Scaling Robotics Automation : Crossing the Chasm

If you had a tool that was capable of reducing errors, improving process consistency and customer service, why wouldn’t you use it as widely as you could? Robotics Process Automation (RPA) softwares mimics rule-based and repetitive tasks such as fetching data from one system, validating with another system/s and classifying it. Their potential is huge. Take Transport for London (TfL) for example. TfL receives thousands of requests for tickets refunds by passengers. If handled by humans, this volume would lead them to insanity so they have deployed an RPA that reviews, validates and refunds the claim. Passengers with fair claim can get faster refunds and at any time of the day. RPA has improved customer service, reduced errors, improved process consistency and reduced TfL’s cost of operations. 

RPA softwares arrived with much promise, but businesses have been slow to embrace them. Rather than use them widely, their implementation has been limited to a few. Forrester research on 5800 organisations suggests that 73% have deployed less than fifty robots! That’s quite a damning statistic for the adoption of software robots. So what has gone wrong and what must be done to fix it? 

RPA softwares have failed to scale not because they are ineffective but mainly due to a broken implementation approach. To implement RPA, most of the enterprises established a centralised Center of Excellence (RPA-CoE). These CoEs were formed similar to a small startup company within an enterprise, with management support, technical expertise and a mandate to deliver business benefits. These CoEs did well initially working with business managers that were technology enthusiasts, comfortable to experiment and able to visualise a future state with robots.  However after that initial wave of automation with the enthusiasts, the CoEs couldn’t sell the RPA solutions to other business managers. RPA scaling stalled.  

Why have the RPA-CoEs failed to scale? 

CoEs failed to scale because they failed to understand their buyers; unlike the early technology enthusiasts, later buyers are more pragmatic. The pragmatic buyers are risk averse and require a complete solution, not just a robot. A complete RPA implementation requires process simplification approaches such as lean or six-sigma; it requires business value to be delivered faster and support processes to bring their people together and improve the robots.

Another reason these pragmatic buyers didn’t buy the RPA is that the CoEs solely focused  on cost reduction and didn’t consider other benefits such as better customer service or reduction in errors. Focusing only on cost reduction doesn’t win many friends. Not every pragmatic buyer would be motivated by cost reduction alone and the CoEs failed to highlight other benefits. 

How and what can the RPA-CoEs do to scale?

In 1991 Geoffrey Moore, a famous management author, wrote “Crossing the Chasm,” which even today is considered to be the bible for startups to scale up their business. Moore broke down the journey of a startup and its buyers into five distinct phases - innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards. According to him there’s a chasm between each of the phases and hence each phase requires different marketing strategies to cross the chasm to serve the market and grow. The most dangerous chasm is the chasm between the early adopters (visionary) and the early majority (pragmatist). 

How to scale to hundreds of RPA and deliver larger benefits?

RPA-CoEs are like a startup within an enterprise, they are now on the dangerous chasm of early adopters to early majority. To cross this chasm requires a few uncomfortable changes. Moore provides a few strategies and they are as applicable for the RPA-CoEs as they are for startups: 

1. Identify a pragmatic business manager: Develop the persona of a buyer. What keeps this persona awake at night, what do they like, what scares them? A good example is a team leader who has a team of 50 to 100 staff, is responsible for certain SLAs with penalties and struggles with staff attrition. 
2. Define compelling reasons to buy such as an improved customer response time, reduced errors, improved staff motivation or a way to deal with attrition and maybe save costs. 
3. Define the components of a complete solution incorporating how to deliver incremental benefits, remove duplication of effort, reduce errors and minimise disruption to the BAU business.
4. Develop distribution channels: partners can play a role here, but won’t be enough alone so other channels such as intranet forms, road-shows or chat-bots should be judiciously used to reach out to the target customer
5. Pricing: Price should be based on benefits delivered. The good news is it’s relatively easy to provide a business case for RPA
6. Demonstrate credibility: The CoE, along with partners, should demonstrate previous case studies and references to show credibility 
7. Develop partners and allies: this is make-or-break in providing a complete solution and scaling. Software such as SAP has been able to scale successfully due to its partner networks. RPA-CoEs require partners, both external and internal. External partners can offer valuable assistance with areas such as defining the outcomes, business case and benefits in addition to providing technical resources and training or change management support. Internal partners are required for hardware, change management support, procurement, internal brand building. 

In order for RPA-CoEs to scale up they must  adapt to the new buyer persona of pragmatic business managers. The approaches taken so far won’t work and if they don’t change, the death valley between the early adopters and the pragmatic buyers will swallow them. 

Key References: 

1. Forrester research: "Forrester, The RPA Services Market Will Grow To Reach $12 Billion By 2023, July 2019".
2. https://www.businessillustrator.com
3. TfL case study reference: https://easuk.co.uk/clients/transport-for-london/
4. Inspiration from:https://mastersofscale.com/wences-casares-how-to-start-a-revolution/
5. Crossing the Chasm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_Chasm