Introduction Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is making waves in the mainstream and Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) press with predictions ranging from the over-blown the end of work as we know it or the end of the middle class to the prosaic increasing efficiency by 35% in areas where RPA is adopted. Behind the hype is the reality that more and more work is being done by robots with more or less real intelligence and that for the foreseeable future this is not a question of either machines or people doing the work, it is a fact that people and machines will work alongside one another. So the real issues we should be addressing are not about the end of work (or indeed humanity) but are about how to organise and manage these two very different capabilities together. Systems Thinking tells us that we should consider the knock-on effects of any single change that we make in an organisation. That way we avoid the Law of Unintended Consequences. Introducing RPA into an operation could have profound effects on the people and work around it manage these implications right and everyone wins. Get it wrong and short term gains could give way to long term cynicism and bad press. 1 2 3 4 5 POINTS TO CONSIDER FOR AN RPA PROJECT The growth of robots as co-workers rather than replacement workers should guide our design of operations Implications for human talent as machines take on some of the routine work. And for how this human talent will have to be managed How to make a realistic assessment of the RPA business case. In particular, in what sequence should you count people and machine efficiency benefits How to develop blended plans to cover human and robotic workforce How RPA might find its way into managing work as well as doing work and how to avoid some of the pitfalls. Some notable people have even gone so far as to suggest that machines now really do represent a threat to humanity. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/ news/technology-30290540 Stephen Hawking warns artificial intelligence could end mankind).
Co-worker Robots: Back Office Cobots? In the late 1990s, the term Cobot was coined to describe robots that physically interacted with humans. We all now accept that machines work alongside humans in the world of manufacturing and this is becoming increasingly commonplace in the world of back office operations. Perhaps in the 21st Century we need to adopt this term to help us to consider the challenges and opportunities presented by the growth of Back Office Cobots. We particularly like this term because it emphasises that it is the human-machine system that will have to be optimised. In some areas of the back office, robots may replace some of the jobs maybe even a lot of the jobs but across the whole of the back office we can expect to see humans and robots working together. By thinking in terms of Cobotics, we can embrace the opportunities presented by RPA without falling into the trap of yet-another-magic-bullet-technology-solution. Optimising back office operations will require thinking through and managing the relationship between these two co-workers, people and robots, not merely replacing some people with some robots. Implications for human talent management RPA is inevitably targeting some of the simpler, more repetitive work that is currently done by people in the back office. Indeed this is often heralded as a human benefit taking away the drudge work leaving people the opportunity to do more interesting and challenging work. This may well be true but we also need to consider the potential changes to the labour force: - Take away the bottom third of employees from the lowest pay bands and your average wage bill goes up. You will have a smaller, higher paid work force. - Similarly, the average educational requirement may well go up as staff are focused more on exception handling, problem solving and human contact. A better paid, higher educated workforce can bring challenges. There may be increased competition for the best resources, stronger negotiating position for key workers and a general rise in the expectations of the way that staff are managed. Interestingly, it could be that a rise in RPA will lead to a resurgence in interest in leadership and talent management. For some time now the world of operations management has been schizophrenic. On the one hand, there has been a continuing trend for decades to emphasise employee engagement, wellbeing and the power of good leadership. On the other hand, the increasing availability of data and computational power has led, in some operations, to a return to old-style centralised command-and-control management. For example, much of the Workforce Optimisation space is dominated by tools that support the centralisation of planning and the removal of initiative from front line leadership. It could be that this brief resurgence of command-andcontrol management could come to an end with the rise of RPA. Operations Performance Management of the human workforce will have to become more sophisticated, with greater emphasis on leadership and talent management, while the scheduling of the robots will have to be blended in to work alongside the human system.
Making the RPA business case This leads us on to the question of how to make the RPA business case in a systemic and credible way. There are countless examples from management history where technology changes have been only partially costed and justified, looking at local savings without considering the wider implications. Our first question would be how do you quantify the saving if the process you automate is inefficient The introduction of a sophisticated Back Office Workforce Optimisation to capture and measure performance of all back office operations, can typically improve productivity by 15% to 40%. The introduction of sophisticated Back Office Workforce Optimisation technologies and methods to support the planning and managing of all back office activity, can typically improve productivity by 15% to 40%. Process simplification and the application of Lean principles or similar methods can deliver additional gains. 40 % 40 % So, imagine you employ 100 people in a process which could be 80% automated. A saving of 80 FTE. But if the process were first simplified and managed better, that 100 people could be just (say) 50 people and the saving from automation would be just 40 FTE. Might that change the cost/benefit calculation? Our message to Client COOs would be don t automate inefficiency. Not just because it flatters the automation business case but because there is also a danger of locking in inefficient processes. Just because the RPA allows us to do something quick, being inefficient more quickly is unlikely to be a recipe for long-term competitive advantage. RPA commentators we have spoken to all stress the need to precede RPA with good process analysis indeed one of the benefits of initiating RPA work is that it can help an organisation to take a long, careful look at its processes. Getting the management process right prior to automation is, in our view, equally important. As mentioned earlier, on the wider front, gearing up the HR functions of recruitment, training, engaging and retaining the human workforce should be considered. A smaller, higher paid, workforce will bring its own opportunities and challenges. So, the maxim, when introducing RPA, should be include all of the costs associated with changing the whole system, but exclude any of the benefits that could be taken first, faster and cheaper by managing differently. Just because the RPA allows us to do something quick, being inefficient more quickly is unlikely to be a recipe for long-term competitive advantage.
Blended workforce planning It is likely that for the foreseeable future, RPA or robots will exist as Cobots: part of a blended workforce. In some places, the robotic capacity will sit alongside human capacity doing very similar work with one or the other acting as the surge capacity. More often, the robotic capacity will take on one or more elements of a process, sitting within a process flow with work passing back and forth between human and robotic capacity. Until back offices are completely lights out operations with all work being carried out by robots, the real world will contain a blend of people and robots. This will present some very interesting challenges. Here are just a couple to think about for now: Bottleneck scheduling. If all RPA does is move work more quickly to the back of the queue then little will be gained. This means that load balancing of the output from the robots into the human work will be essential. A capacity planning solution will require the capability to schedule humans and robots alongside each other. Having one system for humans and one for robots is unlikely to be a success. Blended scheduling style. A problem might then arise because robots can (obviously) be treated like machines but people (particularly well educated people in a competitive market place) won t respond so well to that sort of approach. This is going to require an increasingly sophisticated blend of centralised planning, coupled with local control to manage people and exceptions.
RPA in operations management Much of the current WFO technology supports central planning teams through a decision making process, based on running capacity calculations though sophisticated models and then monitoring actual trends to make real time adjustments to optimise workforce efficiency. It is tempting, therefore, to ask why not apply RPA to the management process. Indeed, this is already happening with increasingly intelligent workflow systems distributing work based on skills, capacity, priority and such like. But, hopefully we have now made the case to say that, on its own, such a step would be fatally flawed. Until back offices are completely lights out operations with all work being carried out by robots, the real world will contain a blend of people and robots. The effect will be to raise the requirement for great leadership of a more confident and capable workforce. Some of the back office workforce optimisation solutions that largely treat optimising capacity as a numbers game, may well become automated but the requirement for improved Artificial Intelligence in the world of human management is more likely to be decision support rather than decision replacement. Features that help managers to lead could include: Providing forward forecasts of work and resource and highlighting problems to managers Analysing trends and presenting choices to managers Presenting data in intuitive and meaningful ways to help managers to communicate with staff Creating rapid and meaningful feedback to individual staff members to help them to manage and improve their own performance improving engagement and intrinsic motivation Perhaps one of the greatest advantages of the rise of RPA is that as we manage the robotic capacity alongside people - we will stop treating people like machines and rediscover the art of leadership!