Critical Success Factors for Scaling Robotic Process Automation
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Critical Success Factors for Scaling Robotic Process Automation
Organizations are increasingly turning to Robotic
Process Automation (RPA) to improve operational
efficiency, productivity, quality, and customer
satisfaction. With 65% of insurance and banking
organizations already reporting reduced IT costs
from automating systems and processes, there is
a clear shift towards automation.
How Does RPA Transform an Organization?
RPA can have a transformative impact on the organization and bolster its ability to
accelerate a large-scale business transformation. For example, RPA can:
1. Improve Customer Experiences: By standardizing processes, your outcomes are
more efficient and effective, thus freeing up time for your teams to deliver better
service to the customer.
2. Elevate your Employees’ Experience: By automating the mundane, repetitive and
tedious tasks, teams are free to spend time on activities that are not only interesting
but serve higher value to the business.
3. Ensure Compliance: Robots follow exact rules and processes; thus, compliance and
risk management are improved through error-reduction. Also, robots are habitual,
so adapting to a regulatory change is quicker and easier to implement.
4. Increase Operational Efficiency: When processes are automated, they are less
prone to error and increase both the speed of execution and quality of output.
Although growing in popularity, RPA success remains a non-trivial endeavour. Gartner pre-
dicts that by 2021, 50% of RPA implementations will fail to deliver a sustainable ROI. The
reasons for this predicted margin of failure are well-documented: automating small, incon-
sequential processes, automating the wrong processes, constant bot outages and rising
maintenance costs from poor planning and development practices, and a lack of gover-
nance. While RPA promises to unlock new opportunities for optimizing the current way of
delivering value, organizations are still vulnerable to costly mistakes.
This white paper will explore the six biggest mistakes that companies make in expanding
their automation programs, highlighting several best practices that can help organizations
© Blueprint 2021 All Rights Reserved 27 Common Mistakes to Avoid
when Scaling Automation
M I S TA K E # 1
Robots are the whole solution
RPA is not about replacing one process with another; instead, it is an entirely new way of
looking at the same process. The most transformative benefits come from mixing the right
combination of RPA tools, process engineering, and human talent.
Focusing on short-term cost reductions will not deliver the full benefits of automation.
As a result, robots should be introduced as part of a strategy of focusing on incremental
investment in automation, analytics, and artificial intelligence that will underpin
transformation, modernization, and innovation.
Very few processes can be entirely automated with an RPA tool alone. Thinking about the
system from end to end will often require you to use multiple tools and techniques - some
investment often needs to be made first to support the automation process.
This is why solution design - identifying high-value areas, determining which combination
of capabilities to apply to processes to optimize efficiency - is one of the most critical and
complex parts of implementing an automation solution. Strong solution design should
have a broad focus from the start and a long-term plan for ongoing improvements and
innovations.
M I S TA K E # 2
I can do this without involving IT
RPA is usually driven by the core operating business functions like HR, finance or
procurement. Often there is a lack of understanding of how RPA can impact the rest of the
organization. Because RPA tools do not need to be integrated into legacy applications and
can be easily installed onto any desktop, there is a common misconception that RPA does
not require any involvement from the IT team.
But this is a mistake. The best-case scenario for RPA implementation is at the intersection
point of business and IT. A fundamental reason for ensuring IT is involved in an RPA
implementation is to ensure the systems are secure, reliable, and scalable. This will enable
the Operations teams to drive productivity and transformation faster.
M I S TA K E # 3
Using paper-based documents to communicate automation
work
Labor-intensive and ambiguous Process Design Documents (PDD) are not an efficient
instrument to communicate the development work needed to automate a process and
build a robot; PDDs are disconnected and leave a lot of room for misunderstanding causing
costly delays and rework.
What’s needed to successfully scale RPA is a digital method for communicating the entire
context of the robot to be built. One that includes all the enterprise constraints and
regulations the bot must adhere to, as well as mechanisms for centralized collaboration to
mitigate risk and drive precise, high-quality development that produces resilient robots.
© Blueprint 2021 All Rights Reserved 4M I S TA K E # 4
If I can do one robot, I can do 1000
There is no denying that the pilot phase is necessary when implementing RPA. In a
sandbox environment, teams can learn how to use the robots and optimize them
without any significant risks. However, just because the concept has been proven for
one process, it would be rash to assume that it can be generalized for all processes.
Completing a centralized and rigorous program of pilots, tests, and reviews is critical in
determining the validity of automation. Ideally, this piloting phase would last between
one to three months. It would involve a more comprehensive consultation with various
stakeholders throughout the organization to identify what areas can be automated. The
“go live” phase is often a nine to sixteen-month program where implementations are
delivered in waves.
M I S TA K E # 5
Let everyone do their own
Since RPA tools are flexible, easy to use, and applicable in several business contexts,
organizations tend to create or use more than necessary in an attempt to scale
efficiency.
But this isn’t necessarily the most appropriate course of action. Automation programs
need to be centralized, controlled and governed to avoid mistakes that can hinder an
organization’s ability to scale.
M I S TA K E # 6
Robots are “set-and-forget”
Robots are no different from other business systems; they need to be managed and
maintained. Think of your robots like virtual employees - when there is an update or
change to business rules, regulations, policies, or procedures, it’s important that your
robots are up to date and aligned with human workers. RPA programs require continuous
change management.
M I S TA K E # 7
People strategy can come later
RPA automates mundane, repetitive and high-volume tedious work that is part of high-
turnover roles that are filled by dissatisfied and disengaged employees.
RPA automates these dull tasks and allows teams to be retrained to focus more of their
time on tasks that are of higher value and higher satisfaction. But, to achieve this, the
technology strategy must be aligned with the people strategy. Doing this early will
reduce delays in training, reduce employee turnover, improve team development, and
improve overall organizational morale.
© Blueprint 2021 All Rights Reserved 5Critical Success Factors
Avoiding the six mistakes is about S U C C E S S FA C T O R # 4
getting pre-implementation Robot Risk Control
expectations and strategy correct, Robust monitoring and security governance
putting in strong governance of RPA are critical to ensure all the tools and related
infrastructure developed in RPA are compliant with
across the organization, and ensuring IT security, policies, regulatory provisions and risk
ongoing monitoring, maintenance, and policies across the organization.
improvement.
Without robust risk control, the window for missed
controls and regulatory requirements increases,
Seven critical success factors that leading to costly rework and maintenance that could
have been avoided.
underpin these imperatives are:
S U C C E S S FA C T O R # 5
S U C C E S S FA C T O R # 1
Operating Governance
The Automation Centre of Excellence
A comprehensive governance framework is essential
To scale RPA across the enterprise efficiently, to execute step-by-step RPA implementation,
tackling inter-departmental processes is necessary. manage organizational and regulatory change, update
Inter-departmental processes are complex and processes, manage service demand fluctuations and
require process optimization, cross-functional communicate with stakeholders.
collaboration, and the use of multiple technologies.
The Automation or RPA Center of Excellence S U C C E S S FA C T O R # 6
(COE) provides organizations with high-quality Focus on Realization
automation services to meet the enterprise’s
strategic objectives by ensuring that best practices Implementing RPA is about driving operational
are implemented. The COE is responsible for efficiency, productivity, quality and customer
automation governance, idea generation, skill satisfaction. Successful RPA programs are focused on
development, process assessment, and enterprise- delivering business value from their investment. To
wide support. ensure the organization is prepared for the changes,
it’s recommended to train RPA developers and
S U C C E S S FA C T O R # 2 analysts relatively early to answer any outstanding
Right Tooling questions or fears about the new processes.
Despite there being many automation tools on
the market, organizations need to ensure their S U C C E S S FA C T O R # 7
toolchain includes a platform that provides teams Collaboration, Visibility, & Alignment
with an end-to-end view of the business processes
being automated, and that also promotes visibility Automating processes demands alignment between
and collaboration. A solution that includes business the business and IT. The tools and mechanisms
processing modeling capabilities ensures that that foster collaboration and visibility to completely
you’re able to map and design complex processes understand the context and dependencies of the
that are part of a larger objective more accurately. robot to be built is critical.
S U C C E S S FA C T O R # 3
Structuring the Infrastructure
A strong infrastructure support network is
needed to facilitate a large-scale rollout of RPA
tools seamlessly.
© Blueprint 2021 All Rights Reserved 6About Blueprint Blueprint is a leading provider of digital process design and management solutions to Fortune 1000 organizations. Today, global leaders from every industry use Blueprint to identify, design and manage high-value automations with speed and precision in order to scale the scope and impact of their RPA initiatives. From comprehensive analytics and AI- assisted modeling to change management and integrations with the leading Process Discovery and RPA vendors, our award-winning business solution provides the end-to-end visibility and control you need to simplify and accelerate the path to a scalable, enterprise-wide RPA model that drives continued business growth. To learn more, visit us at: www.blueprintsys.com 2021 Blueprint Software, Inc. All rights reserved. All product and company names and marks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.
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