Key Success Factors for an Enterprise RPA Program

[ashutosh.agarwal]

It is very interesting when speaking to enterprises who are in various phases of their RPA journey. Most are also eager to hear stories of other enterprises and where they are in their journey. Lot of curiosity to know if the challenges are similar and how others are addressing the challenges that they are facing.

The factors that make each organization’s journey unique include organizational culture, organizational structure, business-IT relationship, geographical spread, size, overall IT maturity of their ecosystem and the structure of their RPA organization. Despite these differences, most of them have several commonalities. Further there some enduring common success factors that stick out from most of them. 

So, what are some examples of unique customer journey trajectories? Well, here are some common and some not so common ones:

• A start with a central CoE formed under business that delivers an initial set of automations and then rapidly scales to cover a significant part of their business functions.
• A start within a one of the business units which focuses on some quick wins for that business unit. Delivers for the immediate opportunities but fails to scale and reach the economies of scale and saturates out. Team reduces to skeletal staff and over time due to lack of support, work moves back to humans.
• A central CoE which delivers early successes only to find itself stuck without much pipeline after the initial successes. Funding challenged and the team is ring fenced to a small flash-in-the-pan team.
• An initial start with a CoE which delivers robust automations and then moves to federate out mentoring the business units set up and run their own teams
• A central CoE set up by a leader who understood and drove the RPA mandate within the organization. However, as the leader moved out of the organization, the CoE didn’t have any Chief Evangelist and with diminishing pipeline and prospects team members move out leading a slow decline of the CoE
• RPA initiative taken by a business unit (but no CoE was formed) and it slowly declined as a lot of automations failed in production and work was moved back to humans

The list can go on.

The top three common factors across such examples which significantly contribute to an organization’s success are:

• Executive buy-in at the highest level that provides that impetus, air cover and organization buy-in to kick start an RPA program against the organizational inertia. A strong business leader who has view and authority across the organization is best suited to anchor this buy-in.
• A program that is outlined, driven, managed and communicated around the business value it delivers. The focus should be to set automation targets aligned to business benefits (like hours back to business, dollars back to business etc), track these post go-live, and include them in the governance with business. 
• A stream of early successes in the first 12-18 months to get a critical mass to set the program in motion. Hence it is also important to ensure that the early candidates for automation are chosen carefully. 

A business-led, IT controlled Intelligent Automation program built around the principles of Robotic Operating Model, is the best way to start on this journey aligning to these key success factors. While this will provide the basic premise for success, the above three factors should be baked into the Vision, Governance and Pipeline, and overall Organization for ensuring a journey that scales up rapidly on a back of a strong business traction.

#ROM
#COE