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Hello!
My name is Ronan, I started working at BluePrism last year as a new Analyst/Developer in our Centre of Excellence (CoE) in the Warrington office. It has been amazing so far and I wanted to write down what I experienced in my first month.
To give you a bit more information, my background wasn’t in RPA, I’ve worked in the drinks industry, for Ernst & Young, and even in industrial sales. I’ve always liked processes and making work more efficient so when this role was advertised I had to apply for it, and (after a very fun assessment centre and nervous interview) I got the job! I had worked with another automation software with EY which was a lot of fun but I didn’t even know it was considered RPA at the time.
Everyone was lovely in the interview and it felt like a great fit and I couldn’t have been more excited. I had a 2 month notice period but the team even invited me out for a meal during this period to catch up which was completely out of the blue and extremely welcoming.
I did a bit of background reading to get me up to speed during my notice period including the books by Leslie Wilcox, which are a good read on what RPA is and how it should work in a company. And then it was time to start the role!
Week 1:
I started out with learning the basics of automation and the software, that you can find on the portal here: https://blue-prism.docebosaas.com/pages/24/welcome-to-blue-prism-university, to get a better understanding and bring me up to speed whilst going through induction and settling in. If you don’t currently have access you can download the learning license for free here -> https://portal.blueprism.com/products/learning and this isn’t just for the basics, you can continue to use it until it expires once you’ve gone through everything!
I started with the Robotic Operating Model which is a really good foundation to learn about how automation should work in a business, and the best practices to follow. It teaches you the roadmap of an automation and how they should be planned out, implemented and controlled throughout their lifecycle. If you are involved with automation at your work or want to get involved I would definitely recommend this module.
The BluePrism Foundation Training was next, and in all honesty it was a lot of fun. Everyone was more than happy to help out if I got stuck and it kept me busy and focused in those early days in a company you can often get, where there's normally not much you can do.
It starts by teaching you the basics one chunk at a time from how to spy and open programs to how to use the functions to interact with programs and how to handle when exceptions come up.
A little tip I would say is as the start of the videos you can often save a bit of time playing them at 1.5x speed, although I have mentioned to the education team that a 1.25x speed would be ideal!
It was also useful that I made some notes in the form of a cheat sheet with the quick tips that I could reference, without having to go into the notes for each slide when I came to the 'consolidation exercise'.
The training is laid out very well and the consolidation exercise near the end asks you to build a complete end to end process, piecing together all the little bits you learnt along the way with less help so you become more independent in your ability. In total, along with inductions and other work, the training and a first draft of the consolidation exercise took me the working week.
Being new to the industry this was a big change but it was all so exciting learning about why, when and how processes are automated in a business. Everyone has been welcoming and very helpful with finding my way around everything from meeting bookings to microwaves!
Week 2:
Week 2 and I’m still here!
At this point I had also gone down to London with the team to see everyone and meet more people that we will be working with as the CoE grows. I know this is a classic trope of joining a new company but everyone is genuinely lovely and happy to talk to you if you want to.
After the consolidation exercise was complete this was marked by the senior developer in our team and then I was pointed in the direction of the 'BEST PRACTICE' guides.
These are the guides that ensure anything you build is made in the most efficient and most effective way to be robust to challenges and reusable in the future by other people as they should be.
Now there's a reason they don't start you off in this as if you don't know what you're doing it's easier to learn how to do it in a way that suits you and then adapt that to how it SHOULD be done.
It is a bit of a tweaking process but I studied a science so I'm used to the classic "what you just learnt isn't quite right" trope. It is all very useful and teaches you the best practice for your objects and your overall process, I would definitely advise that you make notes as well to use in the re-consolidation exercise.
This was a couple more days of me now fitting the process I've built (and if I'm honest was rather proud of) into a best practice template and add in all the necessary extras that it would need if it were to go live and be released.
This took me the second week to go through with the few re-drafts that I had to do to make it good and proper.
In the end I passed them all and got a much better understanding of just how much this software is capable of and I am looking forward to building my own objects in the near future!
Weeks 3&4:
The past two weeks have been full and somehow also flown by at the same time! After my training there has been a plethora of other opportunities and experiences to go on. I was included in a trip to visit a client and see how they use BluePrism which was fascinating, as well as some ways of working that we are looking to use to improve ourselves. Whilst we were out there I even helped run a session on critical thinking workshop, looking at what we want to do in the future with our wider team.
Now that I had passed my training I was helping out in discovery workshops, working alongside other teams to see how we can help them. It felt really good to be able to be given responsibility for a project that I will lead the discovery of and eventually the build early in the new year!
Next week I am going to our partner (and my previous employer) EY's Manchester office as BluePrism are sponsoring the Smart Futures scheme they run. This has been run for a number of years throughout the regions of the UK by the EY Foundation. It is a wonderful scheme where EY provide children from low income areas who are at high school, with learning sessions and paid work experience. Part of this scheme includes providing them with a professional mentor, who is DBS checked and NSPCC certified, for this period who they can talk to at any time in confidence. I can’t wait to get involved again as it’s such a great program to be a part of. If you want to learn more follow this link: https://www.ey.com/en_uk/corporate-responsibility/ey-foundation/ey-foundation-accelerate-programme-smart-futures
I hope this has been enjoyable for you, if you are new to the industry or if you have someone who has joined your RPA programme in your company then definitely feel free to share your stories! We want to hear from everyone, what went well, what you felt helped you the most and what you have been able to do for others. Who knows you might help improve someone else’s onboarding process.
It's safe to say that there is vast array of opportunities to get involved in and I’m enjoying exploring them all so far. See you all again in my next blog!
Thanks for reading,
#Employeediaries
