There is real duality in the businesses that we work in today. We rely massively on trusting other people. This trust can relate to anything from completing tasks, offering advice, or maintaining quality. And yet, despite this massive reliance on others, we still put safeguards in place – just in case they don’t follow through.

Today we’re talking about what makes ‘good’ RPA (TL;DR? It boils down to how much you trust it to work).

Deemed Unnecessary

While no bot that we put in place is ever left completely unattended – because checks and balances are crucial in managing any process – we always want the people we work with to gain the trust of a bot’s ability and use this trust to truly free up their time.

If this didn’t happen then the bot would be redundant. Why? Because they wouldn’t actually be taking the menial work away from someone! Instead, they would just be overseeing the task rather than completing it.

Double Standard

One habit we see in every implementation is that a person who has had their tasks taken from them distrusts the bot innately. When they log in each day, 9 times out of 10 the first thing they’ll do is check on the bot. If it’s working correctly, great, that’s what it’s designed to do. But the moment it deviates, alarm bells start ringing! Imagine for a second if we treated people like that.

The real truth is, despite the exposure to technology that we all share, we still believe that people can do things better than robots. That might sound counterintuitive because we’re told to think of robots as machines that speed everything up, but in actual fact people still prefer people. People trust people and they assume a robot will fail because it isn’t intelligent in the same way that our fellow humans are.

But What Does It Do?

In case you didn’t know, automation is a brilliant way to boost the efficiency and reliability of a process by freeing up a person’s time. Not only do you get more value from the person by being able to give them more complex tasks, but you also catalyze the process allowing it to work far better at scale.

When it comes to defining ‘good’ we need to understand primarily what is the purpose of automation – what problem does it solve? There are always multiple ways to achieve the end goal, whether that is using people or robots or a combination of the two. RPA is only as good as the result it provides.

Process, Processes, Processes

But you can only determine if a result is good or bad by benchmarking everything that you are already doing. That starts with understanding your processes and documenting their effects.

Good RPA is a bot working well in an existing environment without you worrying about it. Process development and improvements are important in getting the most out of a bot. But if that bot does the boring, repetitive work quicker and more accurately than a person within the same environment, then it has succeeded. Then and only then, can we finally call it ‘good’ – it’s actually really simple.

How good is your RPA? Oh, you don’t have any?(!) Look no further than PAteam. Drop us a note – xxxx.

If it ain’t broke don’t fix it. That’s a phrase used by everyone and their uncle. But unfortunately, it isn’t often stuck to.

We’ve made a business off the back of broken processes, so in some ways, we’re grateful for them – but you definitely shouldn’t be.

If you already know there is something you or your teams do that just doesn’t work properly – whether there are communications challenges, technology errors, security incidents, issues with workplace safety, or quality control – you need to get on it ASAP. But is automation *exactly* what you need?

Perhaps. But it’s not where you should start.

Don’t Patch It. Rebuilt It.

Our phone rings pretty regularly with calls from businesses desperate to drop automation into the middle of their operations. But 9 times out of 10 their business isn’t ready for it. The processes they want to build on aren’t sustainable and adding automation is just going to add cost for minimal gains – not good. Even worse though is when they suggest that they can tweak it to make it fit. If it’s broken don’t ever just patch it – rebuild it better than before.

Because of automation’s recent addition to the pool of tech buzzwords, people think it’s a one size, fix all, easy win. While it does have a good amount to offer, it isn’t going to fix what is already there. If your process is inefficient, automation will just execute that inefficiency at a higher rate.

The Real Battle

Change though is its own mountain to conquer. Whether you’re battling to fix something while it is in motion which often can’t be done or you’re trying to tap into your IT team who are already pushed to get everything else finished. This is where bringing in an expert really helps.

Automation experts, like us, have seen it all before and can provide guidance on how to rebuild processes with as little impact as possible to your operation and your people. Because we see your business from a fresh perspective (and have been doing this for longer than we’d care to admit!) anything that doesn’t work jumps out at us.

Case in Point

Let’s take an example, something simple that businesses, maybe even yours, have to do – adding record IDs to a report. It might start to sound familiar. This manual Excel report is stored in a folder that is only ever dusted off to update the report. No one has read the report or used it at all since it was introduced. Now is there any point in automating this process? Of course not.

As experts, it’s also our responsibility to let you know when something isn’t just broken, but also redundant. If you’ve been carrying out a process poorly for 50 years, why would we want you to invest in doing it for another 50? That wouldn’t help us build a strong relationship with you and that’s what we always want. We’ll help you find a way to make the process more efficient and less error-prone – and then supercharge it with automation to give you the maximum kickback on investment.

Process improvement is present everywhere you look. An efficient process creates more value and automation makes it scalable. We won’t take “because we’ve always done it that way” as an excuse. Let us help you fix your processes and then we’ll look at automation.

We’ve got the complete toolkit and the right experience to fix your processes – contact PAteam today.

While we do love spending a little bit of time talking about ourselves, that’s what this is all about right? We also love to shout out the brilliant tech and players in the industry. While we work with a lot of vendors, to be honest, one of our go-to vendors is NICE. Because of that, not that they need the press, we wanted to take some time to talk about why they’re often our vendor of choice.

NICE With a Capital N

We’ll do our best not to throw shade on any other of the big names in the industry because that’s not really our thing, this is all about why NICE is so…well…nice. Nice to collaborate with, and even nicer to recommend them as a great bunch and we can’t say enough good things about NICE – but we’ll give it a good go anyway.

School of Hard Knocks

If we can use a schoolyard analogy for a moment, NICE is like the slightly geeky kid overshadowed by the jock. Quiet, considered, and an all-around good guy, NICE is the one that blossoms a little later than the rest – and turns out to be quite the stud as he approaches middle age (!). Because they have such an approachable manner, it’s hard not to want to work with NICE. They echo and mimic the values many of us want to embody.

Be Yourself

Much of what makes them great is their culture. NICE is interested in developing relationships and although they typically work with big customers, they’re more than happy to work with anyone given the right opportunity. They know exactly what they can do but that at the same time they know they aren’t the best at everything.

A Done Deal

Agnosticism is a lie in tech. Under the hood, 90% of the work that is carried out is tailored to a particular platform. When we start a conversation with a client we focus on understanding what needs and problems they have before we ever look at solutions. The funny thing is it usually just ends up with us using NICE. They’re actually just that good.

Best of Both Worlds

We believe one of the reasons they have been so successful with big clients is that they have the certainty which comes with a business of their size but the soul of a smaller outfit. This is a rare thing and even rarer in the tech world. Some of the other big guys in the industry have huge sales departments. That stands at odds with our own approach and NICE reflects this in the way they work and that makes dealing with them and our own customers that much easier.

NICE wants to do their best but they don’t want to be anyone else. They offer a variety of technologies so they know if they provide the approach to support and create a relationship they will be able to be successful in the future. It’s the long game and one we’re more than happy to play with them. We offer open and honest conversations and that is what we love about NICE.

If you want a great expert to pair with a great vendor like NICE, look no further than PAteam.

We live in a world where so many businesses, and ultimately people’s lives, sometimes depend on nothing more than a single line of code.

With the recent Log4Shell vulnerability sending large corporations everywhere into a spiral we thought today we would talk about the importance of business continuity and how having systems that are adaptive is your best bet.

Hold The Line

As we saw huge corporations dedicate their massive IT teams to defend against L4S, it was clear that even with great business continuity plans, without agility and teams made up of people ready to fight the good fight with great tools, those same companies won’t be ready next time. In IT things are taken for granted, so without question, there will be another part of some code that is susceptible to attack – to think differently is naive.

We Got This

When the Log4Shell vulnerability was first discovered, we had to quickly jump into action. From our customers’ perspective, the scariest thing for them was having software from vendors which might compromise not only their automation but also other aspects of their business. Thankfully,  because we work with a wide range of clients we were able to quickly liaise with the big vendors to ensure that everything was covered.

Not a Simple Switch

However,  fear surrounding stopping automation has developed – because it is now so ingrained in so many companies that it can’t simply be ‘shut down’. Many companies use automation to record and monitor security and compliance; so turning the bot off means potentially breaching internal policy or worse – wider industry regulations.

Paper Over the Cracks

Not so long ago. The idea of filling out an IT security verification form before working with a new customer was nothing more than a paperwork exercise. But now, security breaches can be so quickly and effectively leveraged that having the backup of good IT security in place is quite literally critical.

The Right Approach

We all need agility and mobility within our businesses. We need creative and smart people to help build and maintain our business. RPA is excellent for this as it can be turned around quickly and a working solution can be built and deployed rapidly. We need tools that can deal with things we cannot plan for and anything which can turn on a dime to counter threats is going to help.

There is real value in strong contingency plans and being prepared for the worst but if the pandemic we’ve been gripped by, or zero-day exploits are anything to go by, we can’t be prepared for everything. Better than great planning, is having teams and tools in place that can adapt and overcome new challenges and become all the better for it.

We’re ready for all things RPA, so if you want to find out more, contact PAteam today.

It’s about time we finally address the double standard seen in modern workplaces. And while it’s not usually in our wheelhouse to wade into workers’ rights, we’ve had enough!

Ok, we’re being a little facetious… but honestly, people treat bots badly. Robots are your digital employees. There’s no two ways about it. They carry out work that you would otherwise have people doing. It’s about time we give them the credit they deserve and truly recognise their strengths and weaknesses.

Clear Favourite

Imagine for a moment that you have an employee who does, well, average work. And while they don’t set your world alight, they’re OK at what they do. Then, let’s say, you have an employee who processes at incredible speed, 24/7. But from time to time, they get it really wrong. Like completely wrong.

It’s a bit obvious, but we’re comparing an average employee with a bot. It is a double standard that, for the most part, you’ll get a lot more frustrated with a bot than a person? We think so. And that just isn’t right.

Many Hands

Truly understanding the limitations of both a person and a bot is the only way to work when evaluating what you’re going to get by choosing a digital employee over a human one. A human being is going to be capable of making decisions and dealing with things they haven’t seen before – but, a bot isn’t. However, a bot can work round the clock, at a speed 100x a team of people could only dream of.

Golden Ratio

The thing is, any time a bot makes a mistake it’s because a human didn’t build it properly. That’s right – we’re all to blame when we curse a failed program.

This is why aiming for a 100% success rate with a bot just isn’t realistic – so get that out of your head. We aim for 80/20 success to failure. Now, that might sound low – but think how much that bot can do, 80% of a large volume of work is still far more than a team of people could churn through. Edge cases are unavoidable and that’s ok: you’ve got people to deal with those.

Gravy Train

At some point, you’ve got to consider scale. Let’s take the example of a public transport company dealing with strikes that cause massive delays. A lot of frustration for commuters.

With such widespread issues, a huge volume of refund requests flood in. You. You have two choices: hire a bunch of people to process them, or build a bot that can deal with the traffic.

There’s only one right answer here – and that is ‘the one that can deal with all of these requests as quickly and efficiently as possible; in the most cost effective way.’

It’s moments like these that digital employees will truly shine. But, unless companies spend time onboarding bots – as they would with any other new starter – they won’t be able to deliver when it matters most.

Ultimately, bots improve over time, just like people. But – for the most part – their capabilities are designed to tackle tasks in a way that people can’t. Remember though, just like you, they’re not perfect and they need experience to perfect their tasks.

We believe in looking after bots, do you? If you want to talk RPA then contact PAteam today.

It’s that time again where we set ourselves goals to live by for the new year. The joy of New Year’s resolutions is that they come round regularly. This means we don’t have to beat ourselves up too much when we’ve dropped them by mid-January.

But one resolution we wish everyone would stick to is to be more preventative rather than reactive. Clearly, as it’s us, this has an RPA spin, so let’s see where we would love 2022 to take you.

Sometimes You Can’t Help It

Sometimes as humans we too often we get caught up in the day-to-day tasks – the fire fighting that every business deals with. Crisis management becomes an everyday occurrence very easily if you let it. Most of us are or have been guilty of this but what if it didn’t have to be like that? Well… it doesn’t. With more free time we all have the opportunity to make better decisions.

Work Smarter, Not Harder

But where is that time going to come from? “I’m so busy!”, we hear you shout. Well, for one if you took away all the menial, labor-intensive tasks you’re probably holding onto, that would be a good start. We’ve spoken about it many times before, but what if you invested your time in understanding how what you do is done at a process level? And then developed that understanding into a machine that could do it for you? It really works.

Planning Is Everything

Human beings aren’t inherently very good at planning, that’s why we create tools and programs to help us. The streaking lines of a good Gantt chart or the color coding of a coordinated Kanban board all help us see what our brains struggle to keep track of. Having automation in a business aids planning – because it forces you to understand how something actually works. If it’s inefficient then you’ll know pretty quickly when you stop doing it for more than a second and really think it through.

Room To Grow

Investing in automation is more than just a time saver now. It’s highly scalable so as your business grows or the need for a particular task increases within your company, bots can be on hand to grow at the push of a button – it saves you time now, and in the future.

So we’ve cracked it and you now know to step away from the busy day-to-day whenever you can and look ahead. Now that you know what you need to do this year, what’s that free time going to help you solve? Because getting the extra time is one thing, but spending it wisely, well that’s just up to you.

RPA saves time and makes things run smoother when done right. Contact PAteam today to find out more.