Process automation: the DOs and DON'Ts when starting up

Process automation is a hot topic right now. No surprise here – it is popular because of the value it can bring to the businesses and the communities globally. The funny thing is the fact it has been a hot topic for over a decade ?? (some might say multiple decades, depending on the tech they refer to).?

As automation in various forms keeps getting more accessible and applicable to businesses, less expensive, and can be used to take the business to whole new level, it seems quite clear why it's so popular. The reality is that it's not only hot because of its popularity. There are multiple reasons for a lot of heated arguments about the topic. However, they can all be boiled down to two major things:

1. The technology landscape has seen major advances (and continues to do so) ??
2. A lot of companies worldwide still struggle to do automation properly ??

And the trick here is that to hit the sweet spot of the cake, automation must be done right, or else it might backfire.

It's also a very important topic for me (my professional projects are based around automation services). And since I have been eagerly sharing my experience and tips at various communities and conferences, I have also compiled a list of DOs ?? and DON’Ts ?? in process automation to share here over Linkedin.

Buckle up and let’s dive in!

To successfully automate your processes, DO ??:

• Align the automation strategy with the business strategy – they must work in sync. Make automation a strategic goal for the organization??
• Get support from both the business stakeholders and IT – this will also help to manage the expectations of all parties??
• Carefully select the suppliers of software and services based on actual needs of the business ? The supply is huge and it’s easy to choose incorrectly ??
• Get a proper business case on each process and evaluate it according to KPIs that are relevant to the business ? Make sure your automation initiative has actual goals that can be measured and bring value ????
• Make rational commitments that can be reached or even over-delivered. This helps promote automation internally and motivates the people ?
• Grow and adapt the human resources that become available due to automation, so they create additional value doing something more complex. This will generate exponential growth that you may not even expect before starting ?
• Only automate processes that are worth automating (I've got a separate list on which processes are worthy of automation – let me know if you’d be interested in checking it out!) ?
• Improve the processes first ? Only automate processes after they've been optimized and standardized. You might even notice that the processes become efficient enough to not need automation at all ??
• Handle change management with care – the best way is to get experienced external help that can help you out with change management strategy and its implementation ? People will oppose automation if they are not informed of your motives and plans ??
• Get competent developers to do the job (either train/hire in-house or outsource) ? Better do it right on the first time (or with less iterations) than have to pay twice (or even more) when fixing it later ??
• Prioritize security ? Take this point very seriously as cyber-attacks and security breaches can cause enormous problems to your reputation and financials. And automation can be an easy target for that if it is not secured properly ?
• Test every solution properly ?
• Prepare proper support and maintenance procedures after deployment ? Don’t expect it to work fine from day one without any support and maintenance.?

In order to successfully automate your processes, DON’T ??:

• Leave the automation strategy independent of the business strategy ? It will get stalled if it does not have support from top management or if it does not get prioritized at a strategic level ?
• Get support and buy-in only from the business stakeholders OR IT, but not both ? If you try to skip any side, it will eventually stop and fail. Or cause serious harm to the business
• Select the suppliers based on pricing only ? Sure, price is important, but it should not be the most important thing. Going with the cheapest option will usually lead to paying twice ??
• Have no KPIs in place or forget to measure the results ? Automation itself is not a goal. Automating processes for the sake of automation, or because “the competition is doing that” will not yield any results.
• Over-commit and never deliver ? That’s the best way to demotivate the entire organization and terminate the initiative before it gets anywhere ??
• Expect robots to replace humans completely ?
• Try automating every process ? This will cost a lot, will take a lot of time and will usually not generate enough value.
• Automate AS-IS processes ? Automation is not process improvement. Automating inefficient processes simply leads to faster inefficient processes ?
• Ignore change management ? Doing so will likely make internal staff sabotage the initiative in fear of losing their jobs ??
• Ignore the competencies needed to do automation ("anyone can automate") ? Solutions built by incompetent developers are usually more difficult to fix or rebuild later, when they don’t work or need to scale. Doing that will cost more in the long term than doing it right the first time.
• Ignore possible security issues with automation ?
• Skip testing, or only test the "success" cases ?
• Have no support and maintenance in place and expect the bots to run 24/7 with no help and no errors ?

Automation is definitely great. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t be writing articles about it ?? The value it can bring to almost any business is amazing. But, if done wrong, it can also go crashing down and take a few executives along with it.?

So, the top tip here is to prepare for it properly (as you would for any major project) and get help (at least initially) from a trustworthy partner. With that you are most likely set to reap the benefits from automation that will make you think “how could we live without it for so long?”

If you would like to learn more about automation – do not hesitate to drop me a line!

Thanks to Sahil Sharma for some inspiration into the topic. I've written this article based on a talk about #RPA and #processautomation I held a few weeks ago for INFOBALT and Kauno prekybos, pramon?s ir amat? rūmai (Kaunas Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Crafts) . Thanks again for having me there.

#strategy #processimprovement