Strategizing Robotics Process Automation. ARUN RISHI KAPOOR TECH MAHINDRA LIMITED August 2017

Transcription

1 2017 Strategizing Robotics Process Automation ARUN RISHI KAPOOR TECH MAHINDRA LIMITED August 2017

2 Time is the greatest money making asset any individual can possess - Ed Slott. With ever increasing competition, reduced profit margins and advanced disruptive innovation, one of the biggest challenges faced by any business is increase productivity & improve customer services so as to attract new customer and retain existing ones. One of the core reasons of emergence of automation industry wide is to ensure that business can continue its operations seamlessly without any impacts caused by human inefficiency. However, even with increased automation, the productivity and operational efficiency are hit because of human-centric problems around: Communication gap Understanding the bigger picture Poor management and supervision Inconsistency in work Inadequate technical knowledge As a result of these, there is often more time consumed by employees doing manual jobs viz. reworking on similar horizontal and vertical processes, collating & processing information, investigating, validation, comparing reports, summarizing reports and so on. In such circumstances, very little time is devoted to those crucial tasks which have a positive impact on customer experience tasks which make it extremely easy for the customer to learn about you, buy from you, and get support from you as and when they need it. Due to economic competition, many companies across various industry verticals are looking forward to mechanism to make their employees apply latest skills and intelligence in their work. Swaying away the burden of manual tasks and engaging employees in best possible ways to create maximum value out of their actual business is crucial for an organization s survival. When all business tasks are well organized, it helps an organization produce more useful product and services for the end users. Bots for automation The sole idea of automation was not to replace full time employee with bots but to give employees enough time to add value to the product or service, so that customers choose their organization over the competitors. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is an automation software or a piece of code which can perform human actions based on defined rules. RPA is not meant to make judgmental decisions, or to predict intelligence in the task or take any kind of supervised/unsupervised learning decisions. Such tasks belongs to the Cognitive Task Analysis which emphasizes on tasks requiring cognitive activities such as reasoning, remembering, decision making, problem solving, making judgment, etc. Typically, a bot is meant to replace human s repetitive, mundane and tiresome tasks where there is big impact on the operational effectiveness and business revenue. With the right mix of bot viz.

3 rule based bots, logger bots and analytical bots in a process flow plus using RPA framework, brings various advantages as represented in the diagram below: intent and context of the user. For example optimizers, logger bots, etc. Analytical Bots: The super bots or an intelligent personal software assistant understand the intent and context of the user/system and serve the end user based on the previous actions/supervised learning mechanism. They belong to the cognitive task analysis mentioned above. Organization of all sizes, are working towards recognizing the potential in automation to become more customer-centric, imbibe innovation as core strategy and improve quality of their end product and services. Recognizing the potential of Automation An organization must formerly understand the right mix of various types of bots and then evaluate to map their ability to provide the right result at the right time: Rule Based Bots: Understand the inputs that a user/system provides and are limited to giving results based on userdefined rules. These software bots do not understand the

4 Leveraging the human capital One of the challenge when initiating robotic process automation implementation is to handle employees fear of job-loss and gain their cooperation during strategy and implementation phases. It is crucial for an organization to determine these impacts and mitigate any risks associated with productivity and behavioural issues by letting their automation team involved in change management assessing factors like: To map employees existing skillset Skills set requirements post RPA implementation Setting up career path for their employees Identification of new roles / jobs for next generation processes Besides automation, digitally enabled human capital is very critical to enhance productivity and quality of the product and services. The industry needs more strategic and innovative thinkers to compete in the global markets. The employees are expected to go beyond their usual roles and undertake thought leadership roles in respective departments. On the basis of human centric problems, the employees should be granted reasonable time off for enhancing demanding skills which enables them do corporate functions more effectively and efficiently. Such an arrangement is only possible when companies start looking shifting their focus from mundane everyday tasks; which can otherwise be efficiently executed using robotic process automation. With the right fusion of digital workforce and efficient execution by bots, the companies can harness the opportunities in the global markets. An ever increasing adoption of new technologies such as analytics, big data platforms, cloud computing, internet of things, etc., the companies are realizing the value of skilled workforce and new job roles viz. data scientists, data engineers, big data analysts, marketing technologists, IoT architects, visualization analysts, strategic thinkers, etc. The employees with right skills can help an organization milk the several revenue generation opportunities that they might miss otherwise. Sustaining Global Transformation The advancement in Internet of things (IoT), machine to machine communication (M2M) and communication technologies is expected to generate zettabytes in next 5 years. The volume of data generated in last two years is 90% is the total data of the world. The massive data generated from billions of connected devices can no longer be managed by traditional data management systems or by human intervention. Amid digital transformation, organizations must adopt new technologies, build vibrant value fabric with right partnerships and digital workforce to deliver value to customers. The new big data management platforms, query processing tools, storage management and automation tools are the key to manage ongoing business operations. In manufacturing, the usage of IoT technology is helping companies optimize the expenses related to energy, supply chain management and inventory control. The granular visibility into energy consumption, equipment tracking and monitoring tools enhance

5 efficiency, helps in predictive maintenance and provides actionable insights of resource utilization. Similarly in healthcare sector, the alert mechanisms, patient entry- exit workflows, remote monitoring, etc. significantly improve the efficiency of the entire hospital. The top performing IT, manufacturing and healthcare and all other industries have ensured to automate all possible processes which in turn impacts the overall organizational efficiency. The quick turnaround times in fault resolutions, minimization of product/services defects and elimination of delayed outputs give astounding results in increasing overall efficiency and thus increased customer satisfaction. The robotics process automation helps in gaining people support where they can actually add value in the value fabric of transforming environment. Identifying Potential RPA Opportunity When thinking about the opportunities that RPA brings to an organization, it is quite cumbersome to estimate which areas/departments/processes to be targeted. There are always set of processes in an organization that require manual intervention between applications. Generally, the teams / departments with high volume of processes are sought for such an initiative. However many seem to ignore other critical factors identifying which this emerging technology is likely to bring maximum returns. The synergy of the following critical factors brings more rewards that usual selection. Changing Operating Models Organization Structural changes: Given that RPA is successfully implemented in an organization, are we assuring that efficiency and productivity will also improve? It is of utmost importance to understand how RPA implementation affects the nature of tasks, individual and group interactions and how will the organization of the future look like? Robotics process automation affects the organization structure as a whole. The organizational changes defines the new org. structure, reporting relationships, role and task redesigning to align themselves to the robotics processes. There would be changes in the nature of

6 work groups and workflow management. The new organizational structure would require identifying roles like: o RPA Process owners o Decision makers responsible for business rules definitions, change management and refinement o Robotics Process monitors and analysts responsible for supporting, monitoring and benchmarking (quality) of the RPA processes o Developers and testers responsible for development, configuration and testing of robotics processes before implementation. As mentioned in the previous section, the organizations have to redeploy their employees where they will be given a chance to reskill and transform themselves into a digital workforce. Functional Interface Changes An organization s structural changes plus process changes needs a possible mechanism to control various functions in an organization. Introducing a collection of RACI matrixes for the automated processes fully segregates the duties/tasks associated with each robotics process. It avoids any conflicts of interests between individuals/roles so that the new robotic implementation works seamlessly. An overview of a RACI matrix helps designing the robotics process governance and allocation of new roles which have otherwise unclear accountability and responsibility associated with each business function. Key Result Area / Performance Management The key performance indicators of the robotics processes measure the effectiveness of the newly implemented processes and help robotics team measure performance of the business processes. KPI measurement is essential for tracking, analysing, prioritizing and improving the overall output of the processes. Robotic process when improves, also helps enterprise KPIs improve. The following KPIs are directly related to the robotics processes: o Percentage : Availability of RPA Process vs FTE o Number : Count of processes automated / Total Process Count

7 o Percentage : Errors RPA Processes / Total RPA Process o Percentage : Uptime / Total Time o Percentage : Count of RPA processes / Count of FTE o Return on Investment (ROI) o Turnaround Time : Total Time between submission and output o Number of cases closed per hour/week/month o Queue/Backlog Size o Profit per bot Organizational Change Management Organizations must address people specific change management aspects when dealing with changing environment because of factors org. structural, functional and KPIs as mentioned in sections above. To address the uncertainties employees might have due to RPA implementation, it is very crucial to manage the organization transition in terms of: o Leadership alignment This is to align the RPA strategy, tactics and organizational goals. The alignment ensures that the strategic decisions are effectively implemented throughout the organization. The employees are more likely to adapt to the organizational robotics process automation adoption when they see their respective leaders support the new strategic initiative. It is alignment of the leaders at various levels of an organization that assists in successful implementation of robotics process automation. o Communication is another key aspect to ensure that RPA implementation is accepted at all levels of organizational hierarchy. As per a research, the employees of an organization prefer hearing organizational change from: Sponsor of the change Immediate manager An effective communication about adoption of RPA implementation must address the following questions: Why RPA is getting implemented? What is the risk of not adopting RPA? What is there for the employees? It is also equally important that there should be two way communication. An organization must give their employees the opportunity to share their concerns, ask queries and participate in feedback surveys. To gain employees support, an organization must repeat the key opportunities before actual implementation of the robotics process automation projects. Strategy Roadmap In times of radical business changes, the companies needs to also consider new long term strategy on investment and optimization of new and existing resource pool to pursue innovation and capture market intelligence for survival. The digital transformation ambition dream needs sufficient capital for this purpose which is achievable by reducing the existing OpEx and CapEx costs.

8 The organizations need to focus on implementing new strategy models which focus primarily on the following aspects of robotic process automation: Identification of organization functions where robotics process automation (RPA) can be implemented. This consists of identification of business application, corporate functions and legacy systems and assessment on ROI (return on investment tools, consulting, partnership, etc.) for implementation of automation strategy. Defining execution roadmap and implementation strategy and mapping it to that of organization vision and mission. This consists of defining end to end robotic automation plan, tools support, resource management, risk mitigation planning, scope (control on automation), and governance model plus expansion possibility to next level of automation Cognitive Automation. Strategy and operating model review. As said, your strategy needs a strategy. Regular reviews are very important to sustain in disruptive environment. In such ever changing business environment, this aspect must be covered to define the automation review strategy, setting up review periods and thus fine tuning the described strategies based on intermittent business situations The cost saved from implementation of robotics process automation caters to the investment opportunities in new verticals of the business. Not merely in internal organizational changes, but automation also helps in speeding the Mergers & Acquisition activities and thus have significant impact on integration of business processes and technology. Mitigating Bots Trust Issues Opinions usually varies on whether robotics process automation bots can be trusted. There are often questions raised about the readiness of RPA technology. To mitigate such risks, the organizations must also engage in building fall back policy and strong governance to manage the new next generation robotic processes. Having real time refreshed view of bots activities, dashboards with

9 visualization of bots status supported by well engineering analytics are quite helpful. A good RPA implementation should provide preconfigured security settings for the underlying applications. In order to create secure RPA environment, the solution should manage flawless authentication to the backend applications. There are various credentials vaults available which can securely store passwords against URLs/Applications and retrieves the password during RPA process handshaking. All credentials and keys in credential vault are encrypted to protect against disclosure to a hacker. RPA Critical Success Factors Choosing the right Product: based on business needs and supporting (compatible) with your existing technologies and upcoming technologies. Accurate configuration: An efficient configuration can save business resources, cuts downtime and thus reduces any debugging efforts. In right automated environment, the bots have access to the relevant applications, proper logging mechanism and correct workflow configuration. Process mining techniques: Process Mining plays an important role to understand the As-Is processes and the RPA opportunities. An effective technique provides the key insights of the business processes by creating an interactive process map using the process logs. It helps detect inefficiencies due to hidden vulnerabilities, time-taking steps, process bottlenecks and unnecessary detours. Conclusion Choosing the right consulting partner: Helps an organization assess their needs and match their requirements that suits its purposes. The right consulting partner helps an organization in o Define the new operating model o Setting up RPA Centre of Excellence (Governance) o Define and Build Automation Roadmap and execution methodology o Identify and Build business cases o Evaluate RPA products o Determine business prioritization, ROI and effort estimation o Identify areas of improvement or enhanced automation o Recommend RPA best practices As mentioned above, with constantly changing business environment and increasing global competition, the organizations look forward to their employees to constantly innovate and be part of marketing strategy. The need of the time is to connect to end users in real time and also recognize and addressing instantly the customer pain points. Any gap in process flow directly impacts the overall cycle time, time to market and right first time measurement indicators. The gap is fulfilled by adoption of robotics process automation which helps organization focus on proactive marketing, focus more on marketing strategy and achieving high customer satisfaction results. Industry does not want to invest in projects of 3-

10 5 years and wait for the results to come after years. They want to see the immediate ROI of their investments. The resource optimization and cost reduction using robotics process automation helps organization extend their services and improve the value they deliver to their end customers. ABOUT TECH MAHINDRA DIGITALIZATION AUTOMATION VERTICALIZATION INNOVATION DISRUPTION Acknowledgement The development of this research paper benefited significantly from the inputs and support by our outstanding group of thought leaders. Shreekala Jaydeep Group Practice Head Leonard Leo D'Silva Business Consultant Tech Mahindra represents the connected world, offering innovative and customer-centric information technology experiences, enabling Enterprises, Associates and the Society to Rise. We are a USD 4.2 billion company with 117,000+ professionals across 90 countries, helping over 825 global customers including Fortune 500 companies. Our convergent, digital, design experiences, innovation platforms and reusable assets connect across a number of technologies to deliver tangible business value and experiences to our stakeholders. Tech Mahindra is amongst the Fab 50 companies in Asia (Forbes 2016list). We are part of the USD 17.8 billion Mahindra Group that employs more than 200,000 people in over 100 countries. The Group operates in the key industries that drive economic growth, enjoying a leadership position in tractors, utility vehicles, after-market, and information technology and vacation ownership.