Put the RPA money where your mouth is.

Nothing quite like MONEY to verify the alignment between declarations and commitments.

Here is my BENCHMARK to tell whether top management is COMMITTED to RPA. ??

Budgets (money) are the ultimate litmus test to separate ballad singers from committed leaders. The same applies to #roboticprocessautomation (and Digital Transformation initiatives at large).

Let’s imagine a mid-size kind of organization, with revenues between 250M and 500M USD, as a reference for my reasoning. Very roughly, we can say (check “State of the CIO” reports on www.cio.com) their IT budget is around 5% of their revenues.

So, our fictional company's IT budget ranges between 12,5M and 25M USD.

?? My benchmark to establish the level of #rpa commitment is simple and based on four categories to which assign a company, depending on their (annual) budget for RPA implementations and management.

A)???Less than 200K USD per year. "The RPA Opportunist"

RPA has not yet escaped the ‘virtual lab’ where the top management has confined it.

Automation opportunities are not thoroughly searched and prioritized. Specific RPA implementations, led by very few ‘RPA devotees’, only solved the most urgent pain points. The cult is in its infancy, and much evangelization is needed. Automation solutions are not leveraged because only the devotees know how to pray and the benefits of it.

Shortage of RPA skills and experience hampers both the awareness and rate of adoption.

No room at all, neither financially nor technically, for Artificial Intelligence to automate business processes.

??The risk of failure for the RPA project/s is relatively high because of the small budget and lack of professional resources (likely all external consultants).

????An even higher risk is that RPA will die out silently after the first few projects.

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B)??????????????? ???????? ?? ???????? ?????? ?????? ????????: "?????? ?????? ?????????? ??????????????"

There is an initial Scale-up of RPA solutions within the company.

The organization is committed to RPA, but RPA is still considered a tech matter rather than a transformation opportunity. Automation opportunities are searched and prioritized but are limited to one or a few business functions.

Decisions on which automation technologies and RPA platforms to use have been made, but there isn’t yet a multi-year IT strategy for automation technologies.

Automation solutions start to be leveraged, even by simple “word of mouth” within the organization, but the RPA ‘literacy’ is not spread over the organization. Business people know too little about its possibilities and benefits.

Artificial Intelligence begins to be used in applications to automate business processes.

??The risk of failure for the RPA projects is still relevant, but, at this stage, there are enough resources and competencies to implement specific assessment and counter-risk procedures for RPA.

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C)???Between 500K e 1M USD per year: "The RPA Enthusiast"

The organization is playing a solid Scale-up game.

Their top management is genuinely committed to RPA and considers RPA as a transformation opportunity, and is involved in and leading this transformation.

There is now a stable professional team for digital automation (made of internal professionals and consultants), and people from the business are involved and trained in adopting and using digital automation.

Automation opportunities are searched and screened with method and persistence throughout the organization.

Automation technologies are enriched and expanded beyond RPA, with consistent use of Artificial Intelligence to generate Intelligent Automation solutions whenever required.

An Intelligent Automation Centre of Excellence (CoE) is probably in place to drive and govern automation, especially regarding adopting standards, methodologies, and leverage on experience.

? The risk of failure for the RPA projects is minimal, given the volume of financial and professional resources in place and the experience gained through many projects.

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D)???Over 1M USD per year: "The Digital Transformer"

Ladies and gentlemen, we are in the presence of a real Digital Transformation champion (applause!).

#intelligentautomation is considered by top management as a vital part of the company’s Digital Transformation strategy.

The internal professional team has expanded, especially with Intelligent Automation analysts, and everyone in the organization is, at least, aware of the possibilities offered by digital automation. Process automation initiatives often come from users in a bottom-up fashion.

There is a formal and ongoing process, managed by full-time engaged professionals, for discovering automation opportunities based on well-screened methodologies and analytical tools the whole organization is familiar with.

Artificial Intelligence is a sound practice used anywhere required to improve processes, not only to automate them.

Top managers and the CIO take the leading roles of the Intelligent Automation CoE.

There is a well-defined and multi-year IT strategy for implementing automation technologies.

? The risk of failure for the RPA projects is close to zero since the organization has all the resources (money, competencies, KPIs and methodologies) and the experience to properly assess and counter the risks of failure.

There we are with my idea of benchmarking companies against their true intentions regarding RPA and Intelligent Automation. For companies 10X larger or smaller, you can multiply or divide the benchmark ranges above by 10.

I hope this benchmark will help the next time you hear claims about RPA commitment.

#digitaltransformation #investments #budget

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