How to identify the right process for automation

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) automates and integrates any repetitive administrative tasks in order to take the mundane out of work, such as filling out forms, extracting structured data from sources or even moving files and folders. By harnessing RPA’s capabilities to handle these mundane processes provides benefits such as accelerated time to value, reduces human error, decreased costs and increased productivity.

With all the new technology currently in the market, adopting RPA certainly requires investment of time and resources, not forgetting commitment to change. When it comes to identifying and selecting the right process for RPA, some organisations are drowning because some processes are suited for automation whereas some are not. Automating an unfit (wrong) process can cause upsets, disruption of service, financial loss and in the worst case scenario, a stop in RPA.

One of the hardest aspect of RPA is choosing which process to start with. For example, should you tackle simple process first or should you automate the biggest and most complex first? Consider the pros and cons: If you start by automating simple process then potentially you will get faster results with minimal disturbances. On the downside, the results will most likely to have minimal impact to your organisation in terms of solving time and cost constraints. If you choose complex process that are critical to your organisation then the reward and ROI can be must bigger, but the time and effort involved is also greater. So where to begin?

Let’s start with the basics. The first rule of thumb is that a process must be rules-based and definable to be automated. The common types of processes that are fit for automation are in HR, Finance and Accounting, Supply Chain and Core Business Operations because most often it is data driven and lend themselves to tedious and repetitive tasks.

A best practice for carrying out this initial assessment is to create a scoreboard across the business for rating the automation potential of your organisation processes. This scoreboard will help you keep track and provide visibility of the process automation effort you are considering and help to avoid potential pitfalls.

Some of the questions come into mind while brainstorming the idea of the perfect process for automation are, whether judgmental decisions are made during the process (human decision) or is it fully rules based and whether the data within the process is structured or unstructured.

To help determine which of your organisations processes will offer the most value from RPA, I recommend assessing and analysing each process based on some of the points below:

Complexity

The complexity of a process can be defined by the number of application/systems, the frequency of human intervention, or the number of steps required in order to execute the task. Complex processes that are critical to the organisations day-to-day business operations (BAU) will have more to achieve with RPA and will result in greater ROI. But, in general, the automation scenario for automating these complex processes will take longer to develop and require time and commitment.

Solution: The best way to approach this step is to speak to the Subject Matter Experts (SME) within the Business who perform the process manually on a daily basis to have a clear picture of the scope and time required.

Volume

Most organisations do not have a defined set of opening hours, meaning a high volume of orders, requests and complains are received around the clock at any given time, regardless of weekends and holidays. When organisations are entirely reliant on human employees, the workload can only be address when employees are present in the office.

Solution: Processes that consume too much of employees time or require many dedicated human resources are great candidates for automation. By automating mundane and repetitive tasks, employees can focus on valuable initiatives that require innovative thinking and human like decisions.

Stability

Process that are rules-based, consistent and data driven are ideal for automation. But, on the other hand, RPA is not meant for automating tasks that are constantly changing, non-standardised and unstable because they cannot be easily defined. Consideration should also be addresses whether the tasks takes place in the front office or in the back office. While front office automation is possible, back office tend to be more transactional and repetitive, making them more suitable for automation.

Solution: A process that changes frequently or has significant unplanned changes is a poor choice for automation. Assessing the current process with the SME would be ideal to debate whether the process is a good fit automation or not. If the process has just cleared the checks for automation, it will most likely sit at the bottom pile of processes in the scoreboard chart.

Data

Processes that involve hand written invoices, faxes or documents, involve unstructured data components that still needs to be handled by humans. Most RPA tools today come with data capture tools (Optical Character Recognition) that works reasonably well with structured/semi-structured data.

When it comes to automating a process that involves unstructured data, you should automatically assume it would not be fit for automation, as you will most likely be fixing the errors from the bot majority of the time. This is where Cognitive Automation comes into the picture, but more on that in a later article.

Solution: Leading RPA vendors are increasingly using third party cognitive services that can better handle unstructured data. Some examples would include Natural Language Processing, Computer Vision, Sentimental Analysis etc.

Outsourcing

Organisations within the Financial Services require high level of regulatory compliance. Therefore, the option of outsourcing is difficult to achieve and maintain because they have a lesser degree of oversight and direct control when processes are managed by a BPO provider.

Solution: Alternatively, onshore allows organisations to be in control of executing their own transactions internally and opens them up to develop more robust compliance strategies. Although, offshore can be cost effective, onshore allows the quality and talent to be controlled within the organisations.

Summary

Selecting the right process automatically translates into quick ROI. The process could be small but the savings achieved at the end of the year are significant. Simple process reach breakeven in 2- 4 months, medium complexity processes in 6 months, while high complex processes reap ROI anywhere between 6 - 24 months.