6 Essentials Of An Robotic Process Automation Strategy
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is using technology to automate processes in a company. RPA excels when used for repetitive tasks like data entry, data extraction, report generation, client support, sales order, invoice processing, and sometimes, headhunting. Managers across businesses everywhere are now creating a robotic process automation strategy to help them achieve their strategic aims.
Research by insights firm Gartner shows that the RPA industry will reach $12 billion in 2025, up from $250 million in 2016. Such exponential growth shows that more and more companies will take up automation of processes in the quest for a more streamlined day-to-day operation. Robotic Processing Automation is essential for companies that look to become more efficient, reduce the cost of production, and streamline their operations.
So, if you’ve been considering a Robotic Process Automation strategy in your business, here are six essential questions to guide your choices:
What Is The Scope Of The Automation?
How much is your company willing to automate? The first victims of an RPA strategy are often the processes that are time-consuming, rule-based, and repetitive. When developing an RPA strategy, you must thoroughly analyse your company’s processes to determine which ones will get handled more effectively when automated and which will not.
After identifying which tasks will benefit better from the automation, consider how far the company is willing to go with the automation and how significant the changes will impact the business. The best choices of tasks to automate are those with high transactional volumes but are easy to automate and whose automation will be of greater value towards achieving company goals at a lower cost.
What Automation Tools Are You Going To Use?
Many factors determine your choice of automation tools. Some of these factors include the complexity of the process to be automated, the scalability of the tool, the cost of the tool, its user-friendliness, and support and maintenance options.
Of course, what may be relevant to one business might not be applicable in another; so when considering a Robotic Process Automation strategy, your choice of tool will depend on the factors mentioned above. You could get an RPA consultation from 1Rivet.com to help you better understand how your business will benefit and to simplify the process.
What KPIs Are You Looking To Achieve?
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are the values of measurement that show how well a company or individual is achieving the set goals and objectives. KPIs may include revenue growth, customer satisfaction, client retention rate, and others.
The choice of KPI will determine where the company will focus its RPA strategy and implementation. If a company chooses cost reduction as a KPI, its RPA strategy will focus on automating tasks that consume a lot of time and require a lot of resources.
Therefore, an essential of Robotic Process Automation choice of the tool involves choosing KPIs that’ll be directly impacted by choice of strategy.
What Is The Roadmap For Implementing The RPA Strategy?
A roadmap helps a company have a clear sense of direction and align resources toward the targeted strategic objectives. An RPA strategy often represents a drastic change in the company’s business. A company must churn out a clear and structured plan on how it aims to implement its RPA strategy.
This roadmap must include areas where automation can be effectively applied, which projects should receive top priority, how to allocate company resources, how to measure success and in what period, and many other considerations.
A good RPA roadmap must provide a clear vision of the what, the when, the where, the how, the why, and the desired result of the automation process.
How Will Employees Be Ready for the RPA?
Employee orientation is an essential factor to consider when considering an RPA strategy. Changes in any company, especially those that may see some employees lose their jobs, may be taken antagonistically and thus fail to achieve the targeted goals.
When developing an RPA strategy, consider how to implement it with the employees to make their work more efficient rather than how it will eliminate them. Also, employees must be trained to interact with the robots in their daily work, troubleshooting procedures, and other essential lessons.
How Will You Monitor Performance?
Regarding RPA performance, the most commonly tracked metrics include cost saving, gains in productivity, and reduced errors.
A series of tools available in the market would help you monitor your RPA performance. Each tool is made for specific platforms and specific KPIs. So, when developing or implementing a Robotic Process Automation Strategy, consider what performance metrics you will track and what tools will be effective for that.
Parting Shot
The essence of RPA is to reduce the need for your workers to engage in repetitive tasks. An effective RPA strategy will improve your company’s return on investment (ROI) by automating repetitive, time-consuming tasks, thus allowing employees to focus on other productive activities. It will also improve accuracy in automated processes. Overall, a Robotic Process Automation strategy is essential for any company that looks to increase productivity at a lower cost.
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