The great RPA resignation!

In 2007, we deployed nearly 30,000 attended RPA bots to a large telecom in APAC. These bots were deployed on each and every agent desktop to help reduce call times (20% to 30%) and improve first call resolutions for customers calling into the contact center. Each agent had access to 30+ other desktop applications that were used in conjunction with their new CRM system. Before RPA bots, vast manual navigation steps across these many desktop apps for each call was the norm - and so were long call times and error rates. The ultimate goal to was to eventually integrate and digitize these "automated" tasks and processes, and to wind-down the many legacy applications as they became redundant to the business. Roll forward nearly 15 years and they now only need about 5000 of these bots. That's 25,000 redundant bots - but no-one is complaining!

Similarly, a large bank in Canada is on record for only committing to building each of our RPA bots (unattended and attended) when an end-of-life bot strategy was in place which has to be part of the business case. Each bot is on notice, and no-one is complaining!

Another use case, a large customer needed to add 2000 attended RPA bots when the contact center hit seasonal peaks. Here, bots really were, "just for Christmas" and not for life. And no-one was complaining.

Another large UK bank in 2008 had built their unattended bots to help deal with increasing credit card fraud volumes with massive ROI delivered each year for the next 7 years until the entire processed was digitized and all the RPA bots were turned off. And no-one complained.

Back around 2014, a large global bank acquired another bank and for the next 5 years or so, each of the 20,000 agents in the contact center used attended RPA bots to prevent call times getting longer. Each agent otherwise would have had to deal with double the number of desktop apps they might need to access and manual navigations of each was frustrating to all. Roll forward about 5 years later and over 95% of those RPA bots are gone. And no-one complained. The merger was a major success and so was the IT integration of the systems to bring about a seamless digital experience to customers.

These are just a few examples of the very many RPA programs I have overseen over the last 15+ years. Over and over again, RPA vendors that predominantly have a business model that relies on you buying and using RPA bot licenses, will encourage you to automate anything - and everything. Great story for the RPA markets but in reality, the great RPA bot resignation is a good thing. It means the business is on the road to digitization and transformation. Whilst I agree, some digital processes still might need RPA bots, they too will eventually resign themselves (pun intended) to being part of the greater resignation.

Something to ponder, next time you look at your bot license renewals - it's actually a real positive when you don't need as many!