- Your organization has many business processes that rely on manual, routine, and repetitive data collection and processing work. These processes need to be automated to meet strategic priorities.
- Your stakeholders decided to invest in robotic process automation (RPA). They are ready to begin the planning and delivery of their first RPA bot.
- However, your organization lacks the critical foundations involved in successful RPA delivery, such as analysis of the suitability of candidate processes, business and IT collaboration, and product ownership.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
- Manage your business and IT debt before you adopt RPA. RPA doubles down on your process inefficiencies, lack of operations and architectural standardization, and unenforced quality standards. RPA solutions will be fragile and prone to failure if debt is not managed.
- Adopt BizDevOps. RPA will not be successful if your lines-of-business (LOBs) and IT are not working together. IT must empathize with how LOBs operate and proactively support the underlying operational systems. LOBs must be accountable for all products leveraging RPA and be able to rationalize RPA’s technical feasibility.
- Start with RPA 1.0. Don’t get caught up in the AI and machine learning (RPA 2.0) hype. Evaluate the acceptance and value of RPA 1.0 to establish a sustainable and collaborative foundation for its delivery and management. Then use the lessons learned to prepare for future RPA 2.0 adoption. In many cases, RPA 1.0 is good enough.
Impact and Result
- Establish the right expectations. Gain a grounded understanding of RPA value and limitations in your context. Discuss current IT and business operations challenges to determine if they will impact RPA success.
- Build your RPA governance. Clarify the roles, processes, and tools needed to support RPA delivery and management through IT and business collaboration.
- Evaluate the fit of RPA. Obtain a thorough view of the business and technical complexities of your candidate processes. Indicate where and how RPA is expected to generate the most return.
Build Your First RPA Bot Research & Tools
Start here – read the Executive Brief
Read our concise Executive Brief to find out how you should build your first RPA bot, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:
- Build Your First RPA Bot – Phases 1-3
- RPA Pilot Playbook Template
1. Define your RPA governance
Set the expectations of your first RPA bot. Define the guiding principles, ethics, and delivery capabilities that will govern RPA delivery and support.
- Build Your First RPA Bot – Phase 1: Define Your RPA Governance
2. Deliver and manage your bots
Validate the fit of your candidate business processes for RPA and ensure the support of your operational system. Shortlist the features of your desired RPA vendor. Modernize your delivery process to accommodate RPA.
- Build Your First RPA Bot – Phase 2: Deliver and Manage Your Bots
3. Roadmap your RPA adoption
Build a roadmap of initiatives to implement your first bot and build the foundations of your RPA practice.
- Build Your First RPA Bot – Phase 3: Roadmap Your RPA Adoption
Workshop: Build Your First RPA Bot
Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.
1 Define Your RPA Governance
The Purpose
State the success criteria of your RPA adoption through defined objectives and metrics.
Define your RPA guiding principles and ethics.
Build the RPA capabilities that will support the delivery and management of your bots.
Key Benefits Achieved
Grounded stakeholder expectations
RPA guiding principles
RPA capabilities and the key roles to support RPA delivery and management
Activities
1.1 State Your RPA Objectives.
1.2 Define Your RPA Principles
1.3 Develop Your RPA Capabilities
Outputs
RPA objectives and metrics
RPA guiding principles and ethics
RPA and product ownership, RPA capabilities, RPA role definitions
2 Deliver and Manage Your Bots
The Purpose
Evaluate the fit of your candidate business processes for automation.
Define the operational platform to support your RPA solution.
Shortlist the desired RPA vendor features.
Optimize your product delivery process to support RPA.
Key Benefits Achieved
Verifies the decision to implement RPA for the candidate business process
The system changes and modifications needed to support RPA
Prioritized list of RPA vendor features
Target state RPA delivery process
Activities
2.1 Prepare Your RPA Platform
2.2 Select Your RPA Vendor
2.3 Deliver and Manage Your Bots
Outputs
Assessment of candidate business processes and supporting operational platform
List of desired RPA vendor features
Optimized delivery process
3 Roadmap Your RPA Adoption
The Purpose
Build your roadmap to implement your first RPA bot and build the foundations of your RPA practice.
Key Benefits Achieved
Implementation initiatives
RPA adoption roadmap
Activities
3.1 Roadmap Your RPA Adoption
Outputs
RPA adoption roadmap