18 Jun How to use RPA in implementing a business led enterprise digitalisation strategy
All this talk about digitisation and digitalisation and RPA, what does it all mean, how can we take advantage of it?
Firstly, let’s get the words right. Digitisation just means converting physical information into a digital format whereas digitalisation means using digitisation to improve business processes, so do not muddle them up! RPA stands for Robotic Process Automation and is a key market focus for digitalisation software vendors.
RPA has really caught on in recent times. Probably because software vendors identified a niche which is easier than BPMS (Business Process Management Systems) which cover end-to-end processes. RPA deals with high volume repetitive sub-processes, activities and procedures. It is attractive to businesses because it is quicker and cheaper to start digitalisation using RPA.
The intent of BPM is to optimise processes end-to-end and that really is where process innovation occurs. To just dive into low level process automation using RPA will provide immediate automation benefits but may in the end defeat the ability to innovate and optimise the end-to-end process.
So, a good approach is to use BPM to design the new innovated end-to-end process, then pick the pain points for RPA projects.
The counter argument is that you can still do BPM and process innovation later and include earlier automated procedures. Nice theory but by then the task level procedures or sub-processes have been automated and you are locked into that way of doing things. So, you never know what innovation chances you have missed.
The other RPA trap is that existing manual or desktop processes are automated with minimal improvement, so you miss both innovation and some process improvement.
Those who have been doing RPA successfully for a while will tell you that you must still do the hard process design work.
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