RPA: Are we trying too hard?
I make no bones about the fact that I am an RPA evangelist. It pays the majority of my bills, after all, but so many companies out there are struggling to implement RPA. Could it be that they are just trying too hard?
There are a thousand reasons why RPA projects can fail - primarily these are because there has been insufficient investment in the CoE framework to support the deployments, the Platform, the People, the Process, the Proposition and the Pipeline - my other blogs go into this in much more detail and it is a subject in itself.
What many RPA providers won't tell you, though, is that RPA might not always be the right solution for your problem - and why would they? All that money spent trying to get RPA to work lines their pockets, not yours.
However you dress it up, RPA is something of a sticking plaster, a band-aid for papering over cracks between legacy systems. Sure, with the correct framework we can manage those risks and support the bots effectively, but sometimes, RPA may not be the tool to solve the problem.
It might be that APIs may produce a more robust integration solution. BPM may be a preferable way of managing workflows. There may be other ways to manage a process once the front end is digitised and the process made lean.
All that said, RPA does have its niche - low cost, fast ROI for reducing costs where no significant investment is available near-time for replatforming an inefficient, manual process. This is where it excels. A square peg in a square hole. Let's not try to pretend otherwise.
Senior Delivery Lead
4 年Great post Tim. Other common issues are thinking RPA will solve bad manual processes or provide solutions to things systems or software being used should be doing better. In my experience its always best to fix the process first, ensure systems and any software used is doing what it should properly, then get RPA to bridge those gaps in place of the human for the standardised process. This means humans can focus on those non standard processes, more complex issues and people based activity that adds value.
Analysis.Tech | Analyst | CEO, Founder, Automation Den | Keynote Speaker | Thought Leader | LOWCODE | NOCODE | GenAi | Godfather of RPA | Inventor of Neuronomous| UX Guru | Investor | Podcaster
4 年Agreed. RPA (aka screen scraping) popped up over an over promise that UI automation was suddenly a simple Nirvana. It has its place but is being far outpaced with other more advanced techniques and technologies that are making it less and less relevant. Legacy systems and code strangulation wrapped in band aids does not equal digital transformation.
Artificial intelligence, RPA,IDP Service Provider|Digital transformation
4 年We should see RPA as one of the levers of Intelligent automation. Integrated solution of BPM/API/Document processing/Process mining/Machine learning will only help. We cannot automate an instable process. Need to assess the stability and normality of process( based on six sigma), if required re engineer the process, make it stable, then based on design thinking approach/QFD/Pug matrix decide the right solution pack(integrated intelligent automation) for the right problem.