automation project, it can lead to increased turnover, as staff, motivated by fear of losing their jobs, start seeking alternative opportunities.

It is crucial that the introduction of RPA is combined with carefully drafted ongoing communication to staff ensuring they are aware of how they will be affected. This communication can vary from organization to organization, but we recommend something along the lines of the following narrative:

“RPA is not about reducing the number of people. Our objective is to focus our staff on important, client-facing activities, boosting client satisfaction, and eliminating manual, non-value adding activities.”

Or

“Our organization has aggressive growth plans and we need to complement our staff with automation to ensure we are able to cope with our growing volume of clients.”

Mistake #7: Failing to scale up

Many organizations find it easy to deploy the first RPA robot, but are less successful in scaling up their efforts beyond that.

As discussed earlier, the true benefits of an RPA implementation can be reaped only if you automate the right set of processes. In addition, the scaling up of your RPA means the creation of an RPA Centre of Excellence (CoE) that will handle numerous tasks and capabilities, such as:

• Bundling RPA expertise in the organization (e.g. own a library of RPA objects)
• Provide training for new RPA users (e.g. other business areas)
• Oversee RPA technology infrastructure
• Own relationship with RPA provider and 3^rd party RPA experts
• Own methodology for choosing candidate processes for RPA

Putting an RPA CoE in place will ensure that your organization is always self-developing and that it will be able to provide viable solutions for growing RPA benefits.

We hope these insights will allow you to avoid some of these more common mistakes when introducing RPA in your organization.

If you are considering bringing RPA into your organization, work with a partner who will ensure you to keep your project efficient and on track, in addition to helping you build your internal capabilities as required.

As a pioneer in North American RPA, The Burnie Group will help you develop the right strategy, identify the right programs, and implement your first RPA processes. Ensuring that your Robotic Process Automation can grow quickly, become a core capability, and help you to differentiate your organization from your competitors.

Sources:

image: https://teachingphysics.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/tate-error-t-shirt-ben-newman.gif