Practical Tips for Maximizing ROI on Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Investments

Top customer success secrets to close the time to value gap when leveraging RPA for digital transformation

With 72% of business leaders seeing process automation as an advantage and 80% of executives believing that it boosts productivity – RPA is fast becoming the technology of choice to close the time to value gap during digital transformation initiatives.

Traditionally digital transformation projects were large undertakings, utilizing big systems and projects, for which it could take years to complete and see some sort of ROI. The emergence of Robotic Process Automation has substantially reduced the time to value gap by simply leveraging the same systems that humans utilize in order to complete work. This inherently takes away the need to change an enterprise’s core systems.

Lets have a look at some powerful insights gained from some of our most successful customer RPA implementations and what they did to close the time to value gap during their digital transformation projects.

1. A Quick, But Realistic Start

In order to realize greater value in the short-term by reducing implementation challenges, it is critical to understand the nature of RPA implementations, with a realistic time expectation for completion. A key insight to consider is the difference between mapping out human tasks versus robot tasks. For example, a 15 step process flow for a human could require up to 50 steps for the robot to complete. Any workflow spec exceeding 30 steps, will typically require more time, a later start and a longer time frame to achieve outputs. Our most successful customers have discovered that selecting shorter processes, which can be delivered in two to three months, establishes momentum in their process automation journey.

2. Develop A Center of Excellence (CoE)

Creating a centralized team to build, run and maintain all of the organization’s process automations, is the first step towards formulating and regulating your process automation approach. With a well-trained team, designing, running and reporting on process automation successes and failures – the value realization and sustainability will increase. This will also create a strong framework to increase and scale up your process automations to support any key changes within the business.

3. Consider Combining Pure Robotics & Desktop Automation

NICE customers who combine pure Robotic Automation (process automation without human intervention) and desktop automation (process automation with human involvement) generally achieve the greatest value from their RPA investments. Typically, only 10%-30% of processes can be automated with pure robotics or unattended automation, leaving much scope for desktop automation to be leveraged to further optimize process efficiencies and support employee performance. This combination essentially expands the efficiency of human staff on 2 levels:

• The pure robotics alleviates employees from the very repetitive and tedious tasks that they are expected to action on a daily basis. Replacing software robots with these mundane human tasks, is essentially taking the machine out of the human by freeing up humans to focus more energy on higher value activities that require a human touch.

Example: Human employees will have more time to consult with each and every customer, focusing on resolving more complex issues. This approach has proven to increase process efficiency and customer satisfaction scores dramatically.

• Desktop Automation or a personal digital assistant for employees is designed to support employees during every step of a process, through real-time process guidance. In addition employees can offload certain tasks to software robots to action on their behalf. This is designed to boost employee performance and raise customer satisfaction levels.

Tip: Not only is the digital assistant guiding an employee to ensure a process is followed, each step can be captured, verified, and audited for compliance. This data is a treasure chest for process analytics teams, and is a key item for those operating in heavily regulated industries.

Only NICE has the experience and expertise to seamlessly automate more complex process scenarios by combining pure robotics and desktop automation. This powerful combination can enable greater process efficiencies. There is no need for a process automation to stop when an error occurs, instead, NICE Robotic Automation has the capabilities to seamlessly alert a human to intervene and resolve a process error or complication, in real-time. The process automation can then resume without any down time.

4. Measurability is Key

Establishing a set of metrics and then tracking and reporting on the performance of the process automations against the predetermined metrics, is essential. Some elements to report on include: time saving and volume of automations i.e. how often are the automations running? It is also advisable to have an onsite lab that mirrors the actual production, with an IT team overviewing it.

Source: Nice.com-Practical Tips for Maximizing ROI on Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Investments