Scale Business Process Automation

Take a value-first approach to automate the processes that matter

Analyst Perspective

Scaling business process automation (BPA) is an organization-wide commitment

Business and IT must work together to ensure the right automations are implemented and BPA is grown and matured in a sustainable way. However, many organizations are not ready to make this commitment. Managing the automation demand backlog, coordinating cross-functional effort and organizational change, and measuring BPA value are some of the leading factors challenging scaling BPA.

Pilot BPA with the intent to scale it. Pilots are safe starting points to establish your foundational governance and management practices and build the necessary relationships and collaborations for you to be successful. These factors will then allow you to explore more sophisticated, complicated, and innovative opportunities to drive new value to your team, department, and organization.

Andrew Kum-Seun
Research Director,
Application Delivery and Management
Info-Tech Research Group

Executive Summary

Your Challenge

• Business process automation (BPA) adoption gained significant momentum as your business leaders see the positive outcomes in your pilots, such as improvements in customer experience, operational efficiencies, and cost optimizations.
• Your stakeholders are ready to increase their investments in more process automation solutions. They want to scale initial successes to other business and IT functions.
• However, it is unclear how BPA can be successfully scaled and what benefits can be achieved from it.

Common Obstacles

The shift from isolated, task-based automations in your pilot to value-oriented and scaled automations brings new challenges and barriers to your organization:

• Little motivation or tolerance to change existing business operations to see the full value of BPA.
• Overinvesting in current BPA technologies to maximize return despite available alternatives that can do the same tasks better.
• BPA teams are ill-equipped to meet the demands and complexities of scaled BPA implementations.

Info-Tech's Approach

• Ground your scaling expectations. Set realistic and achievable goals centered on driving business value to the entire organization by optimizing and automating end-to-end business processes.
• Define your scaling journey. Tailor your scaling approach according to your ability to ease BPA implementation, to broaden BPA adoption, and to loosen BPA constraints.
• Prepare to scale BPA. Cement your BPA management and governance foundations to support BPA scaling using the lessons learned from your pilot implementation.

Info-Tech Insight

Take a value-first approach in your scaling business process automation (BPA) journey. Low-risk, task-oriented automations are good starting points to introduce BPA but constrain the broader returns your organization wants. Business value can only scale when everything and everyone in your processes are working together to streamline the entire value stream rather than the small gains from optimizing small, isolated automations.

Scale Business Process Automation

Take a value-first approach to automate the processes that matter

Pilot Your BPA Capabilities

• Learn the foundation practices to design, deliver, and support BPA.
• Understand the fit and value of BPA.
• Gauge the tolerance for business operational change and system risk.

See Info-Tech's Build a Winning Business Process Automation Playbook blueprint for more information.

Build Your Scaling BPA Vision

Apply Lessons Learned to Scale

1. Ground Your Scaling Expectations
   Set realistic and achievable goals centered on driving business value to the entire organization by optimizing and automating end-to-end business processes.
2. Define Your Scaling Journey
   Tailor your scaling approach according to your ability to ease BPA implementation, to broaden BPA adoption, and to loosen BPA constraints.
3. Prepare to Scale BPA
   Cement your BPA management and governance foundations to support BPA scaling using the lessons learned from your pilot implementation.

Research deliverable

Design and communicate your approach to scale business process automation with Info-Tech's Scale Business Process Automation Readiness Assessment:

• Level set your scaled BPA goals and objectives.
• Discuss and design your scaled BPA journey.
• Identify the gaps and improvements needed to scale your BPA practices and implementation.

Step 1.1

Ground Your Scaling Expectations

Activities

1.1.1 Define Your Scaling Objectives

This step involves the following participants:

• Business Process Owners
• Product Owners
• Application Directors
• Business Architects
• BPA Delivery & Support Teams

Outcomes of this step

Scaling BPA objectives

Organizations want to scale their initial BPA success

Notable Initial Benefits

1. Time Saved: "In the first day of live operations, the robots were saving 51 hours each day or the equivalent of six people working an eight-hour shift." – Brendan MacDonald, Director of Customer Compliance Operations, Ladbrokes (UiPath)
2. Documentation & Knowledge Sharing: "If certain people left, knowledge of some processes would be lost and we realized that we needed a reliable process management system in place." – Peta Kinnane, Acting Audit and Risk Coordinator, Liverpool City Council (Nintex)
3. Improved Service Delivery: "Thanks to this automation, our percentage of triaged and assigned tickets is now 100%. Nothing falls through the cracks. It has also improved the time to assignment. We assign tickets 2x faster than before." – Sebastian Goodwin, Head of Cybersecurity, Nutanix (Workato)

Can We Gain More From Automation?

The Solution

As industries evolve and adopt more tools and technology, their products, services, and business operating models become more complex. Task- and desktop-based automations are often not enough. More sophisticated and scaled automations are needed to simplify and streamline the process from end-to-end of complex operations and align them with organizational goals.

Stakeholders see automation as an opportunity to scale the business

The value of scaling BPA is dependent on the organization's ability to scale with it. In other words, stakeholders should see an increase in business value without a substantial increase in resources and operational costs (e.g., there should be little difference if sending out 10 emails versus 1000).

Examples of how business can be scaled with automation

• Processes triggered by incoming documents or email: in these processes, an incoming document or email (that has semi-structured or unstructured data) is collected by a script or an RPA bot. This document is then processed with a machine learning model that validates it either by rules or ML models. The validated and enriched machine-readable data is then passed on to the next system of record.
• The accounts payable process: this process includes receiving, processing, and paying out invoices from suppliers that provided goods or services to the company. While manual processing can be expensive, take too much time, and lead to errors, businesses can automate this process with machine learning and document extraction technologies like optical characters recognition (OCR), which converts texts containing images into characters that can be readable by computers to edit, compute, and analyze.
• Order management: these processes include retrieving email and relevant attachments, extracting information that tells the business what its customers want, updating internal systems with newly placed orders or modifications, or taking necessary actions related to customer queries.
• Enhance customer experience: [BPA tools] can help teams develop and distribute customer loyalty offers faster while also optimizing these offers with customer insights. Now, enterprises can more easily guarantee they are delivering the relevant solutions their clients are demanding.

Source: Stefanini Group

Scaling BPA has its challenges

Perceived Lack of Opportunities

Pilot BPA implementations often involve the processes that are straightforward to automate or are already shortlisted to optimize. However, these low-hanging fruits will run out. Discovering new BPA opportunities can be challenged for a variety of reasons, such as:

• Lack of documentation and knowledge
• Low user participation or drive to change
• BPA technology limitations and constraints

Perceived Lack of Opportunities

BPA is not a cheap investment. A single RPA bot, for example, can cost between $5,000 to $15,000. This cost does not include the added cost for training, renewal fees, infrastructure set up and other variable and reoccurring costs that often come with RPA delivery and support (Blueprint). This reality can motivate BPA owners to favor existing technologies over other cheaper and more effective alternatives in an attempt boost their return on investment.

Ill-Equipped Support Teams

Good technical skills and tools, and the right mindset are critical to ensure BPA capabilities are deployed effectively. Low-code no-code (LCNC) can help but success isn't guaranteed. Lack of experience with low-code platforms is the biggest obstacle in low-code adoption according to 60% of respondents (Creatio). The learning curve has led some organizations to hire contractors to onboard BPA teams, hire new employees, or dedicate significant funding and resources to upskill internal resources.

Shift your objectives from task-based efficiencies to value-driven capabilities

Gauge the success of your scaled BPA

BPA Practice Effectiveness

Key Question: Are stakeholders satisfied with how the BPA practice is meeting their automation needs?

Examples of Metrics:

• User satisfaction
• Automation request turnaround time
• Throughput of BPA team

Automation Solution Quality

Key Question: How do your automation solutions perform and meet your quality standards?

Examples of Metrics:

• Licensing and operational costs
• Service level agreement and uptime/downtime
• Number of defects

Business Value Delivery

Key Question: How has automation improved the value your employees, teams, and the organization delivers?

Examples of Metrics:
Increase in revenue generation
Reduction in operational costs
Expansion of business capabilities with minimal increases in costs and risks

1.1.1 Define your scaling objectives

5 minutes

1. Complete the following fields to build your scaled business process automation canvas:
   1. Problem that scaling BPA is intending to solve
   2. Your vision for scaling BPA
   3. Stakeholders
   4. Scaled BPA business and IT objectives and metrics
   5. Business capabilities, processes, and application systems involved
   6. Notable constraints, roadblocks, and challenges to your scaled BPA success
2. Document your findings and discussions in Info-Tech's Scale Business Process Automation Readiness Assessment.

Output

Scaled BPA value canvas

Participants

• Business Process Owners
• Product Owners
• Application Directors
• Business Architects
• BPA Delivery & Support Teams

Record the results in the 2. Value Canvas Tab in the Scale Business Process Automation Readiness Assessment.

1.1.1 cont'd

Scaled BPA Value Canvas Template:

Align your objectives to your application portfolio strategy

Why is an application portfolio strategy important for BPA?

• All business process optimizations are designed, delivered, and managed to support a consistent interpretation of the business and IT vision and goals.
• Clear understanding of the sprawl, criticality, and risks of automation solutions and applications to business capabilities.
• BPA initiatives are planned, prioritized, and coordinated alongside modernization, upgrades, and other changes to the application portfolio.
• Resources, skills, and capacities are strategically allocated to meet BPA demand considering other commitments in the backlog and roadmap.
• BPA expectations and practices uphold the persona, values, and principles of the application team.

What is an application portfolio strategy?

An application portfolio strategy details the direction, activities, and tactics to deliver on the promise of your application portfolio. It often includes:

• Portfolio vision and goals
• Application, automation, and process portfolio
• Values and principles
• Portfolio health
• Risks and constraints
• Strategic roadmap

See our Application Portfolio Management Foundations blueprint for more information.

Leverage your BPA champions to drive change and support scaling initiatives

Expected Outcome From Your Pilot: Your pilot would have recognized the roles that know how to effectively apply good BPA practices (e.g., process analysis and optimization) and are familiar with the BPA toolset. These individuals are prime candidates who can standardize your Build a Winning Business Process Automation Playbook, upskill interested teams, and build relationships among those involved in the delivery and use of BPA.

Step 1.2

Define Your Scaling Journey

Activities

1.2.1 Discuss Your BPA Opportunities
1.2.2 Lay Out Your Scaling BPA Journey

Scale Business Process Automation

This step involves the following participants:

• Business Process Owners
• Product Owners
• Application Directors
• Business Architects
• BPA Delivery & Support Teams

Outcomes of this step

• List of scaling BPA opportunities
• Tailored scaling journey

Maintain a healthy demand pipeline

A successful scaled BPA practice requires a continuous demand for BPA capabilities and the delivery of minimum viable automations (MVA) held together by a broader strategic roadmap.

An MVA focuses on a single and small process use case, involves minimal possible effort to improve, and is designed to satisfy a specific user group. Its purpose is to maximize learning and value and inform the further scaling of the BPA technology, approach, or practice.

See our Build a Winning Business Process Automation Playbook blueprint for more information.

Investigate how BPA trends can drive more value for the organization

• Event-Driven Automation
  Process is triggered by a schedule, system output, scenario, or user (e.g., voice-activated, time-sensitive, system condition)
• Low- & No-Code Automation build and management are completed through an easy-to-learn scripting language and/or a GUI.
• Intelligent Document Processing
  Transform documents for better analysis, processing and handling (e.g., optical character recognition) by a tool or system.
• End-to-End Process Automation & Transparency
  Linking cross-functional processes to enable automation of the entire value stream with seamless handoffs or triggers.
• Orchestration of Different BPA Technologies
  Integrating and sequencing the execution of multiple automation solutions through a single console.
• Cognitive Automation
  AI and other intelligent technologies automate information-intensive processes, including semi and unstructured data and human thinking simulation.
• Intelligent Internet-of-Things
  Connecting process automation technologies to physical environments with sensors and other interaction devices (e.g., computer vision).
• Ethical Design
  Optimizing processes that align to the moral value, principles, and beliefs of the organization (e.g., respects data privacy, resists manipulative patterns).
• User Profiling & Tailored Experiences
  Customizing process outputs and user experience with user-defined configurations or system and user activity monitoring.
• Process Mining & Discovery
  Gleaning optimization opportunities by analyzing system activities (mining) or monitoring user interactions with applications (discovery).

1.2.1 Discuss your BPA opportunities

5 minutes

1. Review the goals and objectives of your initiative and the expectations you want to gain from scaling BPA.
2. Discuss how BPA trends can be leveraged in your organization.
3. List high priority scaling BPA opportunities.

Output

• Scaled BPA opportunities

Participants

• Business Process Owners
• Product Owners
• Application Directors
• Business Architects
• BPA Delivery & Support Teams

Create your recipe for success

Your scaling BPA recipe (approach) can involve multiple different flavors of various quantities to fit the needs and constraints of your organization and workers.

What and how many ingredients you need is dependent on three key questions:

1. How can we ease BPA implementation?
2. How can we broaden the BPA scope?
3. How can we loosen constraints?

Personalize Scaling BPA To Your Taste

• Extend BPA Across Business Units (Horizontal)
• Integrate BPA Across Your Application Architecture (Vertical)
• Embed AI/ML Into Your Automation Technologies
• Empower Users With Business-Managed Automations
• Combine Multiple Technologies for End-to-End Automation
• Increase the Volume and Velocity of Automation
• Automate Cognitive Processes and Making Variable Decisions

Answer these questions in the definition of your scaling BPA journey

Seeing the full value of your scaling approach is dependent on your ability to support BPA adoption across the organization

How can we ease BPA implementation?

• Good governance practices (e.g., role definitions, delivery and management processes, technology standards).
• Support for innovation and experimentation.
• Interoperable and plug-and-play architecture.
• Dedicated technology management and support, including resources, documents, templates and shells.
• Accessible and easy-to-understand knowledge and document repository.

How can we broaden BPA scope?

• Provide a unified experience across processes, fragmented technologies, and siloed business functions.
• Improve intellectually intensive activities, challenging decision making and complex processes with more valuable insights and information using BPA.
• Proactively react to business and technology environments and operational changes and interact with customers with unattended automation.
• Infuse BPA technologies into your product and service to expand their functions, output quality, and reliability.

How can we loosen constraints?

• Processes are automated without the need for structured data and optimized processes, and there is no need to work around or avoid legacy applications.
• Workers are empowered to develop and maintain their own automations.
• Coaching, mentoring, training, and onboarding capabilities.
• Accessibility and adoption of underutilized applications are improved with BPA.
• BPA is used to overcome the limitations or the inefficiencies of other BPA technologies.

1.2.2 Lay out your scaling BPA journey

5 minutes

1. Review the goals and objectives of your initiative, the expectations you want to gain from scaling BPA, and the various scaling BPA opportunities.
2. Discuss the different scaling BPA flavors (patterns) and how each flavor is applicable to your situation. Ask yourself these key questions:
   1. How can we ease BPA implementation?
   2. How can we broaden the BPA scope?
   3. How can we loosen constraints?
3. Design the broad steps of your scaling BPA journey. See the following slide for an example.
4. Document your findings and discussions in Info-Tech's Scale Business Process Automation Readiness Assessment.

Record the results in the 3. Scaled BPA Journey Tab in the Scale Business Process Automation Readiness Assessment.

Output

• Scaled BPA journey

Participants

• Business Process Owners
• Product Owners
• Application Directors
• Business Architects
• BPA Delivery & Support Teams

1.2.2 cont'd

	Continuous business process optimization and automation
	Scope of Info-Tech's Build Your Business Process Automation Playbook blueprint

Example:

• Scale by Adding More Automation
• Build Digital Processes With Seamless Automation
• Reimagine IT's Role
• Introduce Adaptive Process Governance
• Govern & Manage an Automation Platform
• Implement a Business Automation CoE

Continuously review and realign expectations

Optimizing your scaled BPA practices and applying continuous improvements starts with monitoring the process after implementation.

Purpose of Monitoring

1. Diligent monitoring confirms your scaled BPA implementation is performing as desired and meeting initial expectations.
2. Holding reviews of your BPA practice and implementations helps assess the impact of marketplace and business operations changes and allows the organization to stay on top of trends and risks.

Metrics

Metrics are an important aspect of monitoring and sustaining the scaled practice. The metrics will help determine success and find areas where adjustments may be needed.

Hold retrospectives to identify any practice issues to be resolved or opportunities to undertake

The retrospective gives your organization the opportunity to review themselves and brainstorm solutions and a plan for improvements to be actioned. This session is reoccurring, typically, after key milestones. While it is important to allow all participants the opportunity to voice their opinions, feelings, and experiences, retrospectives must be positive, productive, and time boxed.

Step 1.3

Prepare to Scale BPA

Activities

1.3.1 Assess Your Readiness to Scale BPA

This step involves the following participants:

• Business Process Owners
• Product Owners
• Application Directors
• Business Architects
• BPA Delivery & Support Teams

Outcomes of this step

• Scale BPA readiness assessment

Prepare to scale by learning from your pilot implementations

"While most organizations are advised to start with automating the 'low hanging fruit' first, the truth is that it can create traps that will impede your ability to achieve RPA at scale. In fact, scaling RPA into the organizational structure is fundamentally different from implementing a conventional software product or other process automation."
– Blueprint

What should be the takeaways from your pilot?

Degree of Required BPA Support

• Practices needed to address the organization's tolerance to business process changes and automation adoption.
• Resources, budget and skills needed to configure and orchestrate automation technologies to existing business applications and systems.

Technology Integration & Compatibility

• The BPA technology and application system's flexibility to be enhanced, modified, and removed.
• Adherence to data and system quality standards (e.g., security, availability) across all tools and technologies.

Good Practices Toolkit

• A list of tactics, techniques, templates, and examples to assist teams assessing and optimizing business processes and applying BPA solutions in your organization's context.
• Strategies to navigate common blockers, challenges, and risks.

Controls & Measures

• Defined guardrails aligned to your organization's policies and risk tolerance
• Key metrics are gathered to gauge the value and performance of your processes and automations for enhancements and further scaling.

Decide how to architect and govern your BPA solutions

Centralized

A single body and platform to coordinate, execute, and manage all automation solutions.

Distributed

Automation solutions are locally delivered and managed whether that is per business unit, type of technology, or vendor. Some collaboration and integration can occur among solutions but might be done without a holistic strategy or approach.

Hybrid

Automation solutions are locally delivered and managed and executed for isolated use cases. Broader and complex automations are centrally orchestrated and administered.

Be prepared to address the risks with scaling BPA

"Companies tend to underestimate the complexity of their business processes – and bots will frequently malfunction without an RPA design team that knows how to anticipate and prepare for most process exceptions. Unresolved process exceptions rank among the biggest RPA challenges, prompting frustrated users to revert to manual work."
– Eduardo Diquez, Auxis, 2020

Scenarios

• Handling Failures of Dependent Systems
• Handling Data Corruption & Quality Issues
• Alignment to Regulatory & Industry Standards
• Addressing Changes & Regressions to Business Processes
• "Run Away" & Hijacked Automations
• Unauthorized Access to Sensitive Information

Recognize the costs to support your scaled BPA environment

Cost Factors

Automation Operations
How will chaining multiple BPA technologies together impact your operating budget? Is there a limit on the number of active automations you can have at a single time?

User Licenses
How many users require access to the designer, orchestrator, and other functions of the BPA solution? Do they also require access to dependent applications, services, and databases?

System Enhancements
Are application and system upgrades and modernizations needed to support BPA? Is your infrastructure, data, and security controls capable of handling BPA demand?

Supporting Resources
Are dedicated resources needed to support, govern, and manage BPA across business and IT functions? Are internal resources or third-party providers preferred?

Training & Onboarding
Are end users and supporting resources trained to deliver, support, and/or use BPA? How will training and onboarding be facilitated: internally or via third party providers?

Create a cross-functional and supportive body to lead the scaling of BPA

Your supportive body is a cross-functional group of individuals promoting collaboration and good BPA practices. It enables an organization to extract the full benefits from critical systems, guides the growth and evolution of strategic BPA implementations, and provides critical expertise to those that need it. A supportive body distinctly caters to optimizing and strengthening BPA governance, management, and operational practices for a single technology or business function or broadly across the entire organization encompassing all BPA capabilities.

What a support body is not:

• A Temporary Measure
• Exclusive to Large Organizations
• A Project Management Office
• A Physical Office
• A Quick Fix

See our Maximize the Benefits from Enterprise Applications With a Center of Excellence blueprint for more information.

What are my options?

Center of Excellence (CoE)
AND
Community of Practice (CoP)

CoEs and CoPs provide critical functions

Shift your principles as you scale BPA

As BPA scales, users and teams must not only think of how a BPA solution operates at a personal and technical level or what goals it is trying to achieve, but why it is worth doing and how the outcomes of the automated process will impact the organization's reputation, morality, and public perception.

"I think you're going to see a lot of corporations thinking about the corporate responsibility of [organizational change from automation], because studies show that consumers want and will only do business with socially responsible companies."

– Todd Lohr

Source: Appian, 2018.

Assess your readiness to scale BPA

Vision & Objectives
Clear direction and goals of the business process automation practice.

Governance
Defined BPA roles and responsibilities, processes, and technology controls.

Skills & Competencies
The capabilities users and support roles must have to be successful with BPA.

Business Process Management & Optimization
The tactics to document, analyze, optimize, and monitor business processes.

Business Process Automation Delivery
The tactics to review the fit of automation solutions and deliver and support according to end user needs and preferences.

Business Process Automation Platform
The capabilities to manage BPA platforms and ensure it supports the growing needs of the business.

1.3.1 Assess your readiness to scale BPA

5 minutes

1. Review your scaling BPA journey and selected patterns.
2. Conduct a readiness assessment using the 4. Readiness Assessment tab in Info-Tech's Scale Business Process Automation Readiness Assessment.
3. Brainstorm solutions to improve the capability or address the gaps found in this assessment.

Output

• Scaled BPA readiness assessment

Participants

• Business Process Owners
• Product Owners
• Application Directors
• Business Architects
• BPA Delivery & Support Teams

Record the results in the 4. Readiness Assessment tab in Info-Tech's Scale Business Process Automation Readiness Assessment.

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

DIY Toolkit

“Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful.”

Guided Implementation

“Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track.”

Workshop

“We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place.”

Consulting

“Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project.”

Diagnostics and consistent frameworks used throughout all four options

Related Info-Tech Research

• Build a Winning Business Process Automation Playbook
  Optimize and automate your business processes with a user-centric approach.
• Embrace Business Managed Applications
  Empower the business to implement their own applications with a trusted business-IT relationship.
• Application Portfolio Management Foundations
  Ensure your application portfolio delivers the best possible return on investment.
• Maximize the Benefits from Enterprise Applications with a Center of Excellence
  Optimize your organization's enterprise application capabilities with a refined and scalable methodology.
• Create an Architecture for AI
  Build your target state architecture from predefined best-practice building blocks.
• Deliver on Your Digital Product Vision
  Build a product vision your organization can take from strategy through execution.
• Enhance Your Solution Architecture Practices
  Ensure your software systems solution is architected to reflect stakeholders' short- and long-term needs.
• Apply Design Thinking to Build Empathy With the Business
  Use design thinking and journey mapping to make IT the business' go-to problem solver.

Bibliography

Alston, Roland. "With the Rise of Intelligent Automation, Ethics Matter Now More than Ever." Appian, 4 Sept. 2018. Web.
"Challenges of Achieving RPA at Scale." Blueprint, N.d. Web.
Dilmegani, Cem. "RPA Benefits: 20 Ways Bots Improve Businesses in 2023," AI Multiple, 9 Jan 2023. Web.
Diquez, Eduardo. "Struggling To Scale RPA? Discover The Secret to Success." Auxis, 30 Sept. 2020. Web.
"How much does Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Really Cost?" Blueprint, 14 Sept. 2021. Web.
"Liverpool City Council improves document process with Nintex." Nintex, n.d. Web.
"The State of Low-Code/No-Code." Creatio, 2021. Web.
"Using automation to enhance security and increase IT NPS to 90+ at Nutanix." Workato, n.d. Web.
"What Is Hyperautomation? A Complete Guide To One Of Gartner's Top Tech Trends." Stefanini Group, 26 Mar. 2021. Web.