Look around you, Robotic Process Automation isn’t just some far-fetched concept of the future. Digital leaders are adopting RPA to streamline operations and eliminate unnecessary inefficiencies. Others are combining RPA, business process management and artificial intelligence to improve their customer’s experience and grow faster.
There are many articles that talk about the numerous benefits that come from successful automation. What’s frequently not mentioned is who exactly can benefit and what challenges they face. Although these may pose questions of concern, RPA can be a relatively smooth transition that correlates into saved time and money with the proper information, preparation, and control.
The Fast Facts
Companies that have repetitive tasks that are also high frequency can expect to see a 50-70% cost savings with RPA successfully in place. However, right now it is expected that businesses are missing out on 50% of automation opportunities. This means that there are large opportunities with the use of RPA especially when the right processes are selected to automate.
Researchers at Hadoop estimate that the potential savings that companies will experience with RPA by 2025 is between $5 trillion to $7 trillion. For every $10,000 invested in RPA, you typically need to invest another $100,000 in consulting to identify which processes would benefit from automation.
ROI from RPA deployment can vary enormously (from 30% to 200%), depending on how effectively automation is aligned to processes.
41% Of companies won’t switch to RPA because of lack of clarity of the business process (Source: “State of Automation 2017” Sample: Enterprise Buyers = 400)
Robots, Process, Automation, Data, and You
Whether your RPA project focuses on automating simple, structured data tasks — or more complex, operations that blend bots with human labor — there is a key ingredient for success: in-depth knowledge of current process execution. How each of us get there is a different story… and could be a major competitive constraint on the business. How is your organization identifying high ROI opportunities for automation? Are you 100% sure that these choices are accurate? How can you derive more actionable insights from enterprise data to help your business partners react faster to new opportunities like RPA? How does your organization find the best process opportunities for automation? Is your organization still performing time and motion studies?
Getting RPA right is difficult. However, businesses are generating an overwhelming volume of data, but most of them are unable to use it effectively to improve productivity and most struggle to understand how their business operates. Manual process assessment is still the common approach to pre-RPA process discovery and assessment. There’s a better way.
Hint: Process Intelligence.
Everyone knows and understands the benefits of good business intelligence solutions, but many are struggling to find a solution for in-depth process intelligence. While process mining and BPM can help with some areas of process intelligence, they lack the complete capabilities to provide valuable insight into complex business processes which are most of the ‘case management’ like processes we often see in the modern enterprise.
Process intelligence is a must have for any organization trying to improve business outcomes with the effective deployment of RPA.
Together, Process Intelligence and Robotic Process Automation can…
- Identify processes suitable for RPA implementation during the preparation phase
- Monitor and control end-to-end business processes and provide an easy way to manage and control numerous back-end systems
- Reduce the amount of errors and inefficiencies in operations and ensure positive outcomes with AI enabled prediction
- Provide monitoring and analysis of RPA performance, promoting continuous improvement of RPA in the post implementation phase
The out-of-box solutions and added benefits of process intelligence are critical skills that are necessary for the success of your digital transformation initiative.
What might you use process intelligence with RPA for?
Discover and Benchmark Automation Potential
- Connect to any existing system’s processes (SAP, Oracle, custom, etc.) to identify automation potential and benchmark the as-is state
- Build business cases based on real data and get management buy-in
- Prioritize efforts according to highest Return-on-Investment (ROI)
Monitor and Scale Activities
- Monitor the hybrid, digital and human, workforce to ensure success and address potential issues before they get worse.
- Compare pre and post deployment to quantify achievements and calculate ROI
- Identify new opportunities to tweak and adjust deployments to ensure continuous process excellence.
RPA implementation could be hugely beneficial to an organization, but it also carries significant risks. Stop relying on old tedious, and often inaccurate methods. Using advanced process intelligence technology allows companies to reduce the risks dramatically and ensure the success of their RPA initiatives enterprise wide.
