Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is all the rage at this turn of the century and is only expected to grow and evolve with time. To this day, RPA is one of the most cutting-edge tools available to the organizations. It is helping them increase customer satisfaction and save time, resources, and money by automating and improving the process-quality of the most repetitive, time consuming and mistake-prone tasks. With technology like that and with all the success stories flowing into the market, more and more businesses are jumping onboard.
However, various enterprises were unfortunate enough to experience failure with RPA. Unsurprisingly, the reason behind the failures was not the RPA itself, but the lies and promises regarding the RPA, that lead to it.
If you are considering introducing RPA to your organization, you may want to steer clear of these common fallacies:
RPA Brings Significant Savings
Organizations often end up disappointed with RPA because they were promised significant savings. Not only that, but RPA also ends up going wrong because of that very promise.
In hopes of making true of that false statement, organizations end up using an excessive amount of bots to automate tasks throughout their business. RPA for complex processes can deliver efficiency, provided it is complemented with user validation at the right stages. The process will also need to be intelligently broken down into simpler mini-stages, so that RPA can effectively automate the processes without increasing the complexity further.
As a result of not spending enough time mapping the process to the RPA platform’s capability, companies don’t get any results and their expectations of huge returns come crashing down. Sadly, they end up giving up on RPA entirely, when they really could benefit from it if not for the false promises made to them.
RPA Takes Time to Show Results
Another lie told to businesses is that RPA takes time to show results. As a result of this lie, organizations keep on waiting and waiting for the results to show.
Truth is, the best way to motivate the business leaders to keep investing in RPA is to show them benefits early on. This is the reason why the best vendors out there implement the RPA across a small set of processes and so smartly that the tangible results began to show up within eight-twelve weeks of implementation.
If the results are not seen by then, it means the vendor has wrongly guided and implemented the RPA.
All RPA Solutions Are the Same
This is just a lie most vendors tell to hide their lack of expertise or to use it as an excuse, lest the automation fails.
RPA functions on a consistent basic concept. However, there is a variety of automation tools available in the market, and every organization can find a suitable one for the best solution.
The implementation of RPA is the key to successful automation. A tool doesn’t even have to be extremely complex with various features to be successful. A simple tool that can guarantee ease of use, low cost of ownership, high scalability, ROI, quick time of deployment is the best solution for that particular business. Another tool might be more suitable and provide a better RPA solution to another one. Point is, all RPA solutions are not the same and that’s what makes RPA successful in all enterprises across a range of industries.
All Activities Can Be Automated
In order to sell, most vendors would promise just about anything.
While it’s true that RPA increases productivity and improves the quality of operations greatly, it is also true that it only automates tasks that tick off certain criteria.
Matter of fact, only 45% of the activities performed by employees could be automated by the RPA tools available today.
This percentage can bring significant growth to businesses but cannot claim that all activities can be automated.
Most of the activities could not even be fully automated and require human attendees. Yet they prove to be highly productive because the aptness of RPA, lies within the details.
RPA Can Correct and Improve All the Faulty Processes
This is another of those lies that vendors tell to lure their customers in. RPA tools automate repetitive tasks and take them off the hands of human employees.
When you are finding a suitable RPA tool for your business operations, you might even end up discovering some of the tasks that could use some simplification and improvement. But that’s the extent of RPA’s role in faulty tasks. It would always need a human’s cognitive abilities for that task to improve. And it needs to be improved prior to implementing RPA or it would end up automating waste.
RPA Is an IT Thing and The IT Guys Will Take Over It
The biggest lie anyone can tell you about RPA is that it is a matter of IT.
Sure, IT can ensure the smooth working of RPA but that’s it. RPA brings a massive change in the work culture of an organization, it has to be heavily integrated into a business. Hence, people at the top must be involved in the process. More than involved, they need to understand RPA from the basics.
You Can Get Rid of Most of Your Staff
Do not make the mistake of dismissing your staff because you were promised massive saving on wages. While it is true that RPA will reduce the operational grunt work of your organization, the largest leverage comes from empowering the employees to carry out more value-added tasks. The organisation can raise the overall level of their operations by leveraging RPA to remove dumb grunt-work from the responsibilities of their employees
How to steer clear and ensure successful RPA projects
Here’s what businesses can do:
- The top management must educate themselves on RPA by taking training sessions and learning about the real potential of RPA.
- No business should try to implement RPA on their own without internal or external expertise.
- It’s crucial to pair up with an authentic and experienced RPA vendor who can suggest suitable RPA solutions and identify automation opportunities within an organization
- Choose vendors who will provide continuous support as the automation innovates within an enterprise
- Make sure the vendor is futuristic and have the capacity to provide future-proof solutions
The bottom line is a business must conduct comprehensive research before choosing RPA tools for automation.
Omnisys Solutions has a well-developed practice in RPA, which supports both data analytics initiatives as well as carry out automation driven initiatives. With a focus on business value, Omnisys leverages RPA to deliver tangible dollar benefits to its customers.