Democratizing Robotic Process Automation – RPA is back on our minds!

Our environment is changing rapidly, and in this context, business processes must become agile and adaptive. The adoption of digitalization and automation could prove to be a decisive turning point. The journey is ongoing and remains punctuated by challenges. How can we overcome them?  What is the way to successfully engage employees to join us on that journey? Will RPA still play a vital role in these transformations?

Automation has already taken on a critical role in a post-pandemic world as cost takeout and business resilience become the chief destinations on the technology roadmap. According to the article published in Forbes [1]magazine in 2019, the key technologies that will dominate this and the next few years are e.g.: 5G, Data Analytics, AI and Machine Learning, Blockchain, UX/CS as well as Robotic Process Automation (RPA). For RPA, which is obviously not a new topic, it means catching a second wind. Even if we take out all the other process automation models such as simple macros, Business Processes Management Solutions and workflows or Enterprise-Resource-Planning (ERP) automations, there is still vast potential for Robotic Process Automation itself. What’s more, RPA is a first stop along the path to intelligent automation such as Artificial Intelligence.

Despite having the name “robot” in it, Robotic Process Automation has nothing to do with physical robots. Based on the Gartner definition[2], RPA is a productivity tool that allows a user to configure one or more scripts (which some vendors refer to as “bots”). The result is that the bots can be used to mimic or emulate selected tasks (transaction steps) within an overall business or IT process.

So, let’s talk about the facts and try to determine why RPA has not taken off as everyone expected. I still remember some of my business conferences at the beginning of the last decade where people were amazed by the potential impact that RPA could bring. Many companies declared they would start immediately their robotic initiatives. I saw many show cases and huge investments were made to keep RPA going. However, based on Forrester research[3], only less than 19% of RPA installations are at an advanced stage of maturity. Besides, 25% of companies struggle to meet their productivity targets. The same study indicates scale remains RPA’s Achilles' heel. On top of that, it is also a leadership and change management issue. Absence of a holistic business approach and resistance to change, coupled with a missing strategic direction, is another key reason why 30-50% of RPA projects fail, according to “Get Ready for Robots, EY[4]”.

What is then a winning formula to succeed with RPA? We think we found it and are implementing it in Siemens. To successfully implement and scale up RPA within our organization we are “democratizing” RPA. We still address larger, more strategic initiatives with an end-to-end coverage via Regional RPA Centers of Excellence located in India, Czech Republic, Brazil and our headquarters in Germany. One critical barrier for using an outsourcing model is the size of the project and relatively high development cost (charged as time and material). For many years, smaller and local topics received little attention from the centers due to longer return on investment and smaller, less splendid impact.

This laid the ground for a Citizen Developer concept which makes automation technologies not only accessible for automation experts but also for our business process specialists. The Citizen Developer approach enables end-users to create their own RPA applications for consumption by themselves or others, using development and runtime environments. This complementary concept to our global Centers of Excellence empowers people and organizations to implement RPA for smaller and simpler processes within their own landscapes and ERP systems.

The initiative has been started and funded centrally. The central team provides the IT infrastructure such as the technology itself, the licenses, platform maintenance and process governance. Lead Developers and Solution System Architects ensure high quality during the entire process. Bringing business expertise and IT experts together – in a buddy team of two – has delivered outstanding results.

The Supply Chain & Logistics team is an active member and driver of the citizen developer program. Global communities and collaboration platforms have been created so that citizen developers can get in touch with each other and exchange skills, knowledge, and experience. One example is the internal social media platform, where continuous online involvement and communication across departments is promoted. The next step is to ensure that projects and their blueprints are actively shared within the organization, giving a glimpse into potential projects, as well as ongoing, and most importantly, completed processes. Projects could become scalable and create value add for a fraction of the initial efforts.

However, the most important element of it is that automation projects can also answer very particular needs of our local supply chain experts. Equipped with some programming skills, they can address their major pain points, resolving issues or automating processes which would never be in the scope of the global, corporate initiatives.

RPA Citizen Developer program is an important element of our Digitalization Strategy and is well connected with other Supply Chain initiatives such as process mining in ‘Order to Cash’ and ‘Purchase to Pay’ areas. Through process mining and analysis of available data, we can assess process maturity and efficiency and identify new optimization potentials, but also track and improve the automation rate and reduce manual interference on every single sales or purchase order. 

The hybrid model also boosts process efficiency and ensures the highest quality. Either through large and complex process optimization, designed by Centers of Excellence, or more agile and adaptive RPA programs built by end users, the impact of new process implementation can be measured short-, medium- and long-term, ensuring a long-lasting and positive effect on business performance.

Step by step, the automation from manual operations and repetitive tasks to more meaningful and joyful tasks takes place. A fundamental requirement to make this happen is to have motivated and dedicated people who are willing to go the extra mile. This happens in a culture that expects and encourages experimentation with new ideas, techniques and tools, so that learning is transferred into business practice as a standard. Yet, to mobilize business professionals all over the world, expand their scope, create ownership, share and scale RPA developments across organizations, is a true privilege.

To sum up, we are convinced that the Citizen Developer program will help us progress with process automations. It is the perfect answer to companies’ major challenges of scaling up these initiatives in the organization to leverage on smaller process optimizations. Besides, it will help to improve an employee’s existing skillset. RPA become also one our major change management levers of the future. We are proud that this concept has been recognized by Gartner and is one of the candidates of the semi-finalists of Power of the Profession Awards in the category of Process or Technology Innovation of the Year!

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/danielnewman/2019/07/14/top-10-digital-transformation-trends-for-2020/#734e43b676be

[2] https://www.gartner.com/en/information-technology/glossary/robotic-process-automation-rpa

[3] https://reprints.forrester.com/#/assets/2/54/RES143771/reports

[4] https://www.ey.com/en_gl/financial-services-emeia/get-ready-for-robots