The master's toolbox of RPA and intelligent automation & augmentation (white paper)

Most consulting and solutions companies only know to apply some tools and technologies. In this article "automation guru", Alex Steinberg explains each key tool and guides how to use all together to achieve maximum client outcome. This article leverages his hands-on experience and analysis of over a hundred projects across industries worldwide.

The benefits of available technologies are great, but most companies miss them

The technologies are ready. It lacks experienced people who fully use them. Most consulting/ solution and other companies concentrate on only a few tools & technologies and then offer them to organizational problem. Some contractors specialize in only on tool. Analogy: People run around with hammers of different sizes and look for nails. If people only have a hammer, they will reduce every issue into a nail that they can hammer. The focus is no longer on doing the right thing, but doing the effort in a more efficient way. This is what we currently see: Consulting and solution companies underbid fees for automation services and turn a highly powerful means of transforming an organization into low cost commodity with barely satisfactory results.

Most consulting companies do not offer automation services, but rather sell automation products

Most consulting companies sell what they know and where they have trained people to do the job. They will tell you that they are tool & vendor agnostic, they may even believe it themselves, but in practice they cannot be. Most consulting companies have stringent KPIs mandates. They need their people constantly work on billable projects. They do not have the time, budget and interest to cross train people among many tools across the automation & augmentation spectrum. As a result, people specialize. And when their people meet with clients they will offer what they know and can do, rather address what the client really needs. That good news is that there are exceptions: People like the author of this article who think about client issues holistically and apply the full range of technologies.

The full range of technologies/ the master's toolbox

The above chart is one of the author's personal frameworks and methodologies. It explains different tools, technologies, methodologies and practices working together in order to deliver full-benefit automation & augmentation services.

Solid analysis and possible process changes

The effort starts with a solid analysis of client processes and data flows. Value mapping and process mining combine many valuable business methodologies and advanced technologies to understand individual work steps, tasks, sequence, exceptions and breaks. It helps to develop an objective, accurate detailed picture of the current client situation. It is necessary to run several efforts in parallel. It is self-evident to collect existing document of processes & data flows. However, most often such information is too general, outdated and/ or partly wrong. It is necessary to talk with the users, process owners and other key stakeholders to fill in missing parts and verify/ complement existing documented data. This is a highly time consuming, but necessary effort. Note: It may take several meetings with the same persons to provide full and accurate information.

Process Mining leverages advanced technology to gather and analyze data streams of work/ information flows across the organization. It reveals problems that would be very difficult to spot or would take notable time by human investigators.

Value Mapping helps identify which process, steps and efforts contribute value to the organization. Companies grow. Market and customer needs change. People adapt. However, processes stay often unchanged, become outdated, cumbersome and hindrance to performance. Value mapping and Business process reengineering (BPR) help eliminate parts or entire processes and create improve processes that do add value.

There are different possible depending on the client objectives: 1) Quick fix: Use technology to quick fix any project breaks and keep processes running as they are. Automate manual tasks without changing any process steps 3) Make small/ medium effort changes to processes and then automate 4) Reengineer entire processes and then automate. 5) Use just one tool (like RPA) or leverage the full spectrum of technologies.

Each approach has its own business rational, pros/ cons, timeline, investments, ROI, challenges etc. Often there is no one best approach. The clients need to weigh the options and decide.

Digitalization tools: Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and Intelligent Character Recognition (ICR)

Information on paper: Much information & data is still communicated through paper across companies and industries. It requires unnecessary manual and duplicate work, introduces failures, creates information/ data silos, slows down the process, undermines customer experience and competitiveness.

Incompatible formats and layouts: Another large amount of documents and communication exist electronically. However, the information and data points cannot easily be processes: Emails, Purchasing order, invoices, etc.

OCR and ICR help gather, understand and process information/ data that typically require humans to do the work. The author worked with clients that had large outsourcing operations with hundreds of people who spent all of their day reading claims data, handwritten notes and typing respective information into electronic forms. Another client had similar people process invoices from partners & suppliers (all with their own invoice templates).

OCR and in its more advanced from ICR leverages Machine Learning, text analytics and other technologies to read information out of semi-structured text. Different tools perform stronger for specific use cases such as handwriting or stamps.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA): A great solution in itself and enabler for all other tools, technologies and systems

RPA is an extremely powerful tool that can generate massive productivity, speed, quality and other gain. It can automate much of any rule-based work; eliminate repetitive manual work and help companies focus on value. RPA also can act as glue among most other tools & systems and can help otherwise incompatible systems talk with each other. RPA is often a much cheaper alternative compared to building an API. RPA also serves as a great "work horse" to gather, transport, and clean data. On one project it would have taken 8 months and a price tag far over a million dollars to transfer millions of customer data records to another system. With RPA, we achieve it within 3 months and a fraction of the cost.

RPA is an amazing and great tool. Sadly, most people misunderstand it. Moreover, even RPA consultants/ solution providers only apply parts of RPA's functionality and benefits.

(Read an example of how RPA can impact the Marketing, Sales and customer service functions. Click below...)

Natural Language Processing (NLP)/ Machine Learning (ML)

NLP and ML extend traditional RPA functionality. They go beyond rule based work and train algorithms to read information out of unstructured documents and/ or many different document templates where it would become to time/ cost consuming to apply RPA for every single form. Both NLP and ML make automation truly intelligent.

Read more on how intelligent automation helps Life Sciences companies. Click below...

Cognitive Chatbots and Virtual agents

Many people want to have their hands free and not type. They want to speak to a device while doing other things (such as driving a car). Cognitive is enabling speech as a main new interface. Chatbots carry out simple tasks on answer user questions.

Virtual agents & experts increasingly take on the functions of human agents in call centers and customer service functions. The author has developed winning concepts for entire customer service solutions that significantly increase customer satisfaction, call quality, 24/7 availability, cost efficiency and overall feasibility.

Request a conversation with the author as necessary.

Business Intelligence (BI) & Visualization

Professionals across the industry often lack information and data points to make the right decisions. Often the information is not up-to-date and reports much be requested from other functions. Equally, they feel sometimes drowning in too much information, knowing not where to focus on. BI & Visualization helps address both needs.

Respective tools help to connect to needed data sources and collect information in real-time. Then the tools can be configured to provide each user with customized dashboards that highlight, explain and simplify key information for better decision making and action.

Advanced Analytics (AA) and Artificial Intelligence (AI)

AA and AI provide superior insights and can enhance the human intellect for unprecedented work and outcome. AA and AI functionalities often times overlap or used by people interchangeably. AA & AI help make real-time decisions and respond to situations faster. The world has become so complex that it is increasingly difficult for a person to evaluate all issues or make the right decisions (due to a lack of knowledge or overwhelming amounts of data).

Read two detailed reports on AI for different business functions. Click below...

Systems, Platforms and other tools

There are many different vendor products that can address many needs across business functions. The sheer number of available products, capabilities, functionalities can be overwhelming for most people. To make things even more complicated, the different systems and tools are constantly evolving. Their individual value for a specific client organization increases or decreases overtime given changes in market, customer needs and responding new product releases. It is necessary to monitor existing systems, compare their usefulness & shortcomings and take corrective actions.

Here, three of my articles that provide more details. Click below...

It is not about one tool or system. It is about leveraging all technologies, tools and systems together!

It takes different parts to make a human body and all have their usefulness. Similarly, it does not make sense for companies to focus on a specific technology or system to solve all their needs. The best solutions typically involves the combination of systems, tools and technologies that work together in harmony.

For this reason, it is not enough to be just an RPA expert, or a systems expert, or a specific tool expert. A true automation effort requires the expertise of numerous subject matter experts plus and end-to-end expert who understands the issues holistically and can bring the individual pieces together.

Different starting points and approaches: All have their merits. It requires true end-to-end expertise

There are different ways of addressing the automation needs. Here four main types:

1)    Start with applying systems: Use all of the available capabilities/ features of the systems. Add other tools to complement missing parts. Finally, add RPA and other advanced technologies (described above) to automate and augment.

2)    Start with the technology toolbox (Value mapping through AI – see chart above): Apply in progression RPA, OCR/ ICR, ML, BI & Visualization, Advanced Analytics & AI. Fill cracks/ breaks in processes, automate process steps, make processes intelligent, bridge existing systems…

3)    Start from a platform: Connect to other systems through APIs, create/ offer micro services.

4)    Other special approaches

Each approach has its merits, pros & cons, timelines, budget, costs, risks, required skillsets.

Each target organization is different and requires its own customized approach and adoption of one of the three types. It requires a true consultant to understand all issues to advise the client on the most appropriate approach considering their current situation, objectives, culture and ambitions.

The end-to-end experts are few and desperately missing. Especially consulting companies need to step up their game

The author of this article has worked on dozens of projects hands-on and gained insight into hundreds of projects worldwide. One startling fact is that the industry has masses of SMEs, but few experts who can truly talk a client through the entire automation journey and explain things end-to-end. Sadly, even most consulting companies do not invest in such roles and thus cannot provide truly end-to-end advisory. Most consulting companies develop high-level strategies, governance models, benchmark studies, use case development and/ or oversee automation programs (typically not leveraging the full spectrum of technologies).

Main reasons of failure

Any client engagement starts with a solid analysis/ understanding of the client situation, needs and objectives. The first and second meeting with the client are crucially important. It sets the stage of all further engagement and outcome. Dozens of client engagements and projects have shown that when a true end-to-end automation & augmentation expert like the author was part of the team, our consulting company defined good projects and sold billable work. When consultants with only high-level or specialized skills met with the client, our consulting company sold nothing or it took months of painful, time consuming, costly and fruitless conversations with no outcome.

A solid understanding of the client organization is necessary. Here is where most of the automation efforts already start failing. The client is impatient and wants to spend little money. The client demands to see many previous case studies and answer to what processes to automate before the consultant can even look the processes. The insecure/ inexperienced consultant wants to please the client and displays a list of processes that may have been accurate on previous client situations, but totally irrelevant and wrong for the prospective client. Tool specialists are asked to give estimates of what a tool could automate on average by itself, the vendor marketing increases the expectations, and the consulting leadership further exaggerates numbers in order to win the deal. Everything sounds good on paper. The only poor people are the project manager and team who must deliver the unrealistic expectations…

Example of how an automation project failed

The author has been brought in troubleshoot problems. On one occasion, a famous global consulting company had recommended 20 processes for automation and 19 recommendations were wrong! It had a very detrimental effect on the performance of the company, the client/ consultant relationship, and the career development of some people within the client and consulting organization…

These consultants are highly intelligent people, but it shows again that it is impossible to make good recommendations without analyzing the client situation.

The new good news for the client: The author came and conducted a solid analysis. He and his team analyzed the processes & data flows of the organization and determined the right candidates for automation & augmentation. The project became highly successful and as a result, the client authorized work for many additional areas.

Read my practitioner guidance for better digital transformation. Click below

Follow the data and manage it well

The key to successful automation is to follow the data and work flows. Automation can automate and augment most of the data life cycle. Automation tools such as RPA can fetch information from systems, gather, clean, store, provide, monitor and manage data.

Read my articles below for more details...

A call to action for clients and consulting companies

The technologies are ready to offer unprecedented automation and augmentation solutions to organizations across industries. Unfortunately, most efforts never reach the full benefits due to several reasons explained in the white paper.

Clients need to develop a more open mind toward automation. The focus on getting things cheap is counterproductive. They raise unrealistic demands that consulting / solutions companies cannot fulfill. In order to cut costs consultants need to cut down expert involvement. Automation turns into a low commodity effort, where all parties "cut corners" to make it feasible. The results fall short of the potential benefits.

Consultants need to decide on their role and mandate. Do they truly want to advise and provide consulting services? If so, it will require to understand all key issues holistically and guide the clients through the automation & augmentation journey end-to-end. If they do not want to do it, then who should? Because this service is crucially needed. Many consulting companies have turned into "factories" that turn out standardized "solution products" in an efficient way. They start from a standardized solution product offering and then look for needs in the market to sell those. This is an inward/out approach, which does not meet the needs of time. The author proposes that the current business model of many consulting companies is not helpful for the industry clients and not sustainable. The author calls consulting companies to return to their traditional role of providing true consulting and advisory to clients.

Conclusion

The original article has turned into a white paper and how-to-do guide. If you have any questions, please reach out to me personally. You can communicate with me through email at [email protected] or WeChat (ID: alexwsteinberg2 ).

About the author: Alex drives digital transformation, innovation and intelligent automation efforts for the largest companies in China. He has helped build a world-leading RPA & Intelligent Automation practice recognized/ awarded by third parties. He has been some of the first to develop/ support some of the largest automation programs in the industry.

Legal disclaimer: This article represents my personal opinion and does not reflect that of my current/ previous employer(s) or clients. The article intends to increase awareness, understanding and dialog about key issues to serve the industry. It does not present any offer or advice in a legal sense. Markets and technology change quickly and information gets out-of-date. The reader is advised to get individual analysis & consultation.