Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a crucial part of the development and success of many businesses, and these processes can be hugely beneficial for a number of reasons. As well as cutting costs and increasing efficiency, they make room for creativity, innovation and reduce the risk of human error.
With many businesses embracing RPA this year, proper implementation is key to making the most of these technologies. But these systems don't just fall into place overnight. That’s why we’ve put together a guide which outlines in detail how to successfully deploy RPA in your business.
1. Identify the processes you want to change
The first step to implementing RPA is to identify the areas of your business that are most in need of a revamp. These new technologies are able to take on a number of tasks and complete them more quickly and efficiently than their human counterparts. So spend some time thinking about the areas of your business that need improving and how these can be made better. This will give you a good understanding of the processes you need to put in place and you can begin to map out a plan for deploying RPA.
2. Get professional advice
Once you’ve decided which processes you want to be automated, you need to get some professional advice. RPA technologies take time and expertise to deploy, plus you need to find vendors who can offer you the best systems for your needs. This can take some additional research and negotiation.
Once you’ve been in touch with the experts, they’ll be able to work with your team and those who currently do these tasks manually, to better understand how the process works and how automation can help to make it more efficient. They’ll also be able to offer training on the new systems to those who will be using and monitoring them.
3. Consider and educate your employees
The partnership between RPA systems and humans is drastically changing the workplace, but there has been a great deal of scaremongering around robots stealing the jobs of real people, making them obsolete. The reality is that delegating repetitive and mundane tasks to machines frees up the time of your employees to be creative and innovative.
But you need to make sure that your staff understand this and that they don't think they’re being replaced by a machine. You need your employees and robots to be working in tandem to achieve the best results. The best way to do this is by offering effective training and ensuring employees can see the value that these systems add to their job, reassuring them that they will not be made redundant at the hands of automated processes.
4. Make sure you meet all regulations
When implementing automated processes that will be handling personal data and important information, you need to make sure you're meeting all regulations. This means that sufficient procedures need to be put in place to protect this data from both internal and external sources, ensuring you do not breach regulations such as GDPR.
5. Keep it flexible and scalable
When creating and deploying RPA you need to make sure that you keep it flexible and scalable. The reason for this is that as your business grows and develops, you may want to scale up your processes to take on more tasks or data. Therefore, you don't want to make your systems unnecessarily complicated, causing problems when scaling up in the future. You also want to be able to update your systems whenever you need, especially during peak times when you may want more resource.
6. Consider hiring a Centre of Excellence team
When deploying RPA in your business, it could be a good idea to hire a dedicated Centre of Excellence (CoE) team. This will not only help to make sure that your RPA is deployed effectively, but also help to keep the systems in line with your strategy, ensuring that the technology is doing what it was designed for. Your CoE will monitor the results to see if the process could be made any more efficient and a good team manages these operations to ensure quality control. Finally, they can advise on scaling up your systems in the future should you need to.
7. Keep up to date with the latest trends and releases
It takes time to deploy RPA, but technology is fast paced and these systems are evolving all the time. Therefore, you need to keep on top of the latest trends and releases to ensure your system is as efficient as it can be. Install these upgrades as they are released to make the most of these tools in your business. If you’ve opted to hire a CoE team, they’ll be able to keep up to date with these releases for you.
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