Things to consider when prioritising RPA solutions

In recent years, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has gained popularity as a technology buzzword. RPA is a type of automation that can enhance business efficiency and cost-effectiveness by automating repetitive tasks. However, to achieve the best return on investment when implementing RPA initiatives, it is essential to prioritize the right projects.

To prioritize RPA initiatives, I always ask two questions (assuming organisation have their governance and operating models in place):

1. Why should we do it? This is my entry criteria
2. How long should we do it for? This forms my exit criteria.

Entry Criteria: Why should we do it?

1. Identify the Benefits: Before implementing RPA, it's important to understand the benefits it can bring to the business, such as improved efficiency, cost savings, error reduction, or increased productivity.
2. Evaluate Effort Required: Despite being a great solution, it's important to assess the complexity of the process, the amount of data that needs to be handled, and the resources required to implement RPA.
3. Determine Support Requirements: The maintenance of an RPA solution is critical. It requires regular updates, bug fixes, and employee training to ensure that the system runs smoothly.
4. Determine why it should be an RPA solution: It is crucial to determine why RPA is the best solution and if there are alternative solutions available. This point is tricky as there might be an alternate solution but might not be available currently or might be too expensive. Weighing up the benefits, costs and short and long term ambitions is to key to determining why RPA should be selected. In today's world, changes are frequent and RPA will offer the agility to offer solutions quickly in place of a longer-term solution.
5. Business Continuity: RPA solutions should be designed with business continuity in mind. Businesses should have a plan in place to ensure that critical processes can continue to run even if the RPA solution fails or is unavailable.

Exit Criteria: How long should we do it for?

1. Determine Longevity: It is essential to determine the expected lifespan of the RPA solution. This could be based on business needs, process complexity, and industry changes, among other factors. Understanding longevity helps determine future benefits.
2. Plan for Future Growth: RPA solutions are great tactical solutions, but they should not be considered as a long-term solution (in most cases). Sometimes there are legacy application where RPA might end up being long term solution, however having the mindset to continuously plan to move towards a more sustainable solution helps ensure a continuous improvement mindset, leading to better solutions in the future.
3. Performance Metrics: It is important to track the performance of RPA solutions over time and ensure that they are meeting the expected benefits. It is important to ensure RPA is helping in achieving better performance than a human. It is always good to assess the level of work a bot is doing vs a human user and assess the impact of the bot. This does not necessarily mean the bot has to do more work but it is important to assess what benefit does the organisation gain from having the bot process work.

By taking these factors into account when prioritizing RPA initiatives, businesses can ensure that their RPA solutions are successful in the short and long term. Prioritizing the right projects helps minimize tech debt and ensures that resources are focused on the most significant and impactful initiatives. RPA is a powerful tool that offers organisation agility in providing a quicker solution, but it must be used wisely and strategically to maximize its benefits.

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