Decoding Robotics Process Automation (RPA)

RPA to be successful needs a lot of best practices and a multi-pronged strategy to circumvent the challenges writes Subi Sethi, Vice President, Business Excellence, OGS

Over the last few years, Robotics Process Automation (RPA) has been a much-talked about trend across several industries. Many companies have either have taken to the technology or are still working on it.

However, there are issues which have stopped the companies from adopting it in totality. Companies are successful when they think of the concept but are challenged when it comes to upgrading their technology for large scale adoption across their businesses, geographies, and divisions.

The challenges which the companies face are numerous and varied. However, certain issues run across most of the companies. Few of them are:

Lacking the big picture: The lack of clarity when it comes to finding a solution to the big issue is a problem which runs across many organizations. The companies are stuck in coding as many internal business processes are known to daily users who lack the bigger picture. The management teams fail to convey the end picture to the teams who work on the ground resulting in failure of proper implementation and scaling of solutions. Too much focus on the coding and not solutionizing results in improper adoption.

Piecemeal strategy for implementation: The lack of a comprehensive RPA strategy which runs across the organization often results in failure as various departments undertake their own RPA route which are either incompatible which each other or do not speak to each other. Hence, at the end of the day, each unit is trying to do something which doesn’t fit in the organization level capabilities. By the time the units start communicating about their progress, it is usually difficult to undo certain changes in each unit. The infrastructure built is ad-hoc and hence inefficient for long term scalability.

Start big, disregard the details: On the other hand, there exist instances where companies dream big and hence start big when it comes to RPA implementation. Instead of starting small and building on it, process by process in a planned manner, organizations start on a huge scale which is usually doomed to fail. Many a times they do not even have the right internal capabilities to stay on the right RPA journeys they wish to undertake. There may be misses if the internal teams do not realize the importance of expertise and experience an external agency can provide and are themselves not well equipped. There maybe instances where an internal team is capable but they haven’t been given the authority to take strategic decisions. Since these teams maybe more technically inclined, they may lack the management aptitude. Hence, it is important to have the right balance of technical and management aptitude for the teams implementing the solutions.

Fortunately, most of the challenges which the organizations face can be avoided with proper planning, management buy-in, building a proper ecosystem and design thinking.