First BIT is an international integrator of IT solutions. Founded in 1997, the company has more than 100 offices in 8 countries – Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, UAE, Canada, Spain, Czech Republic, and Andorra. The company also operates as an RPA integrator, partnering with various vendors, including UiPath, PIX RPA, ElectroNeek, and others. Here are a few tips from Alexander Chernikov who is in charge of RPA Projects for First BIT customers.
• Always ask yourself – why should a robot do this?
There are always people in your company who you can ask if there is an alternative solution that will help to establish a business process in a classical way. If not, then your option is this setting of the robot and here you might think over whether it is worth implementing this robot, because there are different licensing costs, different implementation costs, and altogether this may not correlate with the cost of your resources.
• The choice of the platform should depend on the tasks and not vice versa.
• Look for several processes at once, 3-5. The robot must be at least 80% loaded.
Often, customers come with one process and their expectations are not met in terms of cost, because in the basic sense, one robot is the execution of any tasks 24/7 in one stream on a schedule. So you have one robot at a time that can do one task. You cannot give him two tasks, there should already be 2 robots here. Naturally, one robot can execute several business processes. One process after development can last 15 minutes, another process can last an hour and a half, and the third process can last 24/7 because the robot is waiting for something to read and it needs to receive some information for further actions. There are also such processes where you really need several robots instead of one, therefore, ideally first start with 3-5 processes so that the robot is loaded by 80+%, so that in general you pay back at least the cost of the license.
• Do not do detailed TOR (if your company is an SMB). A description with a diagram will double the budget. Record a video of the process as a person does it.
An important note for small and medium businesses. Never write in detail the TOR. If you kick off the first two or three tasks, just call your integrator, take the person who does the process and just hold a demonstration under the record. Video recording of the process allows you to see how a particular system behaves in dynamics so that the integrator understands which pop-up windows appear, which system errors occur, etc. You may often not pay attention to this, but it is important and can save your budget. As a rule, the public sector needs a complete TOR, because they have no other options – they need to see everything so that there is a final budget.
• Establish the 1st line of support.
Certainly, some kind of support will be required, because not only the robot itself operates but also the systems in which the robot works and the robot needs to be supported in them. Ideally, if you teach with the help of an integrator or other resources, someone from your first line of support who is involved in system support.
• It will be necessary to improve the internal regulations of change management (if you have one) – now it is necessary to track changes in the objects of the user interface.
It is imperative to preliminary think that your internal regulations for managing changes in your information systems in which the robot operates will now also require a clear regulation of changes in the user interface. Because after releasing the new versions of the platform, the selectors may change and the robot will stop working.
