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RPA Best Practices and Robotic Process Automation Challenges

Dr. Jagreet Kaur Gill | 17 Apr 2023

RPA Best Practices

Introduction to Robotic Process Automation

RPA is the technology of business process automation where repetitive human mundane tasks are automated. In today’s business era, it eases human tasks, reduces human errors, and helps them to think about more logically complex tasks. Best practices of it are implemented through various RPA tools available in Uipath, Blue Prism, Automation Anywhere, etc. Software automation is the new normal in today’s business environment. It reduces time consumption and increases the productivity of enterprises in work done.
Perform secure design reviews, including data flow analysis, to verify control of security integration in authentication. Know more about RPA Risk Management and its Various Methods

What are its adoption challenges?

The following are the challenges listed to adopt Robotic Process Automation:

Team Structure

Its implementation should have the proper team structure where resources are shared between teams and proper processes are defined for smooth delivery.

Best Practices

If the team does not follow best practices during its implementation, this can result in more time invested in debugging the code and making it difficult for teams to reuse the workflow.

Technical Ambiguity

Sometimes bot deployment doesn’t lead to expected results due to ambiguity among the technical staff. When people fail to ask important questions about processes during the implementation of the process, the automation deployment can be disastrous.

Wrong Platform

One of the Robotic Process Automation implementation challenges is choosing the wrong platform due to a lack of knowledge of all the processes. Most of the time, the deciding factor is the cost, resulting in companies choosing a platform that doesn’t suit business needs.

Insufficient support from the vendor

Having support from the platform vendors is critical for any project's success. They have expertise in utilizing the tools and have worked with several customers on different implementations.

Robotic Process Automation is one transformation that is automating our daily repetitive tasks. Taken From Article, Best Use-Cases in Industries

What are the RPA implementation best practices?

Listed below are the best practices of its states that steps used to do the best automation, which gives the efficient solution for its processes.

Create Process Design Documents

PDD ( Process Design Document) makes the processes more transparent and better understands the business process to be automated, including flow diagram, Steps of the process, discrepancies of the process, time estimation, and all scenarios that can occur in the process, etc.

Use Reusable Component

There are many common processes like login and logout to the web portals, Data Scraping, Send an email and receiving emails Etc. Reuse these components to every process, saving time-consuming and making the process's development swiftly.

Developed flow should be readable and not time-consuming

Using logs in the tool activities to make the developed code understood by other people quickly and developer ensured that the code should not be complicated and time-consuming. Its process will be worth it only if its code makes the process faster.

Build Error Handling

An efficient flow always contains error handling that makes the process execution trouble-free and easy-going at production and saves the execution from unknown error stoppages.

Break Process

Break process flows into a small process that makes the process flow more understandable, and after flow, division integrates all the flows in the main project.

RPA real-world use case Scenarios

Its processes real-world scenarios stating where and how we use its technology in every organization. These examples will make you understand more about business process automation.

Bookings

With the help of its, bookings can be automated by getting booking information and upload it to the database, and confirmed bookings to the user.

Accounting Reconciliation

With the help of its automation of managing to account of the employees in the finance department by reconciling all the required filtered data.

Managing Email Requests

By identifying the user's email request and fulfilling the user requirements, and then notify the user about the status, the Bot adheres to this process. It reduces the workload of a human resource.

Data Entries

A human resource can do errors, but a software bot that is made with defined methods and functions can give low chances of errors. Data entries are the most repetitive work, but it is the most important work in every organization. Its technology gives accuracy in data entry. It will fasten the data entry with more accuracy.

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A technology that works within the software and eases human efforts and hence called Software Automation. Download to explore potential of RPA for Businesses

What are the benefits of Robotic Process Automation?

Robotic Process Automation provides various advantages to businesses by enabling a digital workforce, including:

  1. Robotic FTEs (Full-Time Equivalents) cost a third of off-shored FTEs and can work 24*7 without error, resulting in cost savings.
  2. Robots operate in a virtualized environment, allowing on-demand scalability across any department.
  3. Strict security and controls are provided via a secure and audited robotic automation platform overseen by an IT governance corridor.
  4. The automation of several small to medium clerical operations drives process flexibility.
  5. There will be continuous process improvements without the additional costs of integrating and re-designing processes.
  6. Improved service quality thanks to virtual FTEs that are more accurate and reliable.
A blend of the most advanced technologies used to manage and automate digital processes. Click to explore about, Intelligent Process Automation vs RPA

Best Practices for Robotic Process Automation Solutions for Industries

There are the following best practices that will help you and discuss in detail:

1. Create an automated centre of excellence (CoE) by establishing the correct governance model.


“A Center of Excellence (CoE) provides guiding principles, governance, and a repository of best practices, reusable components, and technical expertise to everyone in a business.”

The steps below will assist you in creating an efficient automated CoE:
Form an executive committee for automation.
Create a Charter of Excellence, including goals, values, roles, and duties.
Create a centralized governing body. They'll be in charge of governance and law enforcement.

Fill out the CoE team. Subject matter experts from essential areas that the change will impact automation, such as pipeline, IT, DevOps, and more, should be included on the team (see the chart on the following page for examples).
Keep an eye on the CoE.

2. Promote early automation success within your company.

“Another element to success is to foster an automated culture. This is accomplished by aggressively evangelizing the advantages of automation as a major organizational value.”

Evangelism should come from all levels of an organization, including the executive committee and COE, and employees who have seen time savings and process improvements as a result of automation.

Here are some instances of how RPA evangelizing could benefit a company:

  1. Create a portal for internal automation. Users should initiate and prioritize automation requests, compute ROI, and monitor requests using a dashboard using this intuitive self-service site.
  2. Mark significant anniversaries and congratulate yourself on your accomplishments. At both company-wide and departmental meetings, can do this.
  3. Set aside days for automation. Encourage employees to present ideas for automation to these sessions and assist them in developing their bots to make their jobs easier.
  4. Make eLearning available. It can be done in-house or by a third party, such as an vendor, and it can assist employees at all levels in understanding their roles in an automated organization and how to use the solution.
  • When it comes to automation development, have an agile approach.

“Although the agile methodology started in the engineering and IT areas, it is now widely used by marketing teams, with sprints and daily standup meetings assisting them in achieving deadlines and delivering high-quality content.”

The actual effort begins with establishing automation that feeds a highly efficient organization, not its evangelism. Using a cutting-edge development technique like agile to design, test, and deploy bots is the best way to go. Adopting an agile approach lets procedures be broken down into smaller components that can be automated quickly, resulting in better and faster bot development.

3. Complete automation capabilities go beyond RPA.

“RPA can help your company save time and money. Still, it can do even more if it's part of a more prominent end-to-end automation solution that integrates people, systems, data, bots, and artificial intelligence (AI) into a unified process. It is referred described as full automation.”

In complete automation, must include the following items :

  1. Workflow: With extensive business process management capabilities, an organization can orchestrate its resources into a single workflow, boosting efficiency and providing great customer and employee experiences.
  2. Low-code RPA: Create bots fast to tackle high-volume, repetitive activities, allowing employees to focus on more critical tasks.
  3. Artificial Intelligence: Classify documents, extract data, embed following best action, and more using best-of-breed AI services from any vendor of your choice.
  4. Low-code Data: Integrate data from anywhere without costly migrations for unified and actionable data.
  5. Business Rules: Use zero code to define and automate sophisticated business logic.
  6. Case Management: Improve performance by handling exceptions and ad hoc activities with task management and actionable data views.

4. Humans should be in charge, not merely in the loop.

“Automation should not be used to replace people in your employment. Rather, it should be about allowing them to focus on more important tasks while maintaining control over processes.”

While automation takes away the tedious aspects of work, the finest RPA tools retain humans in control. Automation should not be used to replace people in your employment. Instead, it should focus on more important tasks while maintaining control over processes.

Organizations should strive to automate processes from beginning to end while keeping humans at the core and, ultimately, in command. It entails providing employees with the relevant facts at the right time to enable them to make decisions. For enhanced decision-making and comprehension, you should combine real-time data from across the business to create a consolidated, 360-degree perspective.

Deploying RPA in Human Resource Management significantly reduces the time employees devote to these tasks. Click to explore about, Robotic Process Automation in Human Resources

Conclusion

For decades, employees have been fearful of words like "robots" and "automation." When RPA is adopted, many employees fear that they may lose their job. Despite all of these concerns, its implementation increases employee satisfaction. According to a Forbes survey, 92% of senior executives feel its implementation has improved team member happiness.

Organizations must have a well-defined advocacy plan to ensure that users understand how it will enable them to concentrate on higher-value activities that are more exciting and fulfilling and provide career progression opportunities.