How can you use RPA tools and platforms to automate end-to-end processes?

Is RPA yet another meaningless buzzword for automation? ?? What do you think? Every once in a while, people come up with a new word to describe something we already have perfectly adequate language for. Synergy, digital transformation, big data, deep-dive, socialize, disrupt, organic, growth-hack, responsive... Is this what business people do with their day? Cause the rest of us have been wondering about that....

The usage/utilization of RPA tools and platform in end-to-end processing is based the business requirement. We can leverage the entire RPA platform ecosystem to achieve end-to-end processing based on the business needs. For instance, in UiPath Ecosystem 1. For any IDP requirement - Document Understanding 2. For Develop/Design Workflows - UiPath Studio 3. For Human in loop meachanism - Action Center 4. For leveraging AI/ML capabilities - AI Center 5. For 3rd Party Integration - Intergration Service 6. For Low-code requirement - Apps 7. For Persistant DB capability - Data Services In a nutshell, to achieve end to end automation, we need to understand and leverage right product in ecosystem.

While RPA is a well-established tool to automate rule based, repetitive process steps, it often struggles with last mile automation. For a process to get automated end to end, it is critical to understand the exception handling required in the process. Unless exception handling is also appropriately automated leveraging a combination of technologies like NLP, Machine learning/AI and OCR, a true e2e automation model cannot be achieved. Hence, RPA must be supported by other intelligent automation tech to derive optimal results.

Interesting ?? Choosing the right RPA tool is one of the best aspects to do : ??Costing of the tool ??ROI return of investment on the overall spend on product ??Platform support ?? Platform user friendliness - how easy Dev's can adopt it ?? Community help and assistance ?? Third party apps/ API Integrations ?? Dashboard support for monitoring runs and triggers ?? Support for version control tool such as git hub ?? Documentation

RPA tools are very impact full. They provide a lot of ease of use by encapsulating complex tasks and exposing them through actions/activities. It brings down the implementation timelines drastically. It's a good idea to stick to at most 2 tools and not overdiversify. BUT, Product Owners and Architects also need to keep in mind that many such automation tasks can be implemented using traditional programming languages and frameworks like .NET, Java, Python etc. Estimate the tradeoff and choose the correct set of tools.

Un proceso End To End no se puede automatizar al 100% con RPA, es un mito. RPA es una solución para automatizar tareas puntuales dentro de un flujo E2E. En un flujo E2E se tiene orquestado con el BPMS tareas de usuario, llamadas a web service, llamadas a los BRMS, a los ECM, la cual puede ser impulsada por IA como Machine Learning, OCR, entre otros, y como parte del ciclo completo se robotizan las tareas manuales repetitivas que tengan un completo o altísimo grado de estabilidad

The full documentation of the as is process is crucial. Identifying hand offs, reporting, system and user controls has to be complete and signed off by all stakeholders first. Getting the stakeholders properly identified up front that often the most difficult part. Automation is actually pretty simple.

Initiating RPA for end-to-end process automation begins with defining clear scope and objectives, identifying automatable tasks and desired outcomes. This definition serves as a guide for selecting suitable RPA tools, aligning stakeholders, and ensuring automation goals are well-understood. Consideration of internal and external factors, such as regulations and system integration, is vital in this process. Involving key stakeholders and establishing SMART objectives contribute to project success and effective measurement of automation outcomes.

This is very important. Questions to ask: → what is the pain point → Is RPA the right solution → cost of development, run cost → Is the ROI positive → do we need a culture change or will stakeholders accept change and support the change

1.Identify Automation Opportunities: Analyze the documented process to identify repetitive, rule-based, and time-consuming tasks suitable for automation. 2.RPA Tool Selection: Choose an RPA tool or platform that aligns with the complexity of the process, supports the required integrations, and offers scalability. 3.Design and Development: Break down the end-to-end process into manageable automation components or steps. 4.User Acceptance Testing (UAT): Involve end-users or stakeholders in UAT to ensure the automated process meets business requirements, addresses user needs, and functions as expected.

This is where most of things go wrong. Look, people expect bots to work the same way human does. But, what they don't understand is that bot needs to be fed with same level of information that humans have to do the work at hand. Bots cannot learn on their own like humans. Most bots are developed for happy path. Bot developers need to be told about the various exception scenarios and how to handle them. Exception scenarios are mostly discovered when bots are put into production. This creates a wrong impression and sets a negative vibe. Please ensure to ask for exception scenarios, sometimes you need to ask right questions to get the information stored in the distant memory of humans.

Incorporate best practices while designing RPA workflows. Implement version control for workflow changes, modular design for reusability, maintain proper documentation, involve end-users in the design process for feedback, implement error logging and retry mechanisms and regularly review workflows to accommodate changes in business processes or the underlying system.

Designing an automation workflow before implementing RPA tools is crucial for efficiency and accuracy, considering factors like business goals and system integration. Stakeholder input ensures a successful design, reflecting their needs and expertise. Visual representations using flowcharts aid in understanding and refining the workflow. Best practices for scalability and flexibility ensure the design accommodates evolving business needs and facilitates continuous optimization over time.

A quick hack - enhance your workflow’s flexibility by storing variables in Excel spreadsheets, avoiding direct embedding. For instance, in an RPA automation reconciling cash for a specific bank accounts, utilize an editable Excel list to dynamically source accounts. This approach simplifies future scope adjustments, enabling seamless expansion or contraction without requiring code or process flow modifications.

All I can say here is test, test and test again! The projects I've seen that have failed are those where testing has not been rigorous enough and there's been a small error in the logic or code. Not testing properly can end up being a very costly mistake...

When it is coming to automation deployment solutions, CI/CD - Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment/Delivery comes into the picture. Automated Pipeline for release needed for each environment. For instance, CI/CD using Azure DevOps for UiPath Process Deployment, 1. Create a pipeline for building nuget package with specific version for each changes in the code 2. Enforce the testing mechanism and workflow analyzer rules configured. 3. Create realase pipeline to point the nuget package to the right orchestrator environment/tenant with appropriate approvals from the business or stakeholders.

Develop the automation workflow: This involves designing the steps involved in the automation process and selecting the appropriate RPA actions for each step. Test the automation workflow: This is crucial to ensure that the workflow is functioning correctly and that it is not causing any unintended consequences. Deploy the automation solution: This involves deploying the automation workflow to the production environment. This may involve installing the RPA software on the production servers and configuring the workflow to run as needed. Monitor the automation solution: This is important to ensure that the workflow is continue to run smoothly and that it is achieving the desired results.

Consider aspects such as thorough testing, user training, change management, monitoring and bot transaction status reporting mechanisms ensuring data security, have a rollback plan, integrate DevOps practices for CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment), document the deployed processes/bot guide and establish ongoing support and maintenance procedures for continuous improvement.

The benefits of using RPA tools for end-to-end process automation: 1) Explore the various advantages that RPA tools offer in terms of efficiency, accuracy, cost savings, and improved productivity throughout the entire business process. 2. Key considerations when selecting an RPA tool for end-to-end automation: Discuss important factors to consider when choosing the right RPA tool for automating your specific business processes, such as scalability, ease of implementation, integration capabilities, and support services. 3. Step-by-step solutions to meet the objective.

It is recommended to adopt CI/CD, for each new deployment to supervise the results, get the feedback from the end user and optimize at a next iteration the solution. Next round to apply the same and so on, till the business process of interest is fully transposed into an automated one with RPA.

The supervision of the solution for a period and continuous feedback from the end user will help to identify and define points that could be adopted to optimize current release. Therefore, LCM (Life Cycle Management) is strongly the key to succeed with evolvement of the initial deployed solution.

Managing and optimizing your automation solution is similar to maintaining a high-performance car. Regular check-ups and adjustments are necessary. Monitor your automated processes, gather performance metrics, and make improvements as needed.

Optimization can be done in various areas but to justify for now let's categorize into Existing processes and New processes. While for new processes you should look for below 1. Best practices 2. Suitable approach with minimal execution time. 3. Reuse code as much as possible 4. Avoid hardcoded delays /value configure them 5. Use background automation as much as possible based on automation. 6. More easy, sustainable approach 7. Spent more time on solution design to understand best suitable approach for automation 8. Parallel processing/bulk processing to use multiple robot at same time. 9. Use of new products available in market to get automation done more easily. 10. Avoid complex logic keep it as minimalistic as possible

It is important to understand that automation is only useful when applied to robust, efficient processes. The first premise when automating end-to-end processes then is that these must have been optimized. Failure to do so will result in perpetuating a bad process, and missing the chance to introduce automation to increse the overall delivery value of the company; garbage-in/garbage-out. Make sure your end to end processes have been through the reciew of the BPM team before looking to build any automation.

I see it slightly differently as this is one of THE excuses I hear quite often not to automate and digitize. Bad processes can (and should) be automated as long as there is an aim to do better. Because RPA offers the opportunity to improve the process along the way. If you approach automation cleverly you probably first ask "who wants this?" and "why do we do this?" This already offers an opportunity to improve in many cases. Waiting for the perfect process before starting automation is from my own experience a way to "never automate"

RPA is very useful with old archaic systems that don’t have any APIs or web-hooks to create a direct automation. You can still automate the process by mimicking user interactions with a system. The biggest drawbacks to consider - heavy reliance on UI elements and random exceptions (unaccounted pop ups, messages etc. that will break the flow). Try to get an update calendar from the system’s vendor to make sure you are prepared. Another good thing to consider is some kind of kill-switch and notification mechanism that will stop processing future transactions if encountered x amount of errors within certain timeframe. This will prevent you from rolling back and restarting loads of the errored transactions in the queue.

Exception handling is one major aspect to seamless automation. So better to ensure bots handle most common exception scenarios for a seamless and less maintenance experience

I think the first thing we must do is draw the current process that we have; sometimes we want to integrate RPA, but it is necessary to previously document our process and reengineer it to optimize it with technology in a v2.0, otherwise we are not being efficient.