Enterprises are bombarded with new ideas, technologies, and processes in today’s fast-paced world and majority of these are deemed “necessary” for today’s businesses to remain competitive. With these new technological advancements come an endless stream of acronyms to remember and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is one such technology that aims at transforming business and enabling business executives to accomplish more with less resources. RPA is the solution when it comes to automating repetitive processes so that human workers aren’t slowed down by labor-intensive, manual chores in all departments, including finance, IT, operations, and more. In order to adopt RPA and free corporate personnel to focus on higher value work, businesses are currently heavily investing in business process outsourcing services.
Importance of Implementing RPA
RPA is being used by many CIOs to automate business processes and cut costs. Business users may spend more time on customer service or other higher-value tasks by automating tedious rules-based business processes. It allows human employees to focus on their strengths while allowing robots to complete repetitive tasks. RPA bots often don’t require specialized software or extensive system integration, making them inexpensive and simple to create. These qualities are essential as firms strive for expansion without increasing major costs or employee conflict. RPA software robots, when designed correctly, can boost a team’s productivity by 35% to 50%.
Challenge of Implementing RPA
RPA projects are difficult to complete and challenging. A recent survey found that 69% of RPA programs fail to get traction due to their complexity. Up to 50% of those who are fortunate enough to move on to execution also fail eventually. An enterprise automation firm claims that 63% of business leaders are dissatisfied with the speed of their RPA implementation, which only serves to confuse matters further. PwC analysis backs this assertion. The consultant discovered that it frequently takes 4-6 months rather than the anticipated 4-6 weeks to complete an RPA proof of concept or pilot project.
Here are some of the challenges of implementing RPA and how to resolve them:
- Lack of a defined RPA strategy: Defining automation strategy is crucial to avoid RPA errors. RPA is a technology that is simple to use, but it takes time to understand and implement RPA. For the aim of future scaling, a robust foundation must be established. This calls for a solid base with a clearly defined strategy, communication plans, change management, trained RPA experts, and a reliable IT infrastructure. Every business must establish a strategy to direct the project in order to adopt RPA successfully. Prior to putting RPA into practice, it’s critical to determine the goals, the technology that can be deployed, and the scaling aspirations.
- Inadequate number of qualified resources: Using Robotic Processes Automation is a highly critical activity, and strong team leadership is required to lead the team until the RPA deployment task is successfully completed. An inadequate number of qualified resources are available in the present RPA market. The largest threat to the effective completion of any project is gathering resources at the start of a new project and refilling when a significant resource runs out. Therefore, it is crucial that workers at all organizational levels participate in the automation process with proper coordination. Each employee’s cooperation not only improves the task’s accuracy, but also enables the company to create a system that works with RPA. It will lower risk and enforce safety standards if the IT team is included in the infrastructure-building process.
- Having unrealistic expectations: Before beginning a new process or procedure, it is crucial to have a plan, and the end result that will be achieved once the process has been put into place should be clear. Uncertainty among the staff regarding the process’s end result can have a significant negative impact on the project. This is why it’s crucial to be clear with every department working on the project, about the entire process and what will happen in the end. Having realistic expectations helps staffs perform with clarity due to the reduction of any type of uncertainty on numerous themes. Even before the infrastructure is built, RPA projects are occasionally subject to excessive expectations. However, after the project is conceived and implemented, the outcomes might not match the expectations.
- Choosing the incorrect RPA tool: One of the most frequent problems a company may experience while launching an RPA project is selecting the best tool for RPA. The organization discovers that the RPA tool they selected was the incorrect one during the implementation phase. Only when they are unable to satisfy the demands of the consumer and when the investment exceeds their expectations, they realize it is not fit for them. Therefore, the first item on the list should be selecting the appropriate tools for RPA implementation.
- Managing reluctance among employees: The primary argument for the staff’s unwillingness to adopt new technologies is the myth that “robots will steal our jobs,” which is frequently stated as a common robotic process automation issue. Before beginning the automation project, you should inform them of the capabilities and limitations of software robots. You should also make them understand that the robots should be viewed as assisting rather than replacing present job roles. Additionally, you should spend money on employee training on a regular basis because the “automation era” will probably demand them to pick up new abilities.
- Inadequate support from the business division: One of the frequent RPA issues that needs to be actively avoided during the automation process is relying only on the IT department. RPA cannot be dependent solely on IT; the business side must be in charge of it, especially the finances. For the early stages, business processes need a Process Design Document that includes workflow diagrams, data-specific business rules (for various types of data), a thorough list of potential technological exceptions that the operations unit might encounter when processing data manually, etc. If the business team provides input on the performance of the bots, it is more probable that the pilot opens the door for effective long-term development.
- Lack of well-structured RPA implementation teams: For every business at any time, a weakness is the lack of effective organization. The good news is that fixing it won’t be that difficult. “Effective structure” results from well-defined roles for team members, adequate understanding of the processes chosen for automation, and preventing resource sharing among numerous ongoing projects.
- Operational and technical problems: Since RPA’s key functionality is its simplicity of configuration, you may easily neglect to consult the technical team about operational and technical concerns and even ignore their advice. However, the answer is simple and involves adhering to RPA maintenance guidelines after the implementation stage.
- Infrastructure problems: Infrastructure problems are key difficulties encountered when deploying RPA. If there is no connected system within the business that performs real-time updates on cloud infrastructure or on-premises, it can be challenging to get everyone on board and may even cause problems. It is challenging to accelerate the installation of RPA without enough infrastructure and a centralized infrastructure team.
- Post-implementation adoption: If your organization has adopted robotic process automation technologies, you must consider the difficulties that could arise after deployment. The most prevalent issue when deploying robotic process automation technologies is that many businesses fail to take pushbacks into account. Additionally, RPA will only assist you if your local team has the necessary skills and effective leadership.
It is critical to have a defined strategy that aids in understanding and identifying processes that require automation before an organization embarks on its RPA journey. Following productivity and FTE optimization, we develop the rollout strategy for automation. However, businesses can achieve significant success if they approach their automation projects with preparation and awareness of potential RPA problems. You can also reach out to a reliable robotic process automation company to implement RPA successfully.
