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| Read this strategy guide if you work in Corporate Services and want guidance on creating an impactful RPA strategy that delivers
By following this strategy guide, you will have everything you need to improve productivity, staff morale and, most importantly, continue delivering a quality service for your customers with RPA.
By the end of the guide, you will know:
- Step-by-step, how to build an RPA strategy that works
- How to measure your automation strategy and see if it’s working
- How to win stakeholder buy-in for RPA and build an automation-friendly
workplace - How other private corporations are applying RPA
What is Robotic Process Automation (RPA)?
Quick recap:
RPA is a type of automation technology that can mimic the same interactions a human has with a computer.
With it, anyone can record the steps they follow to complete a work process once, then have a virtual worker follow those same steps and take care of that process for them.
Some of the main benefits are:
- Speed and accuracy: RPA 'bots' can help people perform tasks much faster, and with zero errors
- Increased productivity: Get more done with the same working hours and number of staff
- Increased colleague morale: Automate tasks that workers don’t enjoy and free them to focus on the ones they do
- Integrate people and processes: Look at how work is being done and improve effeciency by removing silos
- Increased compliance: Bots can be fully tracked and audited
How can automation help Corporate Services?
Setting the scene
Two factors have forced the majority of private companies to consider a digital transformation in the last 12 months:
2. Changing consumer preferences: COVID-19 pulse survey: 45% of customers will exclusively use digital channels to engage with brands in 2021 and beyond.
What does this mean?
How RPA can help
The importance of strategy
If you’re reading this automation strategy guide, likely recognise the potential benefits that RPA could offer your organisation already.
At this point, your challenge is likely to convince others of the same.
Automation technologies like RPA aren’t new, but they’re not common yet either. Innovators must be able to evidence value quickly to win over stakeholders, and effective strategy is the key to doing that successfully.
We will show you how to make sure your first RPA implementation strategy has best possible odds of success by showing you:
- How to measure the impact of your RPA strategy
- How to get internal stakeholders on board early
After a quick case study, we’ll get started with Planning - what to prepare and who to get involved in your RPA project first.
“Working with boxxe has been a fantastic experience, they saw my vision and brought it to life, adding their own innovative and forward-thinking ideas.”
- Jayne Allport, Thirteen Group
CASE STUDY #1
Thirteen Group
Challenge
Thirteen Group agents required fast access to documents to manage their 34,000 properties effectively. However, their document management process was slow and prone to mistakes.
This meant that agents wasted lots of time finding lost documents instead of focusing on other more important tasks.
Solution
We built an automatic storage system to make document management easy and error-free. Using RPA and Optical Character Recognition technology, our system reduced their 6-step document process down to 1.
Outcome
It took 20 seconds to correctly label and store each document instead of 2 minutes with our system. Scaled across Thirteen’s 100,000 records, this adds up to 2,000 hours won back for high-value work.
| Preparation
Build your team
Whether you have a dedicated team to support your RPA strategy or colleagues that can only contribute a few hours each week, you should start your strategy by ‘recruiting’ two colleagues for the following roles:
1. An RPA sponsor: This is the senior level champion for RPA within your organisation. This person can help secure buy-in from other
senior stakeholders for important decisions, and have budgeting influence.
2. An RPA evangelist: This is your project lead, and the person responsible for driving the project forward (likely the person reading this strategy guide).
Another important task they have is to speak with other teams in your organisation and identify processes for automation.
'Scout' governance team candidates with a workshop
Next, start your automation strategy on the right foot by assessing organisational fit, appetite and readiness for RPA. The best way to do this is by hosting an internal workshop with potential candidates of your RPA strategy governance team.
Depending on the resources you have available, your workshop can be led by a specialist RPA vendor like boxxe, or by your RPA evangelist. Either way, you want to make sure that you have someone in the room with RPA expertise to help guide the conversation.
HELPFUL TIP
To help develop your own automation expertise ahead of this workshop, use Automation Anywhere's extensive library of free digital RPA training courses.
We recommend that representatives from these departments get an invite:
- Human Resources: Keep your community and colleagues at the heart of your plans by working with HR from the start. This partnership will help you address common automation concerns, and communicate the value of RPA across the organisation
- Communications: A common misconception around automation is that it’s a gateway to job loss, and not simply a tool for getting more done. Bring your communications team into conversations early to help them understand and communicate these benefits to your colleagues
- IT/Project Manager: RPA is most valuable when it works across a number of different programs and systems. It’ll be a huge help if you have someone in the room who understands the systems a ‘virtual worker’ might need to work with to help build your RPA implementation model (i.e. the process of deploying RPA out into operations)
- A rep from another company that is using RPA successfully (optional extra): A growing number of offices are using RPA successfully, consider asking if a colleague at one could join your workshop virtually and offer guidance.
“This isn't a case study in data migration; this is a case study in elevating human potential through technology.”
- Brian Klochkoff, Dentsu
CASE STUDY #2
Dentsu Aegis Network
Challenge
Dentsu, the 5th largest ad agency network in the world, spent the first half of 2020 migrating from legacy systems to newer, more efficient digital platforms.
Without an Application Programming Interface (API) to help migrate data, dentsu were faced with moving 2.8 million records manually.
Despite only taking 70 seconds to move each file, it would take 41 employees working for an entire year to complete the migration.
Solution
Instead of hiring hundreds of temporary employees for a manual copy-and-paste job, dentsu used robotic process automation to complete the entire migration unattended.
Outcome
Using RPA to automate 17 workflows, Dentsu saved 125,000 hours and completed the entire migration in just 6 weeks.
What to prepare ahead of your workshop
A 5-10 minute presentation to introduce RPA
Start by defining RPA, talking through relevant case studies, and introducing the aims of the workshop.
Workshop objectives
Clearly state what you hope to achieve by the end of the session. This can be as simple as getting answers to questions like:
- Could automation benefit our workplace?
- Are there any specific processes that could be automated?
- Are there areas of our organisation where staff are stretched and automation could help?
An elevator pitch
Run an internal survey ahead of your meeting (Optional extra)
- Do you feel like any parts of your work could be more efficient?
- Do you feel like your department has any inefficient processes?
- Do you believe that you could contribute more value to your workplace if less of your
time was spent on administrative tasks?
| Planning
Choose a process to automate first
The best processes to start automating carry high organisational value. Avoid low-risk/low-reward examples which will make it tough to make your business case for RPA later. Example processes you could choose are:
-
Recruitment process
Automating hiring tools for specific keywords allows for an added focus and time on choosing the right candidate - Internal help desk support
From FAQs to company policy, smart bots give immediate answers that help save time - Customer support
Automating customer queries eliminate the need for human involvement completely. To prepare, we’ve created a checklist to help you find out whether RPA is a good fit for your chosen process.
Find out if you're automation-ready by reading our Automation Checklist.
Define success with SMART objectives
Before implementing RPA, set clear objectives that clearly define what success looks like, and you’ll achieve it. An easy framework for drafting these is SMART. A SMART objective is:
- Specific: Try not to create a more generic strategy statement like ‘we will make
customer invoicing faster’.
Instead, be specific about the aspects or areas of your service that you aim to
improve with RPA. This will stop project drift and make it easier to choose KPIs for
measuring success. Speaking of … - Measurable: Set a numerical goal for your automation strategy where possible. It should be time-specific, measurable, and define the staff/customers that will be impacted. This will help you avoid scope creep and monitor progress while your strategy is ongoing.
- Achievable: If you’re unsure about the potential of automation, work with your vendor to understand the technology and set realistic targets in the timescale you have.
- Relevant: You should link your automation strategy to service outcomes or costsaving in a way that demonstrates clear value to stakeholders. This is where your RPA sponsor will come in handy, getting steer from a senior member of staff will help your automation strategy secure buy-in from other parts of the organisation.
- Timely: Set a clear time-frame for when the objectives of your automation strategy should be achieved.
EXAMPLE SMART OBJECTIVE
Reduce administrative time spent invoicing suppliers by 60% before 30 June 2023.
Test with Proof of Concept
RPA is already a proven technology, but can it solve your organisational needs? A Proof of Concept (PoC) will put your business case assumptions to the test, validate your implementation model and help you to understand how your colleagues in the operation react to RPA.
A PoC project is a little tricky to advise on in a general sense, so instead we’ll offer two useful tips to help get you started:
Tip #1: If you don’t want to test RPA on a customer-facing process, we recommend
starting with a smaller, less risky process in departments like finance, recruitment or HR.
Tip #2: Any roll-out of automation, whether it’s a PoC or full deployment, requires that
the affected staff receive effective training in advance.
Whether you use a vendor to run a ‘train-the-trainer’ approach or you encourage everyone
to make full use of free online courses, a digital transformation like this requires on-going training and development to be successful.
| Deployment
Use what you’ve learned in a (hopefully) successful PoC, and move onto a full deployment. If you’ve followed the steps before, by now you’ll have:
- An effective governance team and support system in place to enable an
effective RPA deployment - Contacts in Human Resources and Communications to help you create
an automation-friendly culture in the workplace - A chosen process, or set of processes, that you plan to automate
- Clear criteria for measuring success in your RPA implementation strategy
Our automation experts are on hand to support you at any point in your strategy, and we offer a free RPA Discovery Workshop to help start your automation journey. Visit www.boxxe.com/automation to arrange yours.
| About boxxe
Our expertise in enabling fast, effective digital transformation has been proven over the past 30 years.
Our 5 delivery hubs, (Platform, Workplace, Security, Data and Digital), form an integrated whole that can secure the future of corporate services.
You can read more about how these 5 elements work together and what we do.
Read our Automation Strategy Guide and interested in RPA for Energy and Utilities?
Start your digital transformation by booking a FREE Digital Workshop with a boxxe Automation Specialist. Simply call us on the number below or complete the form to get in touch today.