Friday, March 29, 2024

Achieve Faster Business Automation Benefits by ‘Paving the Cow Path’

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Organizations have a choice to make when it comes to automating business processes. One common approach is to reengineer the business process (also known as business process re-engineering or BPR) prior to automating it. The second is automating the existing process “as is” with robotic process automation (RPA) technologies. This is called “paving the cow path.”

Building a digital workforce with RPA is challenging enough. Developing a new version of a process in addition to implementing new technology introduces risk and delays the return on investment (ROI). Clients choosing the BPR path prior to automation often find themselves on a frustrating journey. BPR has significant costs related to:

·  Standing up proper governance

·  Reengineering the process by creating new work processes and new forms

·  Training the operators on the new process

·  Developing the automation once the new process is proven

·  Piloting the process during a trial period

·  Deploying the new process – assuming it is stable.

Conducting BPR and automating an unstable process is risky. Not only does BPR take time, the resulting process is unproven, and may be incomplete or have unintended consequences. The enterprise client team often begins with great enthusiasm that then turns into overwhelming stress as costs mount without significant progress.

For enterprises just beginning their digital workforce transformation, “paving the cow path” will improve the odds of RPA success, support transition to a digital workforce and optimize ROI. “Paving the cow path” offers the following four benefits:

1. Realizing benefits faster. Successful organizations are busy; finding time to improve processes is difficult. The disruption that happens when automating an existing process is less than the disruption of going through a complex BPR effort and then executing automation. Automating an existing process with RPA enables delivery of benefits faster. It also frees personnel to think through and work on higher-order challenges and issues.

2. Freeing up capital for further investments. Successful companies must continually change to meet the demands of the market, but change is hard and can be expensive. Revenue-generating activities can be a funding source to pay for change, but funds for change in the back office typically materialize only under duress, as in responding to impending catastrophic failure or a new regulatory requirement. A typical RPA bot can do the work of three to five personnel. This means the cost for automating existing processes and software licenses typically can be recovered within the first year of operation. The time savings also reduces overtime costs, delays the need for new hiring and frees up resources that can be devoted to solving more complex issues.

3. Taking the simplest path to success. A well-defined and stable process often is easily automated on time and within budget. Automating a mature process allows the organization to focus on ongoing RPA performance benefits and adopting the change RPA brings to the organization. An investment in RPA should come along with a disciplined approach to identifying and calculating the ROI, creating a strong RPA governance structure, sharing ownership of RPA between IT and the business and reallocating personnel to perform higher-complexity work. Conducting BPR and automating a newly designed process along with the before-mentioned activities introduces risks and delays that could dampen initial enthusiasm and even endanger the program.

4. Meeting the business need. The costs of large implementations and integrations have made organizations resist software change, but RPA is a cost-effective solution that doesn’t require reengineering existing applications. Many tasks can be automated and maintained by the business and do not require highly technical software engineers. Automations do need lifecycle and configuration management. Changes to automations should go through an organization’s governance and change management groups – just like other software products.

Organizations starting their automation journey need to avoid unnecessary risks, delays and costs. “Paving the cow path” is an excellent approach for building a digital workforce and achieving success with RPA projects – and sidestepping the potential ruts in the road created by BPR.

About the author:

Richard Baldwin is Director, Robotic Process Automation, at Information Services Group (ISG), a leading global technology research and advisory firm.

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