CIOs: How to ensure your RPA efforts don't fail next year

There’s no doubt that robotic process automation can help CIOs address the needs of the workforce and any digitalisation projects on the roadmap. But there’s also no getting away from the fact that it’s a difficult balancing act, with far-reaching benefits, and indeed consequences for your staff.

The relationship between humans and machines is evolving at an unprecedented pace. We’ve seen technology and corporate interest in AI shifting from simply imagining what might be possible, to demonstrating real, practical applications in a very short space of time.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is one automation technology that allows your employees to configure a “robot” to use your existing applications. This “robot” is usually just a simple Graphical User Interface (GUI) that a staff member can program and monitor. Although it is just another app, it is a very clever app. It could help your staff to process a transaction, communicate with other systems or manipulate data. So, if your organisation conducts large-scale processing work, RPA will allow you to boost your capabilities and save both money and time. RPA also provides improvements in accuracy and cycle time, compared to human workers, increasing productivity and freeing your staff from dull, repetitive tasks.

Due to growing customer expectations in the digital age, demand for automation has never been higher. For example, 98% of Americans switch between devices in the same day, more than 35% of customers expect to be able to contact the same customer service representative on any channel and 87% of customers think brands need to put more effort into providing a seamless experience. As a result, your customers demand an intelligent and seamless user experience across every channel.

RPA’s impact on people

Next year, I predict the corporate world’s focus on automation will step up a gear to address these needs. But the speed of this change will likely leave many employees feeling threatened with approximately two-thirds of Americans believing that robots will replace most human job roles in the next 50 years. So, how can we reassure our people?

Changing mindsets

Changing the perceptions of your staff and answering their fears around automation is not straightforward but you must address it, or your RPA efforts will fail.

Forrester’s Predictions 2018: Automation Alters The Global Workforce predicts that automation will eliminate 9% of US jobs and will add 500,000 RPA-based digital workers. Robots could also negate one-third of the UK workforce. These widely-quoted stats could give cause for alarm. However, Gartner predicts 2.3 million new jobs will be created thanks to AI, compared to 1.8 that will be eliminated.

Take Amazon, for instance. Their Kiva robots are a shining example of successful human and robot collaboration in the workplace in meeting the needs of the consumer. Amazon customers expect to buy a product via their Prime service, and for it to be delivered deliver by the next day. This is a monumental task. So, to meet these demands, robots help to fulfil warehouse orders, while human workers complement the bots by carrying out anything involving judgement, fine motor skills, or unpredictability. In this case, automation helps both the robot and human workers, as each can focus on its specific skill set. As a result, Amazon subsequently grew both its human and robot workforce by 50% in 2016.

In other words, RPA will present more opportunities for your staff in the long term. Yes, certain roles may no longer be relevant (such as running around the warehouse to find an Amazon product) – but you need to reassure your staff that more opportunities will emerge as a result of automation. Additionally, new positions will certainly need to be created and filled to implement your RPA systems successfully.

What’s more, bots will be typically only be used to replace the repetitive tasks. So, any new roles created will likely boost your employee’s skill set and make them more employable in this new world of work. It’s therefore, hugely important to emphasise the benefits of upskilling to your staff – as without a doubt, this will help them survive and thrive in the new digital world. Your workforce should feel comfortable in the fact that robots can never fully replicate the human touch.

Boardroom buy in

Also, remember it’s not just your staff that will need persuading when it comes to RPA – you must also introduce the concept to the boardroom. Key to this is being clear on the ROI of RPA. For example, PwC predicts there is a potential to save $2 trillion in global workforce costs through automating 45% of work activities. And remember to include intangible benefits in the metrics, such as the increased confidence in an outcome, for example, thanks to a RPA system.

You also need to be sure to address any RPA-related security concerns across your staff and boardroom. From an increasing reliance on workplace devices to using cloud-based technologies to store your proprietary and critical data, you need to predict and tackle any security challenges that come your way.

Putting the user experience front and centre of talk about technical advantages will also help. After all, your RPA plan will only be successful if the board see the value in adopting it from a customer point of view. This requires an understanding of the user experience and you may want to take a design-based approach to your RPA systems.

And remember to continue to evolve as automation evolves. Develop an adaptable roadmap to meet the challenges for your workforce and business now and in the years ahead.

RPA’s impact on the enterprise

Of course the people consequences of implementing RPA are a critical consideration for all of us. But you’ll also need to implement a range of changes to your business processes and technologies to realise the full benefits of RPA. These include:

Continuous deployment replacing agile development

Continuous deployment takes agile development to its logical conclusion as your software will now always be ready to release. You will need to build on your current agile, continuous integration and DevOps practices to achieve this. For example, your organisation could deploy vital workloads using an Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) approach. As a result, you will be able to manage your configurations and IT infrastructure by writing code.

RPA will also rapidly speed up your continuous development lifecycle because of an increased focus on automation to improve decision making and productivity.

A need for robust investment in automation

Your budget must focus more heavily on automation, but make sure you choose where to invest carefully.

Gartner predicts 95% of new products will contain Internet of Things (IoT) technologies. As a result, the IoT will likely become part of the fabric of your organisation – but you need to decide how to integrate device management into your overall IT infrastructure so that it does not overwhelm your organisation.

This is where RPA will come into its own, offering intelligent automation of managed IoT deployments efficiently and cost effectively.

Streamlining your platforms

Gartner also predicts that half of IoT security spend will be on remediation by 2022. As such, it’s important to increase your focus on network security. You could, for example, use a combined security and ops automation platform to further reap the benefits of RPA.

In conclusion

Simply put, RPA will result in monumental changes across your organisation. Yes, bots will replace certain mundane jobs – but you will also be granted the opportunity to upskill your workforce and offer them relevant roles for the future of work. And, while you will undoubtedly need to invest in new technologies, your return on those investments will stretch way beyond your bottom line.

For every perceived disadvantage of RPA, there are a swarm of advantages ready to silence the naysayers. If you understand the impact of RPA, and can translate this work into real benefits for your organisation, then RPA will have a universally positive impact on your organisation in 2018, and beyond.