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Mini guide: How to talk to executives about the process automation?

Blog: BPM tips

After publishing the post about RPA I got many comments from readers. One of them asked about very interesting topic: how to make executives interested in the process automation. So, I decided to make a follow up (mini) post with good practices on this topic.

The question I got was: “How to tell the story about BPM and automation & robotics to top management so that they see this as a valuable topic to listen?”

Below you can find the answers. You can either read everything or use the navigation below.

Ying Chen
Adam Devine
Michael Heffner
Bart Peluso
Mihir Shukla
Neil Ward-Dutton

Ying Chen (Pegasystems)

As the Head of Product Marketing for the Pega 7 Platform, Ying Chen leads the strategy, positioning, and go to market for Pega’s industry recognized platform for digital transformation. Ying comes to Pega with more than 10 years of software product management experience leading Fortune 1000 organizations and VC-backed startups with varying software development methodologies to deliver award winning product solutions and enabling enterprises to make the leap from water fall to Agile. Ying holds an MBA from Boston University Graduate School of Management and a Bachelor of Science from Carnegie Mellon University.

WWW: https://www.pega.com
WWW: LI profile
Twitter: @yingchen42
Twitter: @pega

How to tell the story about BPM and automation & robotics to top management so that they see this as a valuable topic to listen?

Don’t start with the technology, start with the value that will be created. For example, RPA by nature lends itself to quick wins and rapid value creation when you focus the impact on automating small % of work rather than 100% of the work. Tasks like searching, rekeying, verifying, conforming (manual knowledge guidance), repetitive applying of the rules, signing in to multiple systems, and keeping pace with changing rules are all great examples of automations that yield rapid ROI that are non-invasive.

Build your story around how starting with RPA, you can fund additional automation projects to drive even more transformative productivity and cost savings. This allows you to leverage the ROI from RPA to parallel the codification of those automations on a case management platform, eliminating redundant tasks and optimize inefficient applications. This is important as the more automations you build, the ability to effectively create and manage the business rules and having access to a platform that already has proven capabilities to ensure enforcement and compliance will be key to complete your automation strategy business case. Make sure your story doesn’t end with a tactical conclusion by talking only about RPA – which is fairly focused on tactical execution. Ensure you provide a tactical to transformation path that allows the organization to pivot into different focus areas as you mature your transformation journey. Remember, the RPAs you create today might become redundant tomorrow when you’ve had the opportunity to streamline your operations and improve your engagement.

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Adam Devine (WorkFusion)

Adam leads market development, product and brand marketing, and strategic partnerships. He began his career in management consulting in the Financial Institutions Group at BearingPoint and has spent the past 14 years in tech product marketing and advertising. He was most recently director of strategy at 360i.
Adam holds a bachelor degree from the University of Vermont.

WWW: http://www.workfusion.com
WWW: LI profile
Twitter: @Devineous
Twitter: @workfusion

How to tell the story about BPM and automation & robotics to top management so that they see this as an valuable topic to listen?

If you’re a C-level executive, which would you rather see your business invest in: a 5-year, $10 million custom integration project that starves your entire business of IT resources for its entire duration and may or may not deliver intended results, or a 1-year adoption of intelligent automation software that puts the power of transformation on LOB leaders already working to improve service delivery? It’s a total no-brainer. RIP custom integration. Long live automation!

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Michael Heffner (Appian)

Michael Heffner is the Vice President, Global Banking and Capital Markets.

Mr. Heffner is responsible for aligning Appian’s vision to the challenges faced by today’s financial services sector. This includes using IT to drive business value, increasing operational excellence and driving new levels of customer engagement. Mr. Heffner is a seasoned veteran who has helped organizations across the nancial services industry achieve success through innovative approaches to problem solving.

Prior to Appian, Mr. Heffner was Managing Director, Business Transformation at State Street Global Markets. He has also held management positions at Accenture and Charles Schwab & Co. Mr. Heffner earned a BSBA in Economics from the University of South Carolina and an MBA with concentration in Finance from Babson College.

WWW: https://www.appian.com
WWW: LI profile
Twitter: @jet_tag
Twitter: @appian

How to tell the story about BPM and automation & robotics to top management so that they see this as an valuable topic to listen?

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has emerged as a cost-effective technique to get work done. As RPA software “bots” automate high-volume, repeatable tasks within existing processes, they free efforts and enable attention to higher-value digital interactions that build relationships and trust while expanding revenue opportunities.

Extracting value from automation often entails redesigning entire processes; not just automating individual components of the process but rather implementing end-to-end renewal.

With the advent of RPA, financial services executives should reconsider how they manage digital process automation and supporting information technology. Benefits of improved accuracy, cycle time, and process productivity are best realized by those who take a strategic approach to integrating RPA into an overall automation architecture for digital transformation.

For mortgage origination, McKinsey estimates that “Automation could cut the current process time in the United States from an average 37 days to less than 1, which not only cuts costs but eliminates errors, reduces defaults, raises customer satisfaction, and lowers drop-out rates.” [McKinsey Quarterly, July 2017, A CEO Action Plan]

To maximize your results with RPA, apply these three best practices and ensure your technology partners work with you to achieve the anticipated results:
1. Stop Thinking Tasks; Start Thinking Results
2. Focus on the Customer Journey
3. Integrate for a One Risk View

Excerpt from the report “Robotic Process Automation The Path To Digital Value For Financial Services Institutions” quoted by permission of Michael Heffner.

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Bart Peluso (Blue Prism)

Bart Peluso III is the Global Head of Product Marketing for Blue Prism, the company that invented Robotic Process Automation (RPA). He manages product marketing strategy, competitive intelligence, technical alliance marketing and the customer advisory group. Prior to Blue Prism, Bart led Product Marketing for disruptive new technologies at Cisco, CA, Dell and the revolutionary start-up Mesh Networks. Bart enjoys boating, hiking and music with his family in Austin, Texas.

WWW: https://www.blueprism.com
WWW:Company LI profile
Twitter: @blue_prism

How to tell the story about BPM and automation & robotics to top management so that they see this as a valuable topic to listen?

Top management knows that reacting quickly to market opportunities and consistently producing delightful customer experiences is key to success in this fast-moving digital world. However, they may not be aware that their complex business processes and legacy business systems do not have to slow them down. Appian BPM, integrated into the most successful digital workforce, Blue Prism, transforms many legacy systems to drive digital transformation.

We advocate that business leaders consider the market leaders of BPM & RPA. Appian and Blue Prism offer a new way – better and faster – to deliver innovative business applications that improve decision-making, mobilize key data and processes, and unite business and IT in driving bottom-line performance. Faster implementation, better service to customers and reduced risk. Learn more here. Download the Appian connector for Blue Prism here.

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Mihir Shukla (Automation Anywhere)

CEO and Co-founder.
Mihir is a visionary in the automation space, having helped define a new, 3 billion dollar market category for business process automation (BPA). With the aim of constantly producing and innovating on automation software that is easy to use, and utilizes enterprise social collaboration and mobility platforms, Mihir leads the charge in driving billions of dollars in savings to millions of businesses, transforming the way they operate. An engineer at heart, Mihir focuses Automation Anywhere as a whole on creating groundbreaking technology that changes the way businesses think about automation. His previous experience includes leadership roles in internet, e-commerce, and wireless market leaders at the forefront of innovation like E2Open, Kiva, ISN, Netscape, Infoseek, and Omnisky.

WWW: https://www.automationanywhere.com
WWW: LI profile
Twitter: @mihirandnow
Twitter: @AutomationAnywh

How to tell the story about BPM and automation & robotics to top management so that they see this as a valuable topic to listen?

We are seeing an integration of technologies as newer, better solutions emerge. It is inevitable. Businesses are looking for faster, more responsive, higher performance automation technologies. This is one of the reasons IBM has chosen to partner with Automation Anywhere, implementing RPA into their broadly used BPM solutions. This is just the beginning.

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Neil Ward-Dutton (MWD Advisors)

ward-duttonNeil Ward-Dutton is MWD Advisors’ co-founder and Research Director, and is one of Europe’s most experienced and high-profile strategic business-technology advisors and industry analysts. His areas of expertise include digital transformation, business process management (BPM), enterprise architecture (EA) and IT strategy.

Neil acts as an advisor to large European organizations across industries and sectors as diverse as financial services, retail, utilities and government – as well as providing advice to a number of leading technology vendors.

WWW: https://www.mwdadvisors.com
WWW: Free report: Robotic Automation: What is it and why should I care?
WWW: LI profile
Twitter:@neilwd
Twitter: @mwdadvisors

How to tell the story about BPM and automation & robotics to top management so that they see this as a valuable topic to listen?

When it comes to selling RPA, BPM and automation to senior managers: you might start by learning from the big consultancies – they’re the ones driving almost all the activity in this space today.
When we look at how these companies are engaging and selling, we see the main focus being on discussions about the business operating model and the value of ‘digitizing operations’ (some will even talk about a ‘digital workforce’). Sales pitches are made to Heads of Operations, and the talk is all about automating routine operational administration work in order to increase speed, increase accuracy, improve compliance, reduce waste and improve customer satisfaction. The emphasis is on the amount of work that ‘robots’ can do repeatably and accurately, when compared to human administrators. Fundamentally, it’s an argument about use of resources and return on those resources. It’s not principally about technology.
Ultimately there are more angles to the value of automation, but this is where we are today.

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