A SHORT GUIDE TO RECRUITING A DIGITAL WORKER How to get started?

Transcription

1 A SHORT GUIDE TO RECRUITING A DIGITAL WORKER How to get started?

2 The content and materials provided on this document are property of Digital Workforce Services Ltd. Digital Workforce reserves all rights to mechanically or electronically copy or share the document including making photocopies without the owner s written permission. All trademarks are acknowledged and used to benefit the trademark owner. PUBLISHER: Digital Workforce Services Ltd, Mechelininkatu 1a, Helsinki info@digitalworkforce.fi 2

3 The purpose of this document is to offer some ideas in the selection of services and solutions for organizations who plan to implement virtual workforce (a.k.a digital workers). 1. THE DIGITAL WORKER The digital worker allows efficient process automatization without changes to existing IT-systems. The technology is particularly applicable to repetitive knowledge work routines that require high precision and speed. The digital worker enables organizations to quickly set up processes in an agile way. Testing new products or processes is both inexpensive and fast with the support of virtual workforce. The digital worker mimics the behavior of a human employee in computer based routine knowledge work. The robot uses the existing applications the same way as their human colleagues would do and is learning the new tasks Consider first what do you want to achieve with digital workers. similarly to a new employee. The implementation of digital workforce requires no changes or additional integration to existing IT systems. APPLICATIONS The digital worker makes it possible to automate and integrate processes, that were previously considered too expensive. Relying on expensive traditional solutions, high integration levels are typically found only between main systems in organization s core processes. The lack of integration, is in many organizations, complemented with manual labor. The aim of deploying virtual workforce is to increase productivity by freeing up the human employees time for more valuable use such as customer service or planning. In addition, digital workers support the organization s agile development of processes, that would have previously required slow and costly changes to IT-systems. 3

4 When choosing the right technical solution to deploy digital workers, it is important to consider not just how to improve productivity and support agile development, but also how to maintain flexibility in IT. The selected solution should support future changes in the existing IT systems. The key to flexibility is a component-based approach that allows constant changes in systems without extensive rework on every change. SAVINGS POTENTIAL The use of virtual workforce greatly shortens lead time and decreases the work load associated to business development projects. On average, training a digital worker to complete a simple process takes about 5-10 working days. Compared to a manual process the costs of a process run by a digital employee are less than a half. Depending on the process, one digital worker typically compensates for 2-5 FTE s (man-years) worth of human labor. IN-HOUSE CAPABILITIES To successfully hire a digital worker, the recruiter must attain at least basic knowledge of RPA (Robotic Process Automation). In the most impactful cases, the customer organization s RPA-team or Centre of Excellence (CoE) has had an active role. These functions are often set up connected to IT management or Project Management Office. The RPA CoE is a small team formed by people whose mission is to support process development in the related business units by helping to prioritize processes applicable for automation. It also monitors the quality of automated processes. In addition, the CoE is responsible for managing the work done by digital employees together with the owners of the automated processes on the customer s end. Think how could you set up recruiting, tuition and management of your digital workers. They won t organize themselves. 4

5 2. DIFFERENT ROBOTS SHOULD BE HIRED FOR DIFFERENT JOBS Digital worker is a commonly used name for a software, which helps users to automate daily routine tasks. Digital workers can be roughly divided into three groups; virtual assistants, RPA (Robotic Process Automation) and artificial intelligence, i.e. cognitive-based support systems. The choice of technology should be based on evaluating what solution best fits the organization s needs. VIRTUAL ASSISTANCE A virtual assistant is a personal productivity tool installed on a workstation, that allows the local automation of processes. Typically, a virtual assistant is taught to perform by recording a full or partial process. Virtual assistants are excellent for improving an individual s work productivity and ability to manage knowledge work routines or to automate simple processes. The responsibility for automation control is always with the workstation user. Limitations of virtual assistance are the static nature of applicable processes and challenges in change management. As the process changes automation paths need to be recorded again. Virtual assistant is typically a personal tool for an individual and it is not typically so easy to deploy it as a team tool for the whole team. SOFTWARE ROBOTS Software robot (RPA - Robotic Process Automation); is a comprehensive solution to enhance work productivity across the organization. The solution allows the automation of processes in several teams simultaneously. Software Robots are typically best suited for reasonably large organizations and / or to automate large-scale processes where control and flexible scaling are important. Think what kind of process you wish to automate and what skills are required of the digital worker you are planning to recruit. RPA is particularly suitable for knowledge work routines that are recurring and rule-based. 5

6 One digital worker can compensate for 2-5 FTE s worth of human labor, depending on the process. The modern software robot is component-based. This enables flexible maintenance and change management of processes even when applications used by the robot are changed or developed. In addition, the software robot s components are usually re-usable in the automation of new process. The majority of the digital workers available on market and in production today are rule-based RPA solutions. Digital Workforce applies a solution based on a technology developed by Blue Prism, which can also be utilized as a cloud service. CONGNITIVE DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEMS AI-based systems continually learn about target processes or information systems. Typically, cognitive (decision support) systems analyze quickly large amounts of data from multiple sources. Operating as the user interface may even be talking with your computer. Cognitive (support) systems understand complex issues presented to them in everyday language, and offer answers based on analyzed information. Cognitive (support) systems learn constantly from various interactions and add to their information resources. The systems utilize big data and combine different sources of information. Examples of cognitive system are IBM s Watson and IPSoft s Amelie, used for customer service. In addition, various chat bots are robots that understand spoken language in a limited form and are able to respond to customer in natural language. 3. SOURCING AND PRODUCTION MODELS The sourcing and production patterns of digital workers are similar to those of any other IT system. The share of IT being provided as a cloud service is continuously growing, as these solutions don t require large investment to new information systems or operative skills. 6

7 OWN DATA CENTER VS. CLOUD RECRUITMENT GUIDE The sourcing model of a digital employee can be license-based, cloud-based (SaaS), or process-based (BPaaS - Business Process as a Service). In a license-based model, the customer acquires technology licenses and software updates from the software vendor. The customer is responsible for providing the hardware resources as well as the organizing their operations and monitoring. The billing is typically based on license and maintenance fees. In the cloud-based model, the supplier is responsible for the technical implementation as a whole and the customer pays for capacity, for example, a monthly fee based on the amount of robots reserved for the client. In addition, the customer organization is responsible for the day to day supervision and team management of the robots. Digital employees may also be acquired as a Business Process as a Service - BPaaS. Such service is, for example, the Digital Worker as a Service -concept provided by Digital Workforce. BPaaS services are charged on the basis of executed tasks or process. In this case, the supplier is responsible for ensuring that the robotic capacity is sufficient at all times and that the determined tasks are carried out within an agreed time-frame and at an agreed service level. All sourcing models require robots for production, development and testing. When calculating the total costs of the different sourcing models the whole robotic capacity needs to be taken into account along with the the cost related to hardware resources, maintenance, operation and monitoring services. 4. DEPLOYMENT AND PRODUCTION Consider your options for sourcing: Do you want to do as much as possible in-house or are you looking for a turnkey solution? Whatever model you choose, the same steps will follow when deploying a digital 7

8 worker; configuring ( teaching ) digital worker, daily supervision of the digital worker, the technical support for production and finally continuous change management & process development. PROCESS AUTOMATION TRAINING A DIGITAL EMPLOYEE The automation of processes with RPA is based on LEAN methodology. The digital employee is trained to new processes the same way as a new employee. How will you arrange tuition for your new digital worker? You need to create a document which provides detailed working instructions how to perform the tasks to be automated. You need to bear in mind when creating the document, that the instructions should be on the level that they can guide any new employee to perform the manual process without any prior knowledge about the systems or the processes. The work instructions are turned into a process model for the digital employee. The process model is linked to the applications used by the digital worker and broken into tasks, after which the process is ready for testing. Before moving to production, the customer needs to perform acceptance testing of the automated process. 8

9 MAINTENANCE AND CHANGE MANAGEMENT OF AUTOMATED PRO- CESSES In an environment of tens or hundreds of automated processes, the maintenance and change management become crucial. The chosen technology solution must support the continuous development of processes and allow regular updates to applications. How will you set up further training and changes to job descriptions of your new digital colleague? Deploying digital employees accelerates the development of processes and enables efficient testing for new products and services. When updating applications, it is however necessary to take into account also a new employee group, the digital workers. Digital workers use the same systems as human employees do. When applications are updated it is important not to forget about testing digital workers with the new version. It is also crucial to include the possible changes to the digital employee s work instructions before updated versions are transferred into production. In this sense the digital employee is no different from people. It gets confused, as a human does, if the applications have been updated to behave in new way without including the changes to work instructions. For this reason, the service provider(s) of digital workers should be integrated into the change management process to ensure uninterrupted production even after changes to applications. SERVICE ADOPTION AND DEVELOPMENT PROJECT In the service deployment phase the robots are set up, depending on the sourcing model, either in a shared cloud environment or in their Don t forget to arrange a workstation and access to necessary tools for your new digital colleague. 9

10 own customized environment. In both models, digital workers appear to the customer as ordinary end users with all the necessary user accounts and permissions. Digital employees are recommended to be connected to the customer s own access control system (for example, Active Directory). When this is the, case the digital workers are automatically included in the centralized user and license management processes. When planning the automation, it is important to recognize that the same software needs to be set up on the digital employee s workstation as on the human s whom it assists. In addition to the normal operating system updates, the new versions of utilized software application must be provided to the digital employees workstations. SUPPORT IN THE PRODUCTION PHASE Consider your support model: Who will assist the digital worker in the middle of the night in case it runs into an issue? Will it have to wait until the morning? The extent of the support provided at the production phase, should be matched to the automated processes as well as the service level requirements of the used applications. If the digital employee works outside the office hours and the service it carries out requires immediate response or allows no interruptions, equal level of support services must be organized for the digital worker. This may require 24/7 service to which the customer can move to step by step, for example, a process at a time. Typically, a basic service level is coverage and 24h response time and it is sufficient for the testing and development environments. FINALLY: Hopefully you have decided to hop on board! We trust that recruiting a digital worker will turn out to be one of the best decisions you have made! Yet, as it is with people too, hiring a digital worker requires some planning and attention along the process. 10