In order to be successful, the Vision for your Digital Workforce should directly align with corporate strategy and should work towards achieving aligned business objectives.
The vision should be cascaded from the top of the organization to ensure that the transformational change required to establish a successful capability is embraced and supported by all key stakeholders across the company. Having an Executive Sponsor in place who can support the RPA program and remove obstacles is an essential element, no matter where you are on your RPA journey.
In order to succeed, the project will require buy-in from a core group of stakeholders, spanning the business and IT, who will use their unified vision to get the rest of the company on board with the cultural change that automation will bring.
Unlike other technology-driven initiatives, automation is most successful when it is driven by the business and supported by IT. Since the business realises the efficiency and productivity benefits, it is best positioned to understand the goals and determine success for the endeavour and be the driving force behind the change.
IT has its own enterprise-grade standards that need to be met, and will be instrumental in giving the digital workforce the data centre access it needs to be truly effective.
Until you can articulate a clear shared vision, you are unlikely to win over all the key stakeholders that you need in an organization to make your implementation a success.
We provide information to help you create and establish your vision and strategy within this section.
Key Benefits of RPA
Increased efficiency and productivity:
- Automation of processing activity releases human capacity and results in efficiency gains
- Enables humans to focus on higher-value judgement based decision -making and customer relationships
Greater operational agility:
- Automations are quick to develop and deploy, and components are re-usable
- Ability to interact with any application
- Robots can be managed and scheduled centrally, and work can be instantly reallocated to manage demand peaks
Reduced operational risk:
- Higher Quality & Consistency
- Process automation results in standardization of best practice
- Complete eradication of processing errors
Superior control, governance and IT security:
- Standardization of processes to improve control and consistency
- Increased security and privacy when handling sensitive customer data
- Segregation of roles between development and operations
Enhanced business insight:
- Wealth of transactional data captured in audit logs provides a foundation for delivering true business insight
Checklist
To help you build an RPA vision and strategy we highly recommend that you take our checklist into consideration:
- Is the RPA Vision aligned with the corporate strategy?
- Is the RPA Vision clearly defined and articulated?
- Is the RPA Vision and Strategy regularly evaluated and revisited to make sure that it still aligns with the corporate strategy?
- If the answer is no, find out how you can Build a Vision.
- Are all key messages communicated to key stakeholders?
- Is there a defined, clear and agreed communication plan?
- Is there a measurement of how successfully key messages are communicated to key stakeholders?
- Is the communication strategy revisited and adjusted on a regular basis to communicate more effectively the key messages of RPA?
- If the answer is no, find out how you can manage communications.
- Is there an organizational design in place to support delivery of your RPA capability aligned with your corporate strategy and culture?
- If the answer is no, find out more about Organizational Designs.
- Are the wanted outcomes of RPA measured? Are there any Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure RPA success?
- If the answer is no, find out more about Measuring Success.
- Have you engaged with senior stakeholders?
- Do you have a senior sponsor?
- Have you created a business case?
- If the answer is no, you can find tips on Building a Business Case.
- Is there a plan in place to overcome resistance and remove barriers during the RPA journey?
- If the answer is no, you can find tips on Overcoming Resistance.