What is important in RPA implementation?

An 'RPA Implementation' is a broad term. There are stakeholders, there is a life-cycle, there is a way to organize your organization to implement RPA, there is the methodology and much more than can be covered in an article.

I won't explain the RPA implementation in detail:

I'll pick out a few points from a few aspects, but in fact everything is important.

Please use the comment section below to point out what is important for you in an RPA implementation.

Life Cycle

Before a robot is implemented, there was a whole trajectory that has been followed:

• Identification - The processes suitable for automation got identified
• Prioritization - Of the identified processes the best ones were selected
• Documentation - The selected processes were documented
• Automation - The selected processes were automated
• Maintenance and aftercare - Once the robot is all up and running in Production environment the goal is reached: But still it's monitored each day and if needed it received its maintenance.

Process identification is key

If you select the wrong processes for automation, misery will follow.

If you select the right processes, you have already set your first steps on the road to success.

There are still a few more things you need to do right as well to realize the success, but you are on the right way.

Prioritization

Once you know which processes can be automated and where automation will bring a gain you can prioritize. On which process will RPA bring most gain? Or where is it most urgently needed? Just keep in mind that FTE savings alone are not the only deciding factors.

Quality, Customer Satisfaction, Employee satisfaction, Audit trail, turn around time or security regulations can be equally good reasons.

Documentation

Documentation is essential for the RPA developer to build a robot.

As the documentation is more detailed than the initial process identification it is also a quick double check if the automation is still feasible and delivers less or maybe even a greater gain, now that we know more details.

It is important for audit.

It enables others to work and perform repairs on someone else's robots.

Automation

The automation is also crucial:

If you do not build the robot, you won't have the robot.

If you build a bad robot, it will also function bad in production environment once it is done and give you trouble and headaches.

If you build a good and stable robot, you will have happy stakeholders.

If you build clever, you make the application logic reusable so future automation can reuse them and have a shorter TtV (Time to value)

Production

Once the robot is fully developed, it's moved from the DEV to the TEST environment to be tested. If it passes all the tests it's moved to the PROD (production) environment. Here it will run daily (or weekly) and perform its duties.

Here it will be also fixed and maintained if needed.

Most important?

All above phases of the above mentioned trajectory are important and interlinked: You can not see one separately from the other. But if I had to pick 2 of them, the process identification and the Maintenance and Aftercare (Production) are the most important ones:

If you select a wrong process, everything else will fail.

And the Aftercare or the Production is the face the Robot shows to the stakeholders:

If all the other parts of the trajectory (documentation, development) went troublesome, but at the end there is a robot and it performs well and truly helps them in their work and brings gain, they will slowly forget the painful start, and thankfully remember each day how good life is with a robot at their service.

at the other hand: If the documentation and build goes well, but then in production it's only misery, they will regret ever wanting a robot and will not want any future robots.

So all those phases are extremely important, but Identification and Maintenance and Aftercare are even more important.

Leverage Experience

It's important to not reinvent the wheel. If you just start with RPA, get experienced people on board to benefit from their experience.

If you have a team, ensure the seniors have ways to transfer their knowledge to the juniors. (e.g. by working in pairs, coaching, training, or buddy system).

And work on upskilling: The better people get, the better the robots get. Also people with more skills struggle usually less, and will deliver faster.

I didn't mention Governance, I did't mention a CoE, and there is much more that i didn't cover as i don't want to make a lengthy article. I encourage you to post in the comments what you think is important in an RPA implementation.

This article is written on personal title