RPA: Still Trying to Get Started...

Thanks for all the positive feedback on my initial RPA blog. Just as a recap, I touched upon the very early days of RPA within TelefÃ´nica and how our proof of concept was constructed. For those that haven’t seen it yet, have a read. Thinking back, the POC for RPA was totally different to any other POC I’ve completed either before, or since (of which there are many, the most recent being a Video Chat pilot in our stores, which was pretty cool). You may think this was due to RPA being some new untried technology that needed lots of hand holding to implement, but it was actually due to the initial scepticism that RPA faced from the Technology vertical within our business. "Its not strategic" ... "It’s screen scrape" ... "Why don’t we do this instead..." were just some of the comments coming from "them". I remember thinking, "if your solutions worked in the first place, I wouldn’t be automating a back office full of work-arounds right now!" (I managed to hold my tongue this time). Thankfully, I had a knight-in-shining-armour within the Technology arena, who was able to see past the type of technology and understand the benefits that RPA could bring to the business. After speaking with a fellow RPA pioneer the other day about the "Technology department" topic, we concluded that RPA is impossible without some support from Technology, difficult with limited support, and it’s only easy when the Technology vertical buys in to the concept and is willing to support it with time and resource. (All this, despite the RPA technology being a service-led tool in my business, requiring very little input from my Technology colleagues on an on-going basis.) Like it or not, without Technology buy-in, RPA is destined to go slow or even fail to take off in your organisation. So how did I win over Technology in TEF? Surprisingly, it wasn’t after my successful POC. It was only after I allowed another POC to happen, this time using the Technology-preferred option of a BPM suite, that I truly won over the doubters. More to the point, it showed that the commercial benefits of RPA were so compelling that a BPMS project couldn’t compete on ROI that RPA could deliver. Editor's note: Wayne Butterfield will be penning a regular column on robotic process automation at work, for SSON. If you have any questions or issues you would like him to address, please send us an email. [inlinead]

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