The COVID pandemic has accelerated the digital transformation and automation drive. Having interacted with clients across Pakistan, the wider MEA region and Europe, the starting point in introducing RPA is to not start with RPA. Our experience with our clients indicates that the starting point is to engage the process business users and process owners first and foremost. The former is the user, who knows the practical functioning of the process and the latter understands the business context of what the process delivers. It is these two individuals/categories that can provide real insights into what the process delivers, and what needs to be done to improve it.
Processes are essential to any organisation. From a documentation perspective, the norm is, “to document what you do, and do what you document”. Yet, rarely is this the case and even if a process is documented, the actual process flow is usually different and only the process owner knows the process better than anyone else. Hence, when an organisation sets out to pursue process efficiencies via automation, the focal point is not the process, but the process owner.
It is in this context, that we recommend that embarking on the RPA path is essential for any organisation. Yet the starting point isn’t the RPA platform or the RPA vendor, but rather a fundamental review of the processes that need to be automated. This is where “Discovery Sessions” become essential and almost critical.
What is a Process?
Whilst this is an obvious question, it is relevant to define it within digital terms. A company is essentially the sum of all of its processes and the processes are built out of the regular activities that the processes constitute. The schematic in Figure 1 shows this. The total data produced by the processes can be filtered via their relevant disciplines. It is these processes that essentially “add value” and hence need to be lean and efficient.
What are Discovery Sessions?
These are small group sessions where process owners sit together and first list all the processes that are their pain points. Then they prioritize their processes in terms of cost, error, efficiency, etc. Once this is done, the process owners can then map out the actual processes from a digital perspective. By this, we mean the data processing that occurs for each part of the step of the process.
Value of Discovery Sessions
The consequence will be that as time progresses, the owner will not only define the process precisely but will then be able to envision the process in terms of the data manipulation/processing that occurs as a consequence. In process transformation terms, this is viewing the process digitally. When the process owner deconstructs the process into the essential data manipulations, the extraction of efficiencies become almost instinctive as the relevance of each data manipulation will be questioned in terms of the “value addition”. In this sense, there is a parallel between this and process evaluation using the Six Sigma methodology, but this focuses on the need for automation, rather than the classical Six Sigma philosophy.
Hence in simple terms, the value of the sessions is to deconstruct the processes that are pain points into their digital equivalent. Once that is done, then the effort required to automate the process becomes evident. The natural progression becomes to define an inventory of processes that require automation together with the complexities and benefits of automation.
From the above methodology, neither an RPA vendor nor an RPA platform is required. A quality “Discovery Session” will yield the right information to ensure that the right processes are automated, to yield the required efficiencies.
