Robotic process automation can put the business in charge of digital transformation - Automation Anywhere

Use RPA to automate business processes end-to-end, one process at a time, says James Dening

Organisations should consider kick-starting their digital transformation programmes using robotic process automation (RPA) platforms, quickly building automated end-to-end processes based on existing processes, and putting the business in charge of digital transformation.

That's the message of James Dening, vice president of Europe at Automation Anywhere, speaking at a recent Computing IT Leaders' Forum.

"RPA is a really great technology, but it's only really transformative at scale. If you automate one process, who cares? You might have saved yourself (say) $50,000 a year. You might have helped take some of the drudge out of someone's job," said Dening. "But it's only really when you have hundreds or thousands of robots that RPA really ‘moves the needle'."

It can reduce cost, it can improve accuracy and it can improve morale

Using an RPA platform, added Dening, semi-manual processes can be fully automated, with the platform trained to carry out activities by literally copying members of staff as they perform existing business processes, turning them into automated processes that the RPA platform can perform instead.

In the process, staff can be freed-up not just to perform more valuable and arguably more rewarding activities, but can therefore devote more time to the very activities they were hired to do in the first place.

"It can reduce cost, it can improve accuracy and it can improve morale," said Dening. "We talk about taking the robot out of the human [because] there's an awful lot that people do that is very repetitive and rules-based."

Traditional IT-led transformation... it's big, it's expensive, time-consuming and complex

At the same time, though, the drastic increase in speed wrought by this automation can create new IT system challenges, admitted Dening.

"If you think about throughput into systems sitting at the back of the IT stack, you may have a system where the input into it is done by a human and they are maybe generating five or six transactions a minute, and that's fine.

"But when you have a robot that's generating transactions an order of magnitude faster, maybe that system isn't so fine? Maybe it's never been tested at that sort of transactional volume. Why? Because no-one ever envisaged the input from that coming from a robot that can work so fast, rather than a person," said Dening.

The speed and simplicity with which you can build those automations with RPA is very different

Hence, while digital transformation projects led by RPA tools can help put the business in charge, it still needs to be done in partnership with IT.

"If you think in terms of a spectrum. At one end, you have traditional IT-led transformation. It's big, it's expensive, time-consuming and complex, but delivers very significant outcomes.

"At the other end of the spectrum, you have got RPA. The outcomes can still be impressive. But in terms of that pragmatic approach, the speed and simplicity with which you can build those automations with RPA is very different.

You can build an RPA project quickly that gives you 90 per cent of that business outcome [from digital transformation]

"RPA doesn't replace those [big] transformation [programmes] but you can build an RPA project quickly that gives you 90 per cent of that business outcome once you're doing that transformation.

"We see people funding IT transformation by using RPA to generate the ROI that they can then re-invest back into fixing those systems properly. Or putting in new systems altogether. Then, you retrain the same bots to do different tasks, putting RPA to use where it's needed next," said Dening.

Also at the same event, John Johnston, director of global applications development at GSK demonstrated how the pharmaceuticals giant had used Automation Anywhere's RPA platform to automate a host of previously semi-manual processes, avoiding the need for a major digital transformation project.