{"id":1721,"date":"2019-05-27T02:58:37","date_gmt":"2019-05-27T02:58:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kusuaks7\/?p=1326"},"modified":"2023-07-28T05:24:26","modified_gmt":"2023-07-28T05:24:26","slug":"putting-process-back-in-to-rpa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/ai-ml\/putting-process-back-in-to-rpa\/","title":{"rendered":"Putting Process Back in to RPA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Robotic Process Automation, commonly known as RPA, is\u00a0pretty hot<\/a>\u00a0at the moment. In spite of the\u00a0attention<\/a>, RPA is a bit of a misnomer. First, RPA does not involve any robots in the traditional sense. Next, RPA software does not automate large processes. Instead, it automates small, repetitive, rules-based tasks. So in its current form – it would be more accurate to call it\u00a0robotic task automation<\/a>. Nevertheless, there\u2019s increasing excitement around RPA as it involves software robots or ‘bots’ to rapidly deliver value. Why? Well, everyone loves ‘bots’ \u2013 don\u2019t they?<\/p>\n

Some of the excitement around RPA is just plain hype, while a bit of it has some substance.\u00a0Forrester forecasted<\/a>\u00a0that the size of the RPA market will reach $2.9 billion by 2021 \u2013 only to quickly point out that this number pales in comparison to the size of the total Artificial Intelligence (AI) spend estimated at $48.5 billion. Further,\u00a0McKinsey estimated<\/a>\u00a0the return on investment (ROI) from RPA around 30% to 200% \u2014in the first year.<\/p>\n

There are indeed some\u00a0very practical aspects of RPA<\/a>\u00a0that account for the current level of interest. It typically involves modest project scope, minimal systems integration, has a small IT department footprint and minimal database intrusion. That\u2019s fairly compelling.<\/p>\n

RPA has potential \u2013 but it does not fix bad processes. Before automating small parts of processes it makes sense to\u00a0see the big picture<\/a>. For optimal results\u00a0leaders need to <\/a>think about\u00a0is how an organization\u2019s end to end processes are performing \u2013 for both customers and the company \u2013 and where RPA may provide the greatest value. That\u2019s how organizations can put process back into RPA.<\/p>\n

By viewing the business from the outside-in and in a big picture process-based context, companies can integrate other digital tools such as process mining and artificial intelligence (AI) with RPA. Such integration can help avoid\u00a0RPA project failures<\/a>\u00a0due to planning and implementation issues.<\/p>\n

Finding the best opportunities to deploy RPA can be challenging. Relying on small brown paper mapping sessions or interviews to identify where to deploy RPA can be subjective. In contrast, using\u00a0process mining\u00a0to develop the end to end \u201cas is\u201d process tracks actual activity in a company\u2019s IT systems. It is comparatively far more objective than analysis based on subjective opinions and an effective way of identifying opportunities to apply RPA.<\/p>\n

A further benefit of integrating\u00a0process mining<\/a>\u00a0and RPA is related to data. RPA project failure is often linked to data challenges. Either lack of data or changes in data. Insomuch as process mining examines event logs in a company\u2019s information systems, some of these data challenges can be mitigated. Forward thinking organizations will use process mining to be\u00a0data driven<\/a>. In addition, integrating process mining with RPA goes beyond the \u2018as is\u2019 analysis as it also has the big advantage of repeating the analysis after improvements are made to see how effective these were.<\/p>\n

The integration of RPA and AI holds equal or even greater promise. For example, voice assistants such as Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa are\u00a0transforming customer relationships<\/a>\u00a0in a dramatic way, and businesses are looking for ways for this to be leveraged. The integration of RPA and AI provides the means for ‘bots’ to fetch and deliver the data to the conversational interface ‘Chabots.’ In this way, the RPA robot can query the system of record to retrieve relevant data items, package them and hand it back to the Chabot, enabling the Chabot to restructure these into a natural language response.\u00a0Forrester has predicted<\/a>\u00a0that more than 40% of enterprises will create state-of-the-art digital workers by combining AI with RPA and by the end of 2019; automation will eliminate 20% of all service desk interactions, due to a successful combination of cognitive systems, RPA, and various chatbot technologies.<\/p>\n

So what does this all mean? Think about it. Automating bad sub-processes doesn\u2019t make much sense. Consider truly putting ‘process’ back into RPA. Do it by seeing how end to end processes are performing for customers. Integrate process mining and AI with RPA to get maximum benefit.<\/p>\n

Originally published in Process Excellence Network<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some of the excitement around RPA is just plain hype, while a bit of it has some substance. RPA has potential – but it does not fix bad processes. Before automating small parts of processes it makes sense to see the big picture. For optimal results leaders need to think about is how an organization’s end to end processes are performing – for both customers and the company – and where RPA may provide the greatest value. That’s how organizations can put process back into RPA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":559,"featured_media":2858,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[183],"tags":[97],"ppma_author":[3243],"class_list":["post-1721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ai-ml","tag-artificial-intelligence"],"authors":[{"term_id":3243,"user_id":559,"is_guest":0,"slug":"andrew-spanyi","display_name":"Andrew Spanyi","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&r=g","user_url":"","last_name":"Spanyi","first_name":"Andrew","job_title":"","description":"Andrew Spanyi, an expert in Business Process Management, is Founder and Managing Director at Spanyi International Inc<\/a>. He is a member of the Board of Advisors at the Association of Business Process Professionals<\/a> and has been an instructor at the BPM Institute.<\/a> He is the author of three books: More for Less: The Power of Process Management, Business Process Management is a Team Sport: Play It to Win!, and Operational Leadership. He is a sought after keynote speaker and has delivered speeches and workshops in more than 10 countries around the world."}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/559"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1721"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1721\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29686,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1721\/revisions\/29686"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1721"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.experfy.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=1721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}