Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a powerful tool which will undoubtedly play a key role in the future of the service industry. So what is stopping organisations from maximising the benefits of this so-called digital workforce?

1. OEE Consulting Become Better.
Don’t rage against the RPA
machine.
Why the real robotics revolution
requires a different approach.
12 April, 2018
Co-authored by OEE Consulting,
ActiveOps and Symphony

2. OEE Consulting Become Better.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a
powerful tool which will undoubtedly play a
key role in the future of the service industry.
So what is stopping organisations from
maximising the benefits of this so-called
digital workforce?
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3. OEE Consulting Become Better.
Accelerating the future of work.
There is no doubt that RPA (robotic process
automaton) has a significant part to play in
the future of the global service industry,
alongside machine learning, natural
language processing (conversational AI),
and smart workflow.
Many Enterprise organisations are working
hard to deploy the technology and derive
the promised benefits, so why does it
sometimes feel like we’re stuck in pilot
phase? A recent HfS survey on RPA
deployments revealed that only 3% of
respondents found that their expectations
were fully achieved.
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4. OEE Consulting Become Better.
Accelerating the future of work.
The current challenge is not really the technology or the providers, but more to do with
the fact that many businesses do not have the data, the control, or the holistic
understanding of their own structures and processes to deploy the right technology in
the right place at the right time.
In order to turn the idea of digital operations into a reality, we need to start our
thinking from a different point.
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5. OEE Consulting Become Better.
Design thinking.
The root cause of these issues is that new technologies are being misapprehended as
panaceas, a means to solve or side-step problems which businesses have never been
able to fix, or never bothered to address.
Mark Palmer, Managing Director of OEE Consulting explains:
“Large organisations are starting to realise that any technology can only be part of
the solution. You have to think about design first. That might just be the design of
the processes themselves, the route or channel that customers choose to use, the
organisation of work - but it also might be that the whole customer journey needs
to be reimagined”
An RPA implementation in a poorly designed process will only create more challenges, as
the hidden problems will be brought to the surface by inflexible automation. Similarly,
this reduced flexibility requires strict management governance to maintain robot
optimisation.
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6. OEE Consulting Become Better.
Taking control of your operations.
It is important to be conscious of the level of variability in operations that the human
workforce naturally accommodates.
There are many examples of organisations who have successfully reduced task cycle
times by the anticipated level via RPA, but have still failed to deliver the business case
due to faulty assumptions about frequency and volume.
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7. OEE Consulting Become Better.
Taking control of your operations.
Automating back office processes properly requires you to know exactly what is
happening in your operation.
“You need to be transparent about work and time” says Richard Jeffery, CEO of
ActiveOps. "All too often, deployments are designed based on assumptions or
partial data rather than a robust and validated understanding of work
characteristics and how people spend their time”. This simply isn’t good enough
information to base decisions on as you start to remove human capacity”
Once RPA is implemented, capturing the opportunity to redirect what can often be
multiple pockets of valuable human capacity can also be challenging. Many organisations
are discovering that immature capacity management disciplines mean the full benefits
cannot be accessed.
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8. OEE Consulting Become Better.
Taking control of your operations.
These may seem small issues but as
enterprise or large-scale deployment is
targeted, the lack of a complete,
quantified picture of work and time,
combined with an agile approach to
capacity management, becomes a major
barrier to success.
Many organisations recognise difficulties in
scaling their RPA deployments.
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9. OEE Consulting Become Better.
Taking the robot out of the human.
For years, companies have been looking for ways to reduce the cost and burden of
routine and repetitive tasks. RPA seems to be perfectly positioned to respond to this
challenge.
However, not everything can be automated.
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10. OEE Consulting Become Better.
Automation by design.
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Ultimately, there is no shortcut to success. The winners will
not be the businesses who can deploy the fastest, but those
who can prepare their teams, redesign their operations and
recognise that making it easy for the customer is the true
goal.
A Shared Services and Outsourcing Network survey in
2016 found that 64% of respondents believed that people
were central to RPA implementation.
In short – the technology deployed can only be as powerful
as the people managing it.
By really understanding how your business is currently
operating, and connecting this with the future delivery of
your customer proposition, you can start to identify
opportunities for the right use of automation.

11. OEE Consulting Become Better.
Automation by design.
You are not deploying technology into a perfect world, or a vacuum. It will have to
interact with legacy systems, deal with manual processes, or cope with a changing
regulatory environment. You may also need to use people for high discretion tasks or
dealing with customers, and you will certainly need people to design and manage the
robots.
Similarly, not every tool can automate every process.
“One of the issues we frequently see is that organisations jump straight into choosing
a provider”, says David Poole, CEO of Symphony “If you think technology first, use-
case second, you will never achieve what you set out to. By assessing the
appropriate place for, and type of, automation for your business, you can start to
build a picture of who the right technology partner might be for you”
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12. OEE Consulting Become Better.
There are six key steps to success.
Review your how your operations currently work.
What are the current bottlenecks in the system? Where are
your customer’ pain points? What do your customers expect
from you.
1. Ensure the operation’s
design is fit for purpose
2. Understand the process
details
3. Choose the right
technology for you
Document your current processes and develop data sets
behind them. By enabling complete and timely data capture
(including work that is done “off system” ), your business
can understand which operations will benefit most from RPA
and track their future improvements.
One solution to ensure this is to partner with a company who
are technology agnostic and can offer your business the right
solutions for the problems at hand, and not just the product
of the moment.
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13. OEE Consulting Become Better.
There are six key steps to success.
There must be an effective governance structure around an
RPA roll out and ongoing management to ensure that it does
not focus solely on the tactical or the technical, but brings
in wider operations management techniques
4. Enable management
governance
5. Skills and engagement
6. IT needs to be part of the
change
Engage your people from the outset to make sure they
understand what is happening, how it is going to happen –
but critically, why it is happening and what it means for
them. Upskill your teams to understand how new technology
can benefit your customers and how their roles can evolve
to further focus on customer value.
Whilst it’s true that many new technologies can be
deployed outside of the existing IT governance and control,
it doesn’t mean they should be. There are often
unanticipated challenges with issues as complex as legacy
systems, or seemingly innocuous software updates. If
IT are only involved at this stage, you may face an
intransigent stakeholder as well as a technology challenge.
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14. OEE Consulting Become Better.
Achieve this, and you
will have the ability
to create exceptional
customer value as
well as lower costs:
A real competitive
advantage.
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OEE Consulting, Symphony and ActiveOps are working together to deliver better RPA implementation.
By automating painful back office work, we enable your people to spend more time with the customer,
adding value where it’s needed.

15. OEE Consulting
t: +44 (0) 1865 593911
info@oeeconsulting.com
oeeconsulting.com
OEE Consulting
8100 Alec Issigonis Way,
Oxford OX4 2HU
Become Better.