Self-Drive Through Your Automation Journey with Process Discovery

Earlier this year, we partnered with SSON (Shared Services and Outsourcing Network) to run a global survey on the state of intelligent automation. Surveying hundreds of business and automation leaders, we uncovered the main drivers and the latest achievements in automation. One of the most insightful learnings came from the question, “What challenges are you facing in implementing intelligent automation solutions?”

Among the top answers from the survey are a lack of knowledge, lack of skills, inability to find the automation opportunity, and organizational challenges

The results of the survey are not that surprising, given that there are two groups involved in automation. A large number of business users and business leaders — who feel the pain of inefficient processes and manual tasks day in and day — and a small group of automation experts — who know how the technology works and can implement automations.

The challenge is connecting the two, interviewing business users on their process expertise and transferring the process knowledge to empower the bigger group to automate independently. Getting started with automation can be a painful, manual process that takes up to 70% of the effort spent on an automation project. That explains why leaders talk about a lack of knowledge, skills, and silos.  

Self-driven automation

What if that challenge could be addressed with the same automation technology — minus any training or technical skills? What if software bots could observe your processes, make automation recommendations, and auto-generate bots on your behalf?

It may sound like a dream, but it’s not. The solution is called process discovery.

If you’re a business user, process discovery can change the way you implement automation. It can drive you through the entire automation journey – from the first step, when you’re figuring out where to start, through the expansion phase, when you’re thinking about scaling, up to the pinnacle phase, when you’re maximizing the effect of automation across your organization.

No matter which phase of the automation journey you’re in, process discovery can assist at every step.

 
Start

If you’re at the beginning of the automation journey, your first question is, “Where to start so that I can show the quick wins?” You may have some tasks to automate, but you still need to understand those tasks down to every click and keystroke. Process Discovery helps you to document those tasks, identify which steps could be automated, and generate an RPA bot for automating those steps.

Scale 

Once you have a successful experience with automation, you’ll want to scale it across the organization. Are your business teams ready for automation? How do you bring together business and automation leaders?

The challenge we see in the market is that some teams are more advanced and ready to automate than others. Those not prepared might have confusing, poorly documented processes. Some could be protective and afraid of any intervention in how they operate. As an automation leader, you need to engage and help those teams to adopt automation.

Process Discovery opens a new path to automation through process visibility and gradual improvements. By enabling Discovery Bot for a business unit or a functional department such as finance or HR, you give leaders the visibility into how their team operates right now and empower them to decide on what could be improved or automated. Process Discovery doesn’t require technical skills from users, which makes adoption easy.

At the same time, it gives leaders the power of transparency and control while preserving their ability to make process automation decisions.

Transform

If you successfully scale automation across the company and your business teams are excited and engaged, how do you maximize automation effectiveness?

You want to democratize automation and reach that state when most of your business users transform into citizen developers and create their bots. Those users who are not ready to develop automation can identify and submit automation opportunities.

As an automation leader, you govern automation democracy. You should have visibility and control over those automations. You should have the ability to review, prioritize, and optimize them. With Discovery Bot, you can effectively manage your automation pipeline, prioritize what to automate, and review and optimize auto-created bots to ensure the highest quality of automation.

Automate faster, automate more, automate better with Process Discovery

Process Discovery allows you to self-drive through the entire automation journey with technology that is easy to use, helps you find the next best automation opportunity, and auto-create bots. It transforms your business users from passive and cautious observers into active champions of automation.

See how it works at Innovation Day.