Struggling with RPA?

The first couple use cases for RPA might have come pretty easily, but building the “sequel” use cases and a robust automation pipeline takes dedication, and a lot of care and feeding. Finding the right use cases for RPA can be stressful; maybe you are unsure where to start, who to talk to, or how to begin. Many RPA initiatives begin with solving a specific problem, but have no attention on scaling the program to solve the next set of problems. Growing RPA across departments, divisions, and geographies is critical, but to many “agency-wide adoption” of RPA is a difficult undertaking.

Most starter RPA programs are funded at the departmental level, or often referred to as “bottom-up adoption”. The dollars come from the folks who are the beneficiaries of the initial automations, solving business-unit level challenges. Many agencies may have multiple of these “bottom-up” efforts, lacking alignment of goals, technology and processes, as well as a lack of corporate vision and funding. Conversely, other programs are defined at an agency-wide, or digital transformation strategic level. These programs, commonly referred as “top-down adoption” may begin with strong vision and objectives and funding, however they are typically slow to start due to a lack of tangible use cases and in-depth process knowledge.

Most organizations look to outside help initially to stand-up their RPA program, but when those consultants are no-longer needed full time, companies are faced with a challenge: Keep an expensive consultant and reduce the ROI of their program or let them go and watch their RPA expertise walk out the door. When that consultant leaves, typically so does the momentum and RPA knowledge that created your initial successes, and your program is left without a path forward.

In “bottom-up” strategies, a business unit may implement RPA with the basic minimal IT involvement. As an RPA program begins to grow, so does the optics from the CIO, asking valid questions around data security, hosting, supportability, process definition and development, reusability, testing, system availability, and disaster recovery aspects of the RPA program. Without solutions for these components, and without business and IT alignment of the RPA program, the program will never expand out of the “RPA Stall Zone” and the benefits that RPA can provide your agency will not be realized.

Optezo believes that both “bottom-up” and “top-down” strategies are required for RPA success. The goals for RPA, the vision for automation use, and ultimately the funding decision needs to come from the to, and outcome based. Business outcomes will help support investment and engagement, align the opportunity pipeline across business units, accelerate the IT & business partnership, and align with the government agency’s overall strategy. The initial use cases and automation roadmap needs to be driven through the department level, with prioritization of ideas and alignment to the agency-wide RPA strategy. Optezo facilitates this strategy through the use of our Customer Success Team assigned to your engagement. Our End-to-End RPA Services eliminate your need to hire and train internal staff to manage your robotic process automation program. Optezo manages your automation portfolio and the scoring and phasing of new automation ideas. Our world-class team provides overarching RPA governance, adhering to best practices and standards to drive your automation to scale.

Optezo’s world-class team uses repeatable streamlined steps to quickly build, validate and deploy your bots in industry-leading timeframes. We provide you overarching delivery governance, adhering to development best practices and standards. Our expertise and best practices eliminate wasted time in development and accelerate your time to value. And our team can scale quickly to meet your agency’s automation demand created through the automation roadmap.