Teach Michael: Senior Leadership role in automation

[Michael_S]

Hey everyone,

Last month I joined SS&C Blue Prism, and the automation community, as a complete newbie. I came to you for help, and you responded gloriously with tips and advice on how to find the best processes to automate. I was blown away by how helpful you all were, and so this month - I'm back with more curious questions!

In particular, I've been looking at the different roles within an organisation that touch on intelligent automation. From citizen developer, professional developer through to heads of RPA and beyond. But one thing isn't clear to me yet - and that's the role of senior leadership.

So my question to you all is:

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What do you believe is the role of senior leadership in the adoption of intelligent automation within an organisation?

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In particular, I would love to hear about:

• How have your senior leaders been instrumental in the adoption of automation across the org?
• What do you hope/wish your senior leaders will do to help you reach your automation goals?
• And for those of you who are senior leaders - what do you do for your automation teams that helps them succeed?

I'm going to summon the brain power of @Vipul Tiwari, @Manpreet Kaur@Jignesh Khakhriya@jessetutt@Michael ONeil @shreya.khot as subject matter experts and to get this discussion going 🙂

I'd really love to hear from as many of you in the community, so please feel free to dive in and share your thoughts!
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💙 Michael
(I'm part of the SS&C Blue Prism Community Team)
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[EVIPUTI]

According to me, the role of senior leadership is very monumental in the adoption of intelligent automation within an organization. This is because they are the main driving force for any organization's technical ideology and growth. Their support is very much needed in undertaking of POCs and projects for automation. Atleast I have seen this in my organizations that they are the ones that go out on limb to get more and more complex automation usecases for our team and also enthusiastically support us in taking new initiatives as well. 

#MVP 

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Vipul Tiwari
Senior Process Simplification Developer
Amazon
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[Denis__Dennehy]

High quality sponsorship and leaders is essential to be able to scale RPA.

Without sponsorship the decisions and change required to make RPA transformational is impossible.  Without it lots of blockers will slow you down and organisational and IT solutions will be difficult and slow to solve.

An amazing leader is essential to run the main RPA COE.  Every RPA capability I have met that has truly scaled (hundreds of robots) have had dynamic leaders who can drive through change, collaborate well with other leaders, and force through barriers.  Ideally the Head of Automation will be someone that has led transformational change before and ideally she/he will report directly into the CIO or COO and have both execs as sponsors.

[devneetmohanty07]

Just to pen down my thoughts as I am working very closely with the senior leadership and am managing the entire RPA practice at my client side in my current role, the role of senior leadership without a doubt is critical in paving the way for the practice in a longer run. Not only, a proper vision of how scalable the practice can grow is important but also one needs to be pretty well aware of the existing model and how it needs to be shaped going ahead when you go to hundreds of bots in place. With focus now being primarily shifted to new initiatives such as citizen led programs, having integration in place with other teams involved in a multitude of technologies such as Data Science, Data Analytics, SAP and many more, a proper model needs to be thought about at the same time where maximum contributions can be made for businesses to grow.

Luckily, in my current client we have been blessed with a great senior leadership who have helped us tremendously to collaborate more with other teams and have also supported us in our initiatives along with communicating the tangible benefits and the potential roadmaps to other stakeholders from various side of the firm such as IT, business, operations and technology. A good leadership not only helps you to improve your current practice but at the same time ensures that the layer of transparency and the improvements in the existing vision of the program can always be discussed and enhanced with respect to what you have in place right now and what can be procured in the near future.

#MVP 

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Hope it helps you out and if my solution resolves your query, then please mark it as the 'Best Answer' so that the others members in the community having similar problem statement can track the answer easily in future

Regards,
Devneet Mohanty
Intelligent Process Automation Consultant | Sr. Consultant - Automation Developer,
WonderBotz India Pvt. Ltd.
Blue Prism Community MVP | Blue Prism 7x Certified Professional
Website: https://devneet.github.io/
Email: devneetmohanty07@gmail.com

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[Jignesh-JK]

I strongly believe that Automation driven through Top-to-Bottom approach works. I have seen many automation models where COE itself drives the RPA journey from identification to delivery, but it results in downslope in pipelines post few automations.

Hence, Leadership should be well aware & educated of this space of digitalization & they should keep pumping the new automation opportunities to the RPA along with required fundings. We can have centralized funding mechanisms where leadership agrees to fund dedicated teams to deliver their use cases prioritized by experts for given timeline - in this case COE did not need to be worried about finding use cases & fundings rather they can focus on Delivery & R&D for new possible opportunities.

#MVP 
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Jignesh Khakhriya
Senior Robotics R&D Engineer
Shell, India
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[GopalBhaire]

Hi Michael,

Senior leadership plays a crucial role in the successful adoption of RPA across an organization.

From my experience, I have seen that in many cases, employees in different departments are hesitant to embrace automation because they fear it will lead to job losses or disrupt existing processes. This reluctance can slow down the adoption of RPA and prevent organizations from reaping the benefits of automation. I think effective communication from senior leaders helps address these concerns and encourage business users to be more open to RPA. When leaders clearly articulate the potential benefits of RPA, such as increased efficiency and improved accuracy, employees are more likely to embrace the technology and be actively involved in the automation process. In one of the projects, we got the business involved as process controllers and few months down the line they were monitoring the bots themselves and also getting direct help from IT support in issues with the VDIs, idk maybe they are developing bots now :P. So, I think senior leaders also help foster this culture of experimentation and innovation.

Additionally, for implementation of RPA the senior leaders are important in allocating the necessary resources such as budget, devs, time of SMEs and then also the necessary support during phases like POCs (when thing don't go right always), or when there are hiccups for getting accesses or approvals for any system.

Communicating the successful implementation of RPA throughout the organization has also help build momentum for future automation projects. By highlighting the benefits and successes of RPA, senior leaders promote and encourage other business units to identify and automate additional processes. 

I have mostly been lucky to work with senior leaders who have had these traits and that has really helped me in my automation journey, and I hope I the same continues for my future automation projects. I think I will have to thank my senior leaders after writing this 🙂

Thanks

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Gopal Bhaire
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