How to start your RPA journey… and make sure you wind up in a great place
Robotic process automation (RPA) can help your business be more efficient, agile, and profitable. It can make customers’ experiences richer by letting you serve them quickly, flexibly, and responsively. And put more joy in each employee's workday by taking repetitive routine out of it.
RPA technology is already transforming businesses of all kinds as companies around the world become convinced of automation’s power and make it central to their strategies. They’ve embarked on their automation journey. And now it’s your time.
How do you move forward? Where can your automation journey take you? The good news: there’s no need to reinvent the wheel on this one. In working with thousands of customers to scale and implement RPA, we’ve seen what works and what doesn’t. And while the details may vary a bit, we’ve found that the most successful companies follow a 3-stage path:
Lay the foundation of a transformative RPA initiative. Discover the benefits through pilot projects and quick wins.
Scale automation by focusing first on top-down, cross-enterprise opportunities that have a big impact.
Become a fully automated enterprise™ by capturing automation opportunities across the enterprise.
Scroll down for an overview of each stage and opportunities to dig deeper into each part of the RPA journey.
It’s a trip well worth taking.
Stage 1: Getting started
Here, you’ll lay the foundation you’ll need to move forward on a transformative RPA initiative. And you’ll prove out the benefits of RPA and show you can move into full production.
Complete a great PoC
Management wants assurance of value before committing—so give them the proof they need.
Build your teams and approaches
Get your traveling companions together (that is, your RPA talent). And set up your center of excellence (CoE).
Get your head around the technology
Equip yourself by selecting the right RPA platform and developing your implementation framework.
Build pipeline and capture more opportunities
Identify the best close-in projects and move on them.
Get your sponsor and build your scorecard
Get management "eyes on" your program, and develop a scorecard to measure success.
Stage 2: Scaling across the enterprise
In Stage 2, you’ll focus on top-down, cross-enterprise opportunities where automation can fundamentally change how work gets done. You’ll grow your ability to manage automation at high scale. As you bring new roles and skills into your automation organization, you’ll also increase throughput and capacity and build new capabilities to support continuous improvement.
Focus on big, top-down opportunities
Concentrate on using automation to transform core enterprise processes for the better.
Broaden RPA skills and capabilities
Bring on people who can handle complex automations and leverage "intelligent automation".
Expand capacity and throughput
Build capabilities to handle many projects and the ability to leverage efficiencies like automation reuse.
Master continuous improvement
Build in learning loops, continuous testing, and a robust way to assess and tweak performance.
Stage 3: Transforming the business
This is when 'a robot for every person' becomes real. When you bring RPA to the desktop in order to transform everyday work. When you’ve got a team of citizen developers working to take the drudgery and repetition out of every workday… and from top down and bottom up, automation is changing the way your organization gets things done.
Give a robot to every person
Bring robots to everyone’s desktop, so they can transform people's workdays, one task at a time.
Spread robot love
Help everyone fall in love with their new digital assistant through training and change management.
Build out your corps of citizen developers
Tap into people’s desire to learn how to automate to expand your ability to capture day-to-day opportunities.
Get technology that loves democracy
Make sure it can capture ideas from everywhere—while giving you control and governance.