3 Signs You Can Get More Out of RPA
Blog: Appian Insight
Many of you are new to RPA, but some are actively investing in RPA already. If you are deploying RPA already, are you running into roadblocks? If so, you’re not alone. Those roadblocks are probably a sign that you’re ready to expand the scope of automation.
Here are three signs to look for, along with actions you can take to get more value from automation.
You want to drive greater enterprise automation but continually run into tasks that are not a good fit for RPA alone.
This is a clear sign RPA may not be enough to deliver on your automation goals. RPA is great for automating high-volume, rule-based tasks within stable, mature business processes. As a result, RPA can address only a subset of most organizational automation needs.
- What about dynamic tasks that change often?
- Long running processes that stay in flight for months?
- Tasks that require human judgments?
- Tasks that require complex rules and decision management?
These represent tasks that are good for automation, but aren’t good use cases for RPA.
What can you do? It’s time to look at other technologies, like BPM, case management, and AI in combination with RPA. These will help you automate business processes that are dynamic, long-running, and have complex rule and decision management needs.
You want to achieve orchestration of digital and human workforces.
New business applications will depend on the orchestration of digital and human workforces, along with AI. In many of today’s RPA implementations, people (mostly in IT) oversee and approve the tasks performed by bots and must manually manage errors or exceptions that occur while bots process tasks. This can lead to significant overhead and low ROI.
Your new apps will require automation coupled with the intelligence to identify and assign tasks to people only in the case of exceptions. Tasks can be associated with a completion time, escalated, or prioritized as needed to make sure collaboration is productive and the overall process stays on track.
What can you do? Orchestrate workflows between your people and the digital workforce. Scale bots without creating unnecessary overheads.
You want automation initiatives to make an impact on your business outcomes.
RPA provides a solution for enterprises burdened by the inefficiencies and challenges associated with manual processes. However, it’s not the end-all-be-all of automation.
According to Gartner, organizations should “Identify the DigitalOps tools that are closely aligned to your automation roadmap. Assess different technology markets and create a progressive investment plan to effectively deliver tactical and strategic business values.”
Building the right roadmap requires a hard look at different automation technologies, as well as an understanding of how they work together and their specific limitations. You won’t regret putting in the effort to understand how technologies like RPA, BPM, decision rules, AI, and low-code can combine to build and execute an overall enterprise automation strategy.
What can you do? Build an Automation Center of Excellence (COE) that considers how core enterprise automation technologies like RPA, BPM, decision rules, AI, and low-code can be used together rather than working in isolation.
Next week, we’ll dive into the other automation technologies discussed here. I’ll examine how they differ from RPA and how they can work together in perfect automation harmony.
To get even more up to date on RPA and other automation technologies, you can sign up for our Low-Code Automation Webinar Series. These live and on-demand webinars go into detail on automation and feature guest speakers like Forrester VP and Principal Analyst, Rob Koplowitz.
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