Strategies to increase automation potential in DSP’s RPA implementation

Automation directly affects the profitability and efficiency, making it crucial to devise ways to accentuate it. Before getting into the details of how to increase automation potential of any process, let’s look at a model RPA implementation roadmap.

An ideal RPA implementation roadmap consists of seven steps:

1. Proof of technology


2. Process assessment


3. Input standardization


4. RPA solution design


5. RPA build and development


6. RPA deployment in a test environment


7. Live implementation

Interestingly, following the right methodology in the first three of these steps can itself increase the automation potential of a process by 25%.

This article focuses on bringing out a few techniques, methods and tools in these first three phases.

Proof of Technology (PoT)

The primary objective of PoT is to test if the chosen RPA tool is able to connect to target applications and navigate, obtain and update information. The recommended approach for a successful PoT is:

1. Kick-off meeting: The whiteboard session where the RPA solution partner along with client organization decides the course of action for RPA implementation journey


2. Knowledge gathering: RPA developer must gather an end-to-end understanding of the process from the process SMEs


3. Target applications: Based on the evaluation, targeted applications are identified. It is important that the PoT covers the most critical/niche applications involved in the process (e.g. the bot should be able to work in mainframe or legacy COBOL or CITRIX environment)


4. Smoke test: To check whether all the prerequisites are installed in the identified system for bot installation (hardware and software requirements)


5. Development of bots: Development and installation of the chosen RPA software (bot) on the test system


6. Execution of PoT: Bot accesses the target systems and navigates through a few main screens and fetches/updates the required information from target systems

The success of PoT signals that the chosen RPA tool is the most appropriate choice for the client environment as it can access, navigate and update/fetch information with their target systems.

Process assessment

Process assessment is the step where the deep-dive analysis of all the aspects of a process is done to improve the automation potential. Key factors to review automation potential are:

• Input and output format


• Various scenarios from the process


• Types of applications


• Time spent on each application and process step


• Execution frequency of each step/day


• Level of complexity of the process


• Current exception and accuracy levels


• Average handling time & average daily volume


• Security levels

Enablers for efficient process assessment

Develop enablers based on Six Sigma (process improvement) methodologies to improve the efficiency of the assessment:

1. Process assessment tool: Excel-based tool/template that helps to record process steps and categorizing wastage classes


2. ROI calculator: Helps to get a snapshot of expected ROI, cost and savings through RPA implementation


3. Process maps (As-is and to-be): Help to understand the end-to-end process by defining and segregating the steps done by bots and humans


4. Implementation roadmap: Helps to visualize and plan as per the timeline for project completion. Helps to prioritize the identified automation opportunities and process improvement


5. Risk Analysis Report: Takes into consideration all the high-risk scenarios and defines fail-safe options. Focusses on threat identification (natural calamity, virus attack, power outage etc.), business impact and mitigation plan.

The following documents are the output of the process assessment:

• Process definition document: Captures the as-is flow of a business process chosen for RPA implementation


• Solution definition document: Captures the to-be flow of the business process using the RPA solution

While process assessment streamlines the process, the data entered in these processes should also be standardized, to make it more receptive for bots.

Input standardization

Practice the following key considerations for input standardization phase for making it robust:

Lightweight standardized webpage: Typically, bots need to access multiple systems with multiple formats. This increases their operating time and reduces efficiency. It is recommended to create a tool that can pull relevant information from various applications and populate it in a custom lightweight webpage.

SOAP/webservices application programming interface (API): With digital transformation, many applications in the digital service provider (DSP) environment are exposing APIs (e.g. SOAP/Webservices/XML). Build an API wrapper for the bot to make API calls into source/target applications. While extracting information from source application or feeding information into the target application’s web pages, the bot needs to access multiple tabs through GUI, at times this is time-consuming. In scenarios where APIs are available, explore options of bots accessing the source/target applications through SOAP/XML API calls.

Templatize: Defining templates and keywords for every scenario and using them across customer care teams can make their notes bot-readable.

• Using standard keywords that can be selected by simple drop-down


• Keeping the templates easily accessible by using help page or template menu

Benefits

Following the above-mentioned key considerations and tools can lead to benefits such as:

• An additional increase in automation potential by up to 25%


• Reduce average handling time (AHT) by 56%

The cost saving of 46% over a 3-year RPA implementation.

Contributing authors:

• Rajesh Khanna J – Assistant General Manager, RPA, Prodapt


• Ananth Paramasivam – Senior Project Manager, RPA, Prodapt


• Sarvagya Nayak – Business Analyst, Prodapt