Posts tagged: RPA

“Bots will take all our jobs.”

Job loss is by far the biggest fear in companies to date. Understandably no one wants to feel like their job is at risk; I had even read in the news how analysts were the most at risk as their roles were highly logical and data driven. As an analyst myself this was a delight to hear. When your RPA team start going into different departments to find automation opportunities fear of job loss is the biggest challenge they will face. It’s a very sensitive topic which needs to be handled carefully, otherwise it can stifle any momentum you were hoping to build.

Change management is vital to ensure the right messages are communicated but businesses need to be thinking about how their staff (their most value assets) can be upskilled and look at redesigning career roles and paths to align with digital transformation.

Bots should be seen as enablers to a workforce not substitutes because human workforce’s experience and intellect is too valuable to lose. In many circumstances RPA has seen an increase in jobs as teams become more productive and cause companies to grow. New technologies always give rise to new types of jobs. Bots can remove the burden of tasks from the workforce, but this gives businesses the opportunity to upskill their staff – by attending specialist courses. I once heard the phrase that ‘RPA should take the robot out of the human’ so that the human can do more interesting and creative work.

There’s a lot of scaremongering about a Terminator-style uprising where Ai becomes as smart as, if not smarter than humans and takes over. There was even a recent debate (August 2019) where Jack Ma and Elon Musk debated the benefits or threats of Ai becoming smarter than humans.

Whatever the theories about what Ai could achieve, what we know now is that Ai is miles away from being smart enough to replace humans. Yes in March 2018, an Ai system was able to read handwriting faster and more accurately that humans could, and for other specific tasks (like playing chess or Go), Ai can out performance humans. Ai can even understand natural language, it can learn, and it can recognize images, but it still is a fair way from replicating human intuition and reasoning and having general intelligence.

Many leaders in technology believe we are already effectively Cyborgs, fully dependent on our technology. Your mobile phone is pretty much a prosthesis as many of us could not exist without it for more than a few waking hours. However, technology has always been an enabler, now allowing us to move through life at lightning speed compared to 30 years ago.

Intelligent automation and Ai bots are no different. They are virtual assistants and digital workers that improve staff productivity and enhance their careers. These intelligent bots are owned by their team (not by IT) to do the lower straightforward work, leaving the higher-level thinking to us humans. Bots are there to enhance our efficiency and effectiveness, not replace it.

However, as business leaders, an important stat you need to be aware of is that when companies introduce RPA about 65% of staff feel their roles are in danger. Like a cancer this can be harmful to your organization as fears spread to two thirds of your staff. If your company is serious about its digital transformation, it’s imperative that you engage with HR and address emotional resistance so what your most valuable assets feel valued.

Granted, RPA will remove the need for a many jobs and reduce the size of teams, as it allows individuals to become more productive. Where a job had required ten people to manage the volume of work, augmented with RPA, it would now only require 7.

So, the big ethical question is, what happens to the other 3?

This seemed to be the most sensitive and generally most avoided question in the media, though of late I’ve seen it become more talked about as technology advances and automation becomes more ubiquitous. Understandably every business has a natural attrition rate, due to performance, retirement or people moving on to other careers. However, businesses should have a plan for how to redeploy their top resource if possible.

• Can they be re-deployed to another team that would otherwise need to hire external staff?
• Will the company itself expand its workforce in the near future, and thus does it make more sense to keep these staff who already know the business, customers and processes?
• Can we upskill them so they can move into a more technical role to support the new digital workforce?

As a responsible RPA leader, now is the time to start engaging with HR to review the re-structuring of employee progression paths in line with these new automation capabilities. This not only will mitigate fears of change and job loss spreading through your organization, but will also keep knowledge in-house

Perhaps a new way to answer this question could be; where a job had required ten people to manage the volume of work, augmented with RPA, the same team of 10 can now do the job of 14 in your ever-expanding business. Re-deploy, upskill, grow

You can learn more about implementing RPA (Robotic Process Automation) and intelligent automation at Leania.co. The virtual consultant. Online support 24/7

You can read about Lean IA’s trademarked AEIO YOU method in their new book Business @ the Speed of Bots, Succeeding In The New Age Of Digital Transformation

…that are causing teams 99 problems to digitally transform

“Transformation is a process, not an event” – John Kotter

If you’ve been involved with change management you most likely would have heard of these words – which are from the world-renowned change management and business thought-leader john Kotter, and he’s written several books on the subject such as his New York best seller “Our Iceberg is melting”. The essence of his message and approach to change still runs true in this new digital age, as I hope to show you today

—–RISE OF THE MACHINES ——

With the tech trends of the last few years suddenly accelerated by recent global events –  it is becoming increasingly difficult to direct teams and strategize as the world becomes more digitally reliant without technological awareness steering the ship.

As technology begins to infiltrate every industry, market sector and every job, CIOs, as a Mckinsey article put it, need to “move from being a functional to a strategic business leader”. If a company does not have a CIO, the non-techie business leaders need to become more tech-savvy to navigate in the new technology age to leverage cutting-edge tech and create value.

There are common traps that business leaders who are new to automation technology fall prey to. These surprisingly common pitfalls and mistakes end up causing an array of consequential problems and challenges down the line – so I’d like to address this at the root from which most or all problems and pitfalls stem from

—————– digital workers, not software ——————

But firstly, robotic process automation (RPA) is functionally quite different to traditional software changes – firstly because RPA is strongly business led (mainly by the COO and the operations team). The reason lies in the history of RPA which was designed to put power in the hands of the business and alleviate pressure for the IT department. RPA allowed the business (with expert guidance and support) to implement solutions and navigate technical roadblocks of old legacy systems faster, in a couple weeks or months, rather than waiting on cumbersome technical changes which could take years.

The other difference is that RPA is used in a very new way to other software, because effectively RPA ‘robots’ are virtual workers who do specific menial tasks – repetitive and mundane processes like copy-and-pasting customer data from one system to the next, or processing invoices.

SO, WHAT ACTUALLY IS RPA

RPA is a software platform, alike a virtual worker, that can mimic any menial and repetitive tasks your staff do on their computer, as long as the process has a logic workflow, with rules-based decisions and it doesn’t require human intuition.

So no matter what type of business or industry you are in, if you have staff doing repetitive tasks, this is a waste of their time and intellect, and waste of your money – as an RPA virtual worker, costs one tenth the cost of a full time employee, doesn’t take breaks and can work 24/7,365

Intelligent automation (IA) combines automation tools like RPA with Artificial Intelligence to further enhance the scope of what your virtual workers can do, be that; reading emails, extracting information from scanned invoices or forms, or even replying to customer via a chatbot

This suit of powerful technologies can save vast amounts of time on menial tasks and unlock six, seven or even eight figure financial savings annually from your business, whilst also increasing speed, throughput, accuracy of service and improving compliance and customer and employee satisfaction.

Many business leaders in industries not yet on the forefront of automation do not feel that this is right for their business and this is fair to think as vendors have focused mainly on Finance, Manufacturing and Insurance industries. However currently about 50% of businesses have started to use RPA, though it is forecasted that by 2025 97% of all businesses will be taking advantage of this modern technology.

Further exploration on how businesses can get started with automation is covered in another article, however I’d like to draw your attention to one data point:

“50% of all investments in RPA (and AI) fail”

This is a concerning reality I have been investigating for several years now, as almost all businesses in a few short years will be utilizing automation and AI, but only 50% of their projects will succeed – so let’s take a look at common reasons for this

1. Lack of senior or business leader tech-awareness

Where senior leadership teams are not fully aware of or can’t articulate what process automation is, it can be difficult for these innovative leaders to get their peers or seniors bought in. Furthermore, it becomes even more of a challenge to fit this into the corporate strategy and develop a roadmap for rolling this out enterprise wide

Leadership team that have a good and aligned understand of how robotic process automation and artificial intelligence (aka intelligent automation) should be used to transform the business and build centre of excellence teams to govern this will led in their market. Most businesses know that they need automation, AI, a chatbot and other buzz words to modernise, but not every leader truly understands how to leverage these in practice

2. Matching wrong technology to use case

“Easy when you know how”

choosing the wrong process for RPA or AI is by far the most common mistake we see businesses make in every industry, and it becomes an expensive PROBLEM, both in money, time and patience. Furthermore, it can result in projects being shut down, and then reopened a year later under new management. There’s also the cost of hiring external consultants to fix the issues and help teams unlearn bad habits – as well as re-gaining commitment from frustrated stakeholders

Identifying automation suitable processes is really quite straightforward when you have a tried and tested method for identifying, assessing and implementing processes. Having a data-backed approach and mechanism is a logic challenge against certain politics and influences and ‘teams who shouts the loudest’. It’s a challenge I’ve come up against many times however by using business data and a scientific approach it was much easier to persuade stakeholders on the best course of action

3. Poor stakeholder education and communications

“Your most valuable assets – your staff”

Implementing process automation to save hours and days of menial tasks from your employees working lives may sounds good financially, but actually can sound very daunting to employees, as it can stinks of replacement and redundancy. Poor (or lack of) communication from the business is the reason for what is by far the biggest cause of RPA and AI project failure – staff resistance to change

Staff need to be empowered with the know-how and the understanding that technology as always is here to augment our work so we are more productive. Teams need to b shown that the benefits of automation means less late nights trying to meet deadline, better job satisfaction due to doing more creative and human-to-human work instead of tedious, repetitive, mind-numbing tasks.

Granted, it would be naïve to believe that no staff member will become redundant or lose their jobs. As an analyst for many years, I have repeatedly heard that analyst roles were most likely to go as they were highly logic and methodical– perfect for automation

However, for societies and businesses to advance, old jobs (just like old business models) that no longer work will need to be modified to those that do. And having a training plan for employees serves everyone two fold.

1 – employees are upskilled and trained to do their job in a new way or do newly created jobs, or staff are re-deployed into different teams that are growing

2 – employees leave companies and enter the marketplace newly skilled to be repositioned into a faster growing industry

4. Lack of time and commitment from SMEs

“Making automation a corporate priority”

Stakeholders of RPA projects generally have unrealistic expectations as they believe implementing automation is a lot faster and simpler – but unless they’ve been made aware, they wouldn’t know what actually goes into automating a process.

Process owners and subject matter experts are who automation teams interact with the most to identify the problems, design, build and test the solutions. As they play such a central role it’s imperative that they and especially their managers understand at a high level the general process for delivering automation, as the project will literally live or die with them. They hold the knowledge of the process, the have the access to the process data.

What I’ve witnessed and heard from peers is that team managers (either un-informed or resistant to change) will dedicate an hour or two of one or two SMEs initially but then re-deploy them back into Business-as-usual work and have limited availability and put it as low priority going forward – again RPA is a fairly new concept and stakeholders must be shown that these changes is a process, not an event

5. Not streamlining process first

“Garbage in, garbage out”

There seem to be two schools of thought in RPA. Roll out automation quickly, leaving the processes as it is. This immediately positively impacts the bottom line with financial savings. However, re-engineering a process to optimise it first doesn’t speed up a bad system (which could put immense strain on bottleneck or result in an unstable robot), but provides a better return on investment and gives you a more robust bot due to a simpler process

Lean thinking is a great combination to RPA and AI, as many companies are starting to form Lean teams in tandem with their RPA team.

These 5 key mistakes cause hundreds of problems and can be boiled down to these 3:

Businesses failed to transform their automation plan because:

1. They didn’t know how to get started and couldn’t build momentum
2. They had technology skills gaps throughout their core and stakeholder teams
3. They didn’t have a clear plan which showed how automation would be rolled out or how help achieve various corporate objectives

When you’re in the mists of ‘doing automation’ it is sometimes hard to find the time to take a speak back and understand what is and isn’t working in your RPA delivery. Make projects have stalled, staff aren’t as engaged anymore, or key stakeholders are looking elsewhere to invest their budget to save time and money, like in outsourcing.

I can’t now remember which business psychology book I had read this, however an important point it made was that you can’t perform whilst you’re in a learning phase and you can’t learn when you’re in a performing stage. This is why in our AEIO YOU methodology, reflection is a keep step in RPA delivery.

You can’t perform whilst you’re in a learning phase, and you can’t learn when you’re in performing stage

I’ve seen many teams that have processes and frameworks set up and keep running and hitting a brick wall, repeating this action each time, hoping the wall may eventually break (though you may run out of money due to minimal results before that happens).

So, here are a handful of questions to ask your self, your business and your team at each stage of the AEIO YOU method to help you identify where you may have potential areas of improvement in your RPA team and implementation process, which may encourage finding a new method that fits your situation

A: Aware & Align

Are YOU Aware?

It’s vitally important to win hearts and minds by being visible and taking key stakeholders along with you through the transformation journey.

1. Can you and your RPA team clearly articulate in a sentence or two what RPA and intelligent automation is?
2. Do senior managers in Operations, IT and HR understand how RPA and intelligent automation can impact and benefit their teams and departments?
3. Do directors and C-levels understand how RPA and intelligent automation can fit into the organisation’s strategy? And do they have congruent realistic expectations?
4. Do team leaders and staff members understand how RPA and intelligent automation can enhance their performance, productivity and job satisfaction?
5. Do your RPA and Intelligent Automation Centre of Excellence and Operational Excellence teams understand the various myths and challenges as mentioned, and are they aware of how to avoid common pitfalls?

Otherwise can you combine several RPA hubs or centralise resources, tools, and knowledge so you can learn and improve faster?

1. Are all RPA opportunities identified, assessed, and measured in the same way?
2. Do all developers and support engineers work to the same coding standards?
3. Do you have a standard tool kit, including checkpoint criteria and templates for each stage of automation lifecycle?

E: Educate & Empower 

Are they educated?

Test whether your Centre of Excellence (CoE) team has educated your entire staff:

1. Can key stakeholders and staff involved in RPA projects clearly explain what RPA is, and what the benefits are at a business, department, and individual level?
2. Have you connected with HR to educate them on the emotional impact of digital transformation with regards to new career paths and incentive structures?
3. Has everyone in the teams you’ve targeted for automation attended at least one lunch & learn session or workshop?
4. Do teams understand what the eight types of waste are?
5. Do team managers understand what metrics must/should be collected to assess a process’s performance and suitability for RPA?
6. Does your CoE have its own intranet portal with information, shareable material, and a forum for requests and questions?

Do they feel empowered?

Verify that your CoE is providing the tools, templates, guidance, and training need to accelerate your digital transformation strategy:

1. Has each team interested in RPA been given an automation catalogue template and guidance?
2. Is the CoE having regular communication with teams who are pursuing RPA to ensure they are using the right tools, and using them in the right way?
3. Has the CoE received any positive feedback or interest from staff keen to learn more about the technology or take on more responsibility to assist in identifying and assessing opportunities?
4. Has HR communicated that the CoE may provide new roles in the near future?

 I: Inspect & Ideate

Inspect: Have you identified and prioritised opportunities?

Review these questions below to confirm that your team has prioritized your automation candidates in a logical way:

1. Have you measured your processes by effort (AHT x volume) and potential saving?
2. Do you know which handful of processes make up 80% of all your team’s effort?
3. Have you reviewed your top processes in detail to understand their complexity?
4. Have you plotted your top processes by Effort, Benefit, and Ease of Implementation on the Complexity quadrant?
5. Have you provided the leadership team with a visualization of the makeup the department’s processes so that they can strategically prioritise which processes to automate first?

Ideate: Have your solutions involved all the right people?

It’s important to include those stakeholders that may cause or be affected by the existing problem and may be impacted by the solution when implemented:

1. Have you involved key stakeholders from the team(s) that are upstream from your process, who feed information into your target team?
2. Have you involved key stakeholders from the team(s) that are downstream from the process, who receive information from your team?
3. Do all the root causes identified by the workshop group relate to all the problems being experienced in the target team?
4. Have you first considered lean process re-engineering?
5. Did you have a technical expert present in your solution design workshop?
6. Did you have full participation with everyone’s opinions being heard and respected?

O: Optimise 

Are your processes lean?

Before moving to the automating stage, look back and see how much waste you’ve removed from the process and see if you now have a lean process to automate.

Remember that the purpose of Lean Six Sigma is to meet the customer’s expectations as fast as possible, and in RPA and intelligent automation, Lean Six Sigma can greatly increase the ROI of your initiatives. See how well you can answer these questions:

1. Have you identified all eight wastes in your target process and team?
2. Have you mapped out your target team or process in a SIPOC?
3. Have you identified non-value-added areas using a VSM?
4. Is your CoE’s physical and digital work environment organized using the 5 S method and ready to scale?
5. Have you run a root cause workshop and used the 5 whys to discover what the potential root causes are for the inefficiencies in your target team?
6. How much waste have you eliminated in the proposed future state model, even before you automate?

Y: Yield 

Are you getting value?

The big question clients, stakeholders, and senior leadership will ask is, are they getting value from this digital workforce? Look at these questions to make sure your team can answer this:

1. Was performance of the processes measured accurately before they were automated?
2. Do you have visibility of your bots’ performance, via logs and a dashboard?
3. Do your internal/external clients have visibility on how their bots are performing?
4. Are you regularly tracking the bots’ and CoE’s performance metrics that answer the right questions?
5. Have you found ways to quantify qualitative data? (cost of errors/re-work, using Net Promoter Scores etc)
6. Have your robot performance indicators helped teams discover potential ways to improve on the most common systems and business exceptions?

O: Organise & Oversee 

Are you in control?

Go through these questions to confirm whether your Support team have all their bots under control and the team has a scalable structure.

1. Do you have someone carrying out each role shown in the Support CoE structure (even if some of your team are wearing several hats)?
2. Do you have a transition manager who is a separate person to the developer and support engineer?
3. Do both the Development and Support teams use the same agreed coding standards, best practices, criteria, and knowledge base?
4. Do you regularly provide process owners with bot health and performance reports and discuss seasonal or future volume increases?
5. Do you have a prioritization mechanism and triage process for handling requests and defects?
6. Are you continuously looking to optimise your CoE through the same lens as when inspecting a BAU team? (automate repetitive tasks, using self-service portal for clients and process owners).

U: Uncover, Upgrade & Upskill 

Have you identified ways to enhance your bots to gain more benefits?

Keep circling back to the beginning of the AEIO YOU lifecycle to stay aware of new emerging technology and education.

1. Is your team aware of the plethora of different types of AI capabilities on the market? (e.g. chatbots, ICR/OCR)
2. Have you meet with different AI vendors and watched demos of what their products are capable of doing for your business?
3. Have you run any POCs with vendors to demonstrate first-hand how much value their ‘bots’ can add to your CoE team?
4. How serious (or nervous) is your business at implementing AI into their business processes?

Want to get a clearer understanding of your RPA/CoE teams stregnths and weaknesses, take our straightforward multiple choice test and receive a free report that scores each sections and breaks down your results with useful actions you can use today to improve

TAKE THE RPA TEST

You can learn more about implementing RPA (Robotic Process Automation) and intelligent automation at Leania.co. Lean IA Consulting

You can read about these tips and tools used in their AEIO YOU method in their new book Business @ the Speed of Bots, How to implement RPA that scales