Which are the Steps Involved in the Successful Implementation of RPA?

Robotic Process Automation, popularly termed RPA, is the technology enabler for optimizing digital transformation across the organization. Therefore, it won’t be wrong to state that RPA proves to be an essential prerequisite for any business that intends to optimize its operational effectiveness with enhanced productivity and improved outcomes. The research by a leading consulting firm reveals that RPA’s global market size will reach $6.5 trillion by 2024, which explicitly depicts the enhanced confidence of the key global players in the potential of the technology to streamline their business processes and accelerate their journey towards faster and more accurate outcomes at reduced costs. It is important to bring out the fact that even though businesses across industries are aware of the potential of RPA technology, translating those benefits into business processes is a different ballgame altogether. The successful implementation of RPA requires a detailed and robust strategy that should align with business objectives. Moreover, the key goal of RPA implementation is to build a sustainable and digitally empowered environment that supports providing services to customers at reduced costs. Therefore, it is critical to understand the steps that constitute the key aspects of the successful implementation of RPA in the organization. 

Rise of RPA Adoption

The current business landscape witnessing a rise in RPA adoption, with more than 70% of companies already accelerating RPA technology into their processes and 15% planning to optimize in the next three years, makes it critical for organizations to understand the need for a planned and strategic approach for optimized results. Moreover, it is a long-term journey imbued with organizational, structural, and cultural shifts towards RPA adoption that can make it highly result-oriented for businesses. It will help companies avoid overwhelming experiences while implementing RPA into processes due to the technical ambiguity and complexity involved in the whole project, creating a strong and positive environment for leveraging the true potential of the technology and streamlining processes without security, regulatory, or operational challenges.

Fundamental Challenges in the Optimized Implementation of RPA

Every business has an inherent quest to attain cost and operational efficiencies with the adoption of technology and RPA. Being at the forefront of digital evolution, RPA is highly sought by businesses across industries to revolutionize their processes and bring desired efficiency into their operations. But there are certain challenges that organizations have to face if they try to adopt the technology without building a defined strategic approach towards its successful implementation. The common RPA constraints incorporate the skill shortage that results in selecting inappropriate candidates for RPA adoption and the lack of expertise in building RPA bots that leads to multiple discrepancies in the system, resulting in frequent breakdowns and loss of productivity and resources. Another key challenge is the lack of capability to expand the horizons of RPA adoption beyond the initial processes, making the whole endeavor expensive and futile. Also, while bringing new systems into place, it is critical to ensure adequate communication and all stakeholders’ buy-in that help in streamlining processes and providing skill training to employees to help them understand the mechanism of the whole RPA technology and they can deliver their best to make most of the technology. The sudden implementation of technology without informing and training employees results in a stark contradiction in terms of assessing the benefits of RPA, leading to failure and the propagation of information and data silos in the organization. Also, not owning the IT, not having clear ways to measure performance, and having too high hopes make it hard to show the return on investment (ROI) from RPA projects, which impacts efforts to grow RPA adoption across the organization.

Key Steps in the Result-oriented Implementation of RPA 

Many organizations have leveraged the transformative power of RPA to bring about instrumental changes in their processes, and their success lies in their adherence to the given steps that ensure RPA adoption will lead to desired outcomes. The advancement of artificial intelligence and machine learning can bring revolutionary results when optimized with RPA; therefore, the future holds promising possibilities for businesses that intend to leverage RPA for optimizing their processes. But the key to success is the fundamental steps that constitute the perfect environment for RPA’s implementation. 

So, let’s get started with the key steps in RPA implementation:

1. Identification of the Right Processes for Automation: It is a fact that adoption of RPA accelerates efficiency, but if the wrong processes are selected, then the results can be ineffective, and there is also waste of resources. In such a scenario, the stakeholders’ trust in RPA capabilities can become questionable, and further initiatives can also suffer setbacks. Therefore, it is important to map the existing processes in the organization and identify those that are rule-based, have reliance on structured data, are highly voluminous, and are repetitive in nature. Having a clear strategy for the identification of right candidates for RPA is just the first step towards initiating the transformation across the organization, as if the initial processes are streamlined, then stakeholders get a boost to apply their success to other processes as well. 
2. Assessment of the Feasibility of Given Processes: Once the processes are selected based on the above-mentioned criteria, the next step is to assess the feasibility of the given process to reinstate the success quotient of the automation of processes via RPA. It incorporates an assessment of non-technical aspects of the process by charting out the map of processes and identifying the key points where automation can be introduced. It also includes gauging the possible bottlenecks in the processes and estimating the level of complexity of automating these processes for accurate analysis. The technical aspects include the assessment of whether the applications that the processes are using are interacting with RPA bots, whether the data used in processes is fully structured, and whether they follow the data privacy guidelines as well. Additionally, in order to make informed decisions, a collaborative team of RPA experts, subject-matter experts, and real-time operation users should conduct the assessment. If any of the processes fails to justify the above parameters, then restructuring and reoptimizing the processes is an ideal solution.
3. Initiation of the Development Process: After the identification and assessment of a perfect candidate for RPA implementation, the next step is to start the development of RPA bots. And it begins with the selection of RPA tools. As the market is flooded with numerous possibilities, there is a need to select the tool considering business goals, the analysis of complexity of the given process, the pricing structure of the tool, and the consideration of specific requirements like platform integration, customization needed, and the complexity of the user interface. The leading tools for RPA include UIPath, Automation Anywhere, and Blue Prism, to name a few. After selecting the tool, RPA developers initiate the process of designing the RPA scripts, which mimic the users’ interactions with different applications for completing the desired tasks. There is extensive testing and validation of RPA scripts before the deployment of the RPA bots in the production environment, and the processes are automated in the predetermined systems to achieve the desired results.
4. Reconfirmation and Final Deployment of RPA Bots: Before the deployment of RPA solutions into a real-world scenario, it is critical to double check the quality, performance, and precision of RPA bots. This step helps to ensure that RPA bots are result-driven and perform in alignment with business goals and process requirements. Therefore, this process incorporates the testing of RPA bots in unusual scenarios to ensure that they are capable of handling the anomalies with precision. There is a need to ensure the smooth integration of RPA bots with the existing systems and applications to ascertain that the processes are well synchronized with the IT ecosystem of the business organization in a seamless manner. As data privacy and compliance regulations form integral part of business, it is important to verify and validate that RPA bots strictly adhere to data privacy guidelines and all the regulations. Having the final checks with the actual operation users is critical before finalizing the performance and quality of RPA bots. It provides an in-depth view of users’ experiences with the RPA bots, and considering all safety and performance parameters, if the users give their approval, the RPA bots are released into the real business environment.

Conclusion

To conclude, Robotic Process Automation offers numerous possibilities for optimizing repetitive workflows that can revolutionize processes across business organizations. The capability of this technology to make significant reductions in manual workloads along with enhancing operational efficiencies makes it a significant contributor towards leveraging the digital transformation. RPA supports the skilled workforce of the organization to contribute more towards complex tasks requiring strategic innovation rather than getting overwhelmed with mundane and voluminous tasks. The key to successful outcomes of RPA implementation depends on the employment of a RPA strategy and a certified team to attain desired outcomes.  Overall, businesses can leverage the capabilities of an IT partner, which can assist in chalking out a detailed strategy for RPA implementation that includes mapping the business requirements, key goals, selection of the right candidates for RPA, taking inputs from all concerned stakeholders, and building, deploying, and testing bots to assess and validate their precision. With domain expertise, successful projects, and a certified and skilled team, an IT partner empowers an organization to build a comprehensive approach and the ability to integrate RPA with advanced AI solutions. This can transform the processes of the organization and simplify them to bring efficiency, speed, productivity, and reduced costs, with the end goal of serving the customers better and faster and bringing agility into the processes to gain a competitive advantage.