Let us introduce to you a few insights from Sumeet Pathak, Digital Workforce Evangelist, and SK Lau, Sr. Director and Head of Pre-sales Consulting at Automation Anywhere, into what steps can be taken to avoid early pitfalls and how to ensure the success of your digital transformation.
The first most common pitfall at the start of RPA adoption relates to the need for senior leadership buy-in and a company-wide strategy not just with the various business units but also with the various functions such as HR where they need to look into educating and retraining the employees, Finance and Operations where they need to look into not just cost reduction but also how to deploy employees to do higher-value work. SK Lau said that they have seen companies fail in such initiatives because they approach at a departmental or business unit level or each department pursue their own cost and strategy. So the first conclusion we should make is we mustn’t approach digital transformation at a departmental level.
The second pitfall is about one common trend that it’s very important to have a cultural shift from the chain management perspective, from the human aspect perspective to put some more thoughts when you’re starting your automation journey. The human aspect is very key to the success of any digital workforce project. Many workers see digital workers as threats to their livelihood and we need to educate and change their mindset because in many cases the digital workers will not replace whole jobs but only the tedious and repetitive tasks within jobs. That’s why the second conclusion we can make is that change management should include a training plan to help your staff reskill and leverage RPA.
And the last pitfall we want to mention is not prioritizing the creation of COE (Center of Excellence). SK Lau emphasized that setting up the COE early is important as the core team drives the strategy and the execution of the project throughout the whole organization. So success or failure depends a lot on the presence of a COE and he has seen many projects could not scale beyond their initial five to ten digital workers and hence cannot get that ROI they are looking for just because they do not have a COE. So, the third key takeaway is setting up a COE should be a priority while implementing RPA.
Watch this video to know more details about how to ensure the success of your RPA program.
