#dont_blame_the_bots

#dont_blame_the_bots

Fridays are for light relief – right?

Interesting article by McKinsey & Company just posted, hard on the heels of a similar critique by #HfS's Phil Fersht (http://bit.ly/2qJU18L).

I agree with both and yet disagree.

I speak with lots of practitioners about robotics, and have heard plenty of presentations at Shared Services & Outsourcing Network (SSON) events. Nearly all happy ones. For all those who are not thrilled with results, I would say the common denominator is faulty planning and implementation.

And I think both articles kind of come to the same conclusion.

The point is that, like for most things in life, if it sounds too good to be true it probably is. Why, even solution providers are complaining to me that so many enterprise clients are being misled into short-term fixes that actually limit them further down the road.

But this is not unique to robotics. Any transformational strategy requires thorough preplanning, planning some more, governance, risk assessments, planning some more,…

 So my thought is: it's not the robots' fault – it's the fault of the project team (sorry). 

 Let's just list, for a moment, how many mistakes can be made:

• failure to include IT up front
• failure to consider regional or task specific differentials that will not allow standardized rollout
• failure to get your customers on board
• failure to communicate with employees that robotics can actually be a "personal assistant" to them
• failure to consider how changes in the underlying platform will impact your RPA fix in the case of desktop automation
• failure to understand the difference between a  server-based solution and a desktop solution
• failure to  recognize robotics as one tool within an overall performance improvement toolkit
•  failure to look beyond six months
• .... feel free to add to the list online with the #dont_blame_the_bots or in my LinkedIn post