Guidelines to Establish a Robotic Process Automation

AThere are numerous approaches you might take as your company begins its path into Robotic Process Automation (RPA).

Your strategy will be determined by your company’s culture, available resources (human and technical), and technological investment.

However, as part of the project, we strongly advise you to create an RPA Center of Excellence (CoE) as part of your long-term goals.

The guidelines below will assist you in developing an RPA CoE that will be sustainable, maintainable, and consistently improve your automation activities in terms of process and technology.

1. Establish an RPA Team –

Any Robotic Process Automation program will benefit from a fully defined team with stated roles and responsibilities.

RPA Sponsor, RPA Developer, Solution Architect (this can be both an IT Architect and an RPA Architect), RPA Automation Specialist/Controller (helps control the execution of the automation), and an RPA Business Analyst are just a few of the roles that should be included.

Dedicated Project Managers can also join the team, however, they will most likely be hired on a project-by-project basis.

It’s critical that the team has a charter and mission in order to govern their environment and establish a shared set of goals and values.

2. Build a Proof of Concept Bot –

This may seem counter-intuitive to the overall process, but you must first learn about the RPA tool that your company has chosen.

This will give you direct experience with the product’s simplicity of use and complexity, the benefits of automation. And how this tool fits into the organization’s bigger technological stack.

Having well-informed technologists and users will also help drive enterprise adoption and lead to more well-informed, well-informed decisions.

3. Establish an RPA CoE Steering Committee –

The RPA CoE Steering Committee will oversee and govern the RPA program, as well as gain a better understanding of the organization’s culture. And technology and how RPA can thrive there.

The group should include representatives from HR, Operations, and IT, as well as Finance and Audit. The committee, like the RPA Team, should have a well-defined charter with roles and responsibilities for its members, meeting frequency, and other details.

The committee should verify that any automation projects support the business and IT organization’s overall strategy, including the use of RPA across many business divisions to achieve economies of scale.

4. Create an RPA Strategy and Roadmap –

Organizations frequently continue to work on an automation and deploy them without having a long-term strategy in place. This is where having an RPA Roadmap comes in handy.

The roadmap will detail the program’s short- and long-term goals, taking into account. The organization’s technological needs and its organizational and cultural factors.

Organizational Change Management (OCM) is an important part of any RPA journey and will help to alleviate employee concerns, particularly those who will be directly touched by automation. The stronger your initiative becomes as the organization grasps “where we have headed”. And the beneficial influence it can have on their everyday tasks.

5. Create an Effective Governance Process and Model –

As RPA becomes more widely used across the enterprise, the need for new automation will increase. As a result, a Demand Management procedure must be in place to oversee this process.

The following items should be included in this model, but are not required:

• Selection and discovery of processes
• Guidelines for prioritization
• Calculations of return on investment (ROI)
• Oversight of the knowledgebase and any documentation related to the RPA program as a whole or a specific automation
• Establishment of business and IT best practices, including the RPA team
• Ensure that best practices are followed.
• Constant Service Enhancement (CSI)

6. Define an Operations and Support Model –

Organizations have assigned RPA duty to IT, but many have also assigned management and support to business divisions. There must be a specified methodology for how testing, deployment, and ongoing maintenance. And support will be handled, regardless of where it lives.

What role will RPA play in overall IT Change Management and Incident Management processes? Will production installations have to adhere to company standards, or will they be able to establish their own?

What role does Incident Management play for the Service Desk? How will changes to the applications that are used in automation be communicated? To the RPA team so that automation can be updated? What are the guidelines for testing and user acceptance?

All of these elements are crucial to an RPA program’s success and how it is supported on a daily basis within the organization.

7. Manage Organizational Change –

RPA, more than any other development in the workplace today, has the potential to directly affect employees.

That is why being proactive in your approach to OCM is critical. This encompasses not just employee morale monitoring while changes are implemented, but also operational planning and organizational redesign recommendations.

The more information that can be given to staff members – for example, an RPA 101 program – the more likely the program and subsequent automation will be accepted.

To smooth the transition across the organization, create Communities of Interest (CoI) groups with members from across the organization who can act as RPA Champions.

8. Continued Collaboration with IT –

Additional coordination between the RPA Team, IT, and end-users is necessary as RPA grows in the company and more internal and third-party apps are accessed via automation.

End-user-requested application modifications made by IT can have a direct influence on deployed automation and, if not managed properly, might cause issues in the environment.

To reduce potential consequences, more frequent and effective communication and collaboration are required.