Business process automation (BPA) has gained momentum, especially as pilots result in positive outcomes such as improved customer experience, efficiencies, and cost savings. Stakeholders want to invest more in BPA solutions and scale initial successes across different business and IT functions.
But it’s critical to get it right and not fall into the hype so that the costs don’t outweigh the benefits.
Ultimately, all BPA initiatives should align with a common vision.
Build the right BPA strategy – smarter, not faster
Organizations should adopt a methodical approach to growing their BPA, taking cost, talent availability, and goals into account.
- Recognize the true value of automation. Successful BPA improves more than cost savings and revenue generation. Employee satisfaction, organizational reputation, brand, and better-performing products and services are other sought-after benefits.
- Consider all relevant factors as you build a strategy. Take into account the impact BPA initiatives will have on users, risk and change appetites, customer satisfaction, and business priorities.
- Mature your practice as you scale your BPA technologies. Develop skills, resources, and governance practices as you scale your automation tools. Deploy BPA with quality in mind, then continuously monitor, review, and maintain the automation for success.
- Learn from your initial automations. Maximize what you learn from your minimum viable automations (MVA) and use that knowledge to build and scale your automation implementation across the organization.
Develop Your Value-First Business Process Automation Strategy Research & Tools
Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:
1. Business Process Automation Strategy Deck – A step-by-step document that walks you through how to position business process automation as a key capability and assess the organization’s readiness for its adoption.
This blueprint helps you develop a strategy justify the scaling and maturing of your business process automation (BPA) practices and capabilities to fulfill your business priorities.
- Develop Your Value-First Business Process Automation Strategy – Phases 1-4
2. Business Process Automation Strategy Template – A template to help you build a clear and compelling strategy document for stakeholders.
Document your business process automation strategy in the language your stakeholders understand. Tailor this document to fit your BPA objectives and initiatives.
- Business Process Automation Strategy Template
3. Business Process Automation Maturity Assessment Tool – A tool to help gauge the maturity of your BPA practice.
Evaluate the maturity of the key capabilities of your BPA practice to determine its readiness to support complex and scaled BPA solutions.
- Business Process Automation Maturity Assessment Tool
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Workshop: Develop Your Value-First Business Process Automation Strategy
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 Understand the Context
The Purpose
Understand the business priorities and your stakeholders' needs that are driving your business process automation initiatives while abiding by the risk and change appetite of your organization.
Key Benefits Achieved
Translate business priorities to the context of business process automation.
Arrive at a common definition of business value.
Come to an understanding of the needs, concerns, and problems of BPA stakeholders.
Discover organizational risk and change tolerance and appetite.
Activities
1.1 Set the Business Context
1.2 Understand Your Stakeholder Needs
1.3 Build Your Risk & Change Profile
Outputs
Business problem, priorities, and business value definition
Customer and end-user assessment (e.g. personas, customer journey)
Risk and change profile
2 Define Your BPA Objectives and Opportunities
The Purpose
Set reasonable and achievable expectations for your BPA initiatives and practices, and select the right BPA opportunities to meet these expectations.
Key Benefits Achieved
Align BPA objectives and metrics to your business priorities.
Create guiding principles that support your organization’s and team’s culture.
Define a vision of your target-state BPA practice
Create a list of BPA opportunities that will help build your practice and meet business priorities.
Activities
2.1 Define Your BPA Expectations
2.2 List Your Guiding Principles
2.3 Envision Your BPA Target State
2.4 Build Your Opportunity Backlog
Outputs
BPA problem statement, objectives, and metrics
BPA guiding principles
Desired scaled BPA target state
Prioritized BPA opportunities
3 Assess Your BPA Maturity
The Purpose
Evaluate the current state of your BPA practice and its readiness to support scaled and complex BPA solutions.
Key Benefits Achieved
List key capabilities to implement and optimize to meet the target state of your BPA practice.
Brainstorm solutions to address the gaps in your BPA capabilities.
Activities
3.1 Assess Your BPA Maturity
Outputs
BPA maturity assessment
4 Roadmap Your BPA Initiatives
The Purpose
Identify high-priority key initiatives to support your BPA objectives and goals, and establish the starting point of your BPA strategy.
Key Benefits Achieved
Create an achievable roadmap of BPA initiatives designed to deliver good practices and valuable automations.
Perform a risk assessment of your BPA initiatives and create mitigations for high-priority risks.
Find the starting point in the development of your BPA strategy.
Activities
4.1 Roadmap Your BPA Initiatives
4.2 Assess and Mitigate Your Risks
4.3 Complete Your BPA Strategy
Outputs
List of BPA initiatives and roadmap
BPA initiative risk assessment
Initial draft of your BPA strategy