RPA and Way Beyond: Leveraging it Right in Finance and other Industries

By Unique Kumar

RPA – The Robotic Process Automation, needs no introduction. Organizations, across industries, are embracing it intending to optimize delivery efficiencies – both in terms of costs and time. These process automations make even more sense in industries such as Banking and Finance where the need for data inflow and management is much higher. However, despite all the buzz and excitement about RPAs, why do we still see hiccups and bottlenecks? When we know and accept the benefits, why is there a sloth in the Bot transition?

In the Finance Industry, there is a lot of data punching happening manually, every day. RPA can potentially make lives easier by automatically picking up data from one machine and place it in the other systems. More so, it doesn’t require a good night’s sleep as do humans. So, efficiency is several notches higher. Yet, humans find a resistance using them at the micro level — the turns out challenge number one.

Where are the RPA Implementations Stuck?

Humans tend to feel insecure the moment they are pushed out of their comfort zones. They avoid trying out something new unless provoked or pushed. Bots challenge those comforts every day – not just by taking over their manual daily tasks but also by demanding their attention in terms of fueling more efficiency in its programming. After all, bots have to be managed by humans. The better you train it, the better it’ll perform. There we are – bots are not here to replace us. They are to be leveraged and trained by us to bring out a better collaborative efficiency. This thought process needs to be promoted.

How to Overcome the Bottlenecks and Make the Journey Successful

Many organizations have this culture of throwing all technical tasks on the IT teams. Of course, their accountability for technical work remains higher, but they have a learning curve too. We have process engineers, for instance, who would install a certain system and then they go back. Unless we train the actual users for handling those systems, which includes our IT teams too, we cannot expect engagement and efficiency in handling the bots from anyone in the teams. So, the training must rise beyond the technical aspects and should be targeted towards the functional areas too.

Secondly, right after the training, organizations should introduce a system of rewards and recognition. For instance, someone who brings a delivery with a 100% usage of RPA receives a reward in a given month. These initiatives will result in a subconscious engagement of employees towards RPAs. The success in implementation will then take care of itself.

Few Key Aspects to Make RPA Journey Successful

– The more you train the BOT the better results you get. It is highly important to train the bot in different operational scenarios and create an involved grounded team to feed and test it thoroughly.

– Prepare a comprehensive charter and project outcome. Define project goals and measure of success at the initial stage and then, based on the ratings, take it forward complementing it with the ROI. Measure and find whether the productivity of employees has increased and if there is improvement in accuracy of that function.

-Accept that humans work 8 to 9 hours but bots work round the clock. So, I firmly believe that efficiency should increase to 100% after implementing the RPA.

– RPA implementation partner: Being a change in digital changing every day the right skill set is required for implementation. When you choose partner, evaluate them with criteria and consider that the partner understands the business operations.

– The final one is to manage the CHANGE. Yes, Change management plays an important role ad the way the businesses work. Most of the implementations fail because of a lack of adoption– change management. So, there is a significant involvement required from top management.

– Evaluate the fitment of RPA with AI-based solutions so that the outcome remains productive. Creativity and Intelligence in Automation takes you way beyond what individual RPAs can contribute to.

Build a Roadmap by Predicting Reactions

Leaders in specific organizations must foresee some possible challenges before launching RPA systems. These challenges will mostly be specific to organizations. So, the roadmap must identify what problems are you going to solve to ensure RPA success and use the best practices and takeaways mentioned above.

The author of the article is the Head- Digital Innovation & Cybersecurity at Max Healthcare.