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Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is one of the fastest-growing technologies in business today. It’s been proven to reduce costs, improve worker productivity and satisfaction, and eliminate errors. And among other benefits, many leading RPA solutions have low-code user interfaces that allow business users with no programming experience to build their bots.
Yet, that’s a two-edged sword. Yes, you have the people who know the business best (your front-line employees and even managers) automating key processes, but business-led RPA initiatives can develop into automation silos that are difficult to track and manage. RPA initiatives built with the best intentions can cause unforeseen problems as projects are deployed without evaluating the risk—or getting the input of the IT department.
RPA governance is needed. RPA governance is the system (including policies, best practices, and rules) by which you manage RPA within your organization. Governance needs to be built into the foundation of your RPA initiatives.
Some indications that your organization might lack RPA governance:
“Diving into RPA without a strategy that considers all aspects of the risks and costs associated with this technology can be as dangerous as disregarding the technology altogether, says Amy M. Brachio, Ernst & Young Global Advisory Risk & Performance Improvement Leader.
You have three fundamental options when choosing a governance model. The first is to let the business units manage RPA on their own. The second is to establish a centralized center of excellence (CoE) that manages projects and controls RPA activities from end to end. The third is the federated model, which is the hybrid of the two, allocating different responsibilities to each. In this blog, we’ll go over all the options, the pros and cons of each.
Today’s RPA tools are relatively easy to use, depending on the provider. You can download RPA software and develop a bot in just a few days. Precisely because the barriers to entry are minimal, different business units can establish their RPA fiefdoms. The chief benefit of doing this is that the people who are closest to the business know which processes aren’t working, aren’t efficient, or are taking too much time to complete. They target the right processes for automation and even know how to re-engineer the processes for optimal efficiency.
The challenges, however, are many:
This topic requires a blog of its own. But to introduce you to the concept, a center of excellence is the way to embed RPA deeply and effectively into and throughout your enterprise; to establish standards for privacy, security, and other important corporate goals; and to collect and share knowledge and experience to all parts of the organization.
In a CoE, all RPA activities are performed—and, more importantly, controlled—by a single team of personnel who have been drawn from both business units and IT.
Building an automation CoE helps you achieve RPA success in numerous ways:
All this sounds great, right? But there are some drawbacks. For example, if all RPA projects have to go through the CoE pipeline, there can be serious bottlenecks, and projects that are important to individual departments might not get prioritized over projects for the business as a whole. Also, a centralized organization cannot be as close to the individual business units as the front-line workers are, so automation designs or process re-engineering might not hit the mark as closely.
The federated model is a hybrid model that takes the best of business-led and CoE models. In this model, the CoE creates the overarching automation framework, strategy, policies, and rules. It contains RPA subject matter experts (SMEs) who act as internal consultants to business units. The CoE makes sure all bots are designed according to standards and is active in building bots that cross organizational boundaries or are enterprise-wide.
With a federated government model, you:
The business units will also feel a stronger sense of ownership and engagement over the automation journey, as they are accountable for their RPA journeys.
So, consider the federated governance model for RPA, as it provides the best of the business-led and the strict centralized CoE method. It allows you to have an overarching framework the aligns your enterprise as a whole while still catering to the unique needs of each business unit.
Ultimately, the most important job that your RPA governance model will perform is to capture and share enterprise RPA knowledge so that success can be replicated and you can operationalize automation on an ongoing basis. When you achieve these things, you are building an increasingly mature foundation for getting the most out of RPA now and in the future.
A growth-focused product marketer, Ritu Kapoor serves as the senior director of product marketing at Automation Anywhere. She enjoys launching new products and evangelizing innovations in the RPA space.
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