Road to Digital Transformation: How to Start Your RPA Journey in 6 Steps
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is no longer only for multinational corporations and large enterprises.
Many small and medium businesses have also started to leverage RPA to boost productivity, reduce costs and enhance market competitiveness.
In fact, this coming 2023, we will see more organisations across a wide range of industries implementing RPA to automate high volume, time-consuming and repetitive tasks to free their team up.
Research shows that the Australian RPA software market will grow to $130 million next year – a forecasted increase of 18.9% from the previous year. With a Compound Annual Growth Rate of 25%, the global RPA market size is also predicted to reach $7.64 billion by 2028.
With its capabilities to improve process quality and drive internal efficiencies, it comes as no surprise that businesses are leaning towards RPA to fast forward their digital transformation.
But how can you effectively optimise RPA? Where do you start so you can implement it correctly in your business?
Our team at CiGen has listed 6 easy steps to help you.
6 steps to starting your RPA journey
A OnePoll survey by Ultima has reported that 65% of UK businesses are planning to automate key parts of their processes, and for 77% of those, the automation of transactional, mundane tasks is the driving force for starting their digital automation journey.
Like many others, your business can also take advantage of RPA’s software robots to handle the daily tasks that are tedious, repetitive and prone to errors. This will allow your staff to focus on value-adding projects and income-generating tasks that can bring more success to your business.
How do you make the most out of RPA?
Here are steps that can help you quickly navigate your RPA journey.
- Determine which processes will offer the most benefits once they have been automated.
Not all processes and tasks are suitable for automation. But many are – so you must first determine the difference.
The most ideal are error-prone, low fault-tolerance and speed-sensitive processes, as well as high-volume tasks, since automating them often results in a significant reduction in errors and an increase in time and cost savings. Processes with irregular requirements (e.g., sales processing) can also make a good match with the scalability of software robots.
To select the right processes and gain excellent results, it’s best to consult your IT team and other relevant departments to determine what to automate.
For more information, here are 5 Factors to Choosing the Right Business Processes to Automate.
- Make your life easier by selecting “easy to automate” processes.
Most automation-friendly processes are simple, rule-based, with uniform functioning (that is, bearing few exceptions and contingencies), mature and company-specific.
So, with complex processes, they must be broken down first in order to yield speedy, significant revenue by automation. Afterwards, you can go on to launch bots that can efficiently carry out the subprocesses in a piecemeal fashion. By doing this, complex processes become more understandable – thereby, leading to reduced programming and auditing efforts.
To give you a better idea, here are some processes that can be automated to help small to medium sized businesses achieve automation success.
- Gain the confidence of people in your organisation.
Do not lose track of the fact that the business case for RPA should be internally accepted and approved before you can fully focus on implementation and launching details.
For instance, in order to persuade your business executives, you might share McKinsey’s profitability analysis. According to it, within only one year from implementation, RPA can yield between 30 and 200% ROI. You can also go one step further by suggesting concrete ways to measure the ROI of RPA deployment in your business.
You must also address employees’ myth-based fear that robots will steal their jobs. Let them know about the benefits of RPA, including the ways RPA can create a competitive advantage while taking frustrations away. You can also train your staff with respect to what robots can and cannot do, allowing them to fully unlock RPA’s potential.
- Choose the optimal RPA tool for your company.
“The true hurdle is selecting the ideal RPA tool that most closely matches the automation profile of your business.” – Vartul Mittal, Digital Transformation and Innovation Leader
A successful digital automation journey is highly dependent on the smart choice of a quality technology provider, like CiGen.
To find the right technology partner for attaining goals, you must conduct an individualised analysis of your business’ needs and specific aspects. You can start by setting a crystal-clear set of objectives.
At this stage, you might also benefit from collaborating with an experienced consultant who can help you identify the best fit between the technical features of the software, the implementation costs, your company’s requirements and your budget.
Here’s What to Look for When Choosing an RPA Service Provider.
- Consider the establishment of automation governance.
Your internal governance board must gather the executive sponsors of the RPA project – namely, business and IT executives, as well as members of all company divisions that will be affected by RPA implementation.
The rationale for bringing these people together under an executive governance is the need to ensure compliance of automated processes with regulatory controls and robotics laws.
Check out: Top 5 Principles Guiding the Modern RPA Centre of Excellence (CoE)
- Be prepared with a backup plan.
It goes without saying that you’ll be working hard to ensure RPA is a success in your business. However, many things can still be beyond your control – which is why it’s smart to plan what to do in advance just in case the software bots face any errors.
So, before you even begin, you should thoroughly assess potential risk sources, and put together a “Plan B” with action choices in case your bots have any issues.
Have a read of Implementing Robotic Process Automation: An Overview of the Potential Opportunities and Difficulties for more information.
Are you ready to begin your RPA journey?
You now understand what’s required for a successful RPA implementation.
Now, you can make the necessary preparations as your business undertakes digital transformation. Through this 6-step roadmap, you’ll also be able to avoid a lot of automation pitfalls too.
At CiGen, we partner with organisations like yours to help you achieve the full business benefits of digital automation and establish a flexible operational environment for your future growth.
Our ultimate goal is to energise organisations and the workforce of tomorrow as digital technologies increasingly evolve toward Artificial Intelligence (AI), Computational Intelligence (CI) and Robotic Process Automation (RPA).
Harness the true power of automation with CiGen On Demand
Our team of RPA specialists are here to ensure you reap all of the rewards of business automation, while we address all of the potential risks.
We even provide an affordable automation service to small and medium-sized businesses through our CiGen On Demand subscription solution, making it even easier for your business to harness the true power of automation and earn back your valuable time.
Contact us today for more information on how we can help your business to succeed through robotic process automation.
