Posted on 04/20/20 by Justin Barr
Last week we talked about manual data entry and how you can automate data entry using technology. Specifically, we were talking about a Robotic Process Automation (RPA) tool. This week we are going to focus on the best practices for an RPA tool.
4/21/2020
As many users start playing with RPA, we are seeing robots starting to take over the workforce. In my opinion this is great as it allows YOU to work on more value-add activities. RPA reminds me of the movie Spider-Man when Uncle Ben says, “With great power comes great responsibility.” Now that you have the power to automate, the question becomes what do you automate?
You literally could automate anything. Hopefully through this post you can start to understand what is recommended to automate and what is not.
Starting out you should know the RULE OF FIVE for RPA best practices.
1. Less than 5 decision made
2. Less than 5 applications/business systems accessed
3. Less than 5 hundred clicks
5 decisions made
If decision changes or rules change frequently, you should really consider whether a robot or another system should be used for your decisions.
Each robot can make decisions based on your automation. The problem becomes if it’s made so many decisions and those decisions change. You would have to go update each robot based on the changing decision landscape. Decisions like “if state equals Ohio send claim to customer service rep x” may be fine if your business doesn’t change or you only service a couple states.
Less than 5 applications/business systems accessed
RPA has a lot of power and can connect to anything. As discussed in my last blog post “80% of applications/business systems that exist today don’t have an approved way to get data in and out of the system”. The problem occurs when these systems change. As we upgrade our business systems this has a chance to break our robots. You have to weigh the ROI and maintenance cost of connecting to one or more applications/business systems and whether you should do it or not.
Less than 5 hundred clicks
Robots need structure and the more you are clicking and moving the mouse the more chaos your robot ensues. You could also risk performance-based issues if you are getting over 500 clicks.
Now that you have some best practices, the next thing you will need to put in place is a governance program. Let’s face it, if everyone in your organization wanted to automate without any structure you would slowly see a total robot failure and millions of dollars wasted.
To avoid losing time and money contact Clear Process Solutions so we can help form your governance and your center of excellence (COE) around RPA.
Contact me on LinkedIn or contact the CPS team.
Let’s #automatetogether
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