Sometimes it can seem as though companies often look for solutions to their IT problems too quickly – being technology, rather than problem-led. Other times, those tasked with finding a solution to a business problem are not the right people.

However, the real problem most businesses have is that the systems, processes, and methodologies they have in place stop their people from adding value or giving customers the value they want.

That’s the bottom line – systems are getting in the way. Even though we’re a tech company, we always think about people first. Fix their problems and you’ll be way ahead of your competitors.

Back in My Day

Remember a time before mobile phones? Perhaps, if you’re of a certain age. Back in the day, if you needed to contact someone there were many steps that had to be taken, from finding a landline, remembering your friend’s number, getting past the gatekeeper (i.e. a parent), and then discovering they were out somewhere.

Now, you simply take your phone out of your pocket, make some hand gestures across its screen and voila, you’re in contact with the person – anytime, anywhere.

The thing to take away here is that the mobile phone makes our lives easier. We achieve the same thing but with far fewer steps – far less effort is required. The mobile phone was designed to give us what we needed without taking away something else – our time.

On The Go Slow

Taking that example, think about some of the ways you complete tasks in your job now. Chances are you interact with a CRM or ERP system and we’re pretty confident at least some of that interaction is laboured. By that we mean it’s more effort than it really should be.

Maybe your company bought an off-the-shelf product which doesn’t suit your business? Or perhaps it’s bespoke… but not enough thought was given to its users when designing it. Either way, the chances are there is an App in your life which slows you down.

In business, your staff want to be able to do their job without wrestling with their own systems and processes. So why do businesses adopt technology that doesn’t best serve their people and in turn their business?

One Size Doesn’t Fit All

If assumption is the mother of all F-ups, then presumption is its father. Businesses often presume that there is a technology that will solve all their problems. In 2021 we have already been inundated with requests from businesses for AI. Just that. Just “AI”. This shows that companies are leading with a solution they don’t necessarily understand – and not the problem that they want to solve.

Like we said at the beginning, the problem businesses have is that they often close themselves off from the real problem – which is that the tech they have in place is inhibiting their people and their customers.

To find out precisely what those problems are we always ask why a few times over. This helps us dive into the real problem and get our customers to look up from their initial idea of a solution. If you understand something you have a fair better chance of solving it.

1s and 0s?

One of the benefits of the current age is companies can look for true problems and solutions in their data. Data often cuts through the preconceptions that business leaders have. This could be customer interaction data or call monitoring data from staff. Just having reliable information to hand is key to putting people before technology because you can often change a businesses’ mindset by showing them cold, hard data.

Looping in our love of RPA, we don’t believe that robots are there to remove people. They should be there to empower them. Taking away menial tasks frees up an individual to focus on value adding jobs. It helps to focus their sense of purpose and gives them a role which taps into their talent. If the big problem companies face is that systems are holding back their people and their customers, then solving that is going to make for better work and happier customers.

Take attendant automation in a call centre, it’s a prime example of where tech unshackles a staff member and benefits the customer. An automated attendant, if built right, can instantly provide a call agent with all the information relevant to the caller without the need to search a database. This means the agent can focus on the caller themselves and in turn that will mean the customer is going to get a more focused response, improving customer satisfaction.

In other areas of business we all implement flexible solutions by understanding problems. Even simple examples like small meeting rooms that can house quick catch ups between a few people. These rooms can be repurposed if needed without much trouble but they are a great way of having a space you don’t have to book or set up in any way. We should all think about technology in the same way, how it can be used now as well as when business needs change.

Why Us?

Bringing this together we want to talk about what makes us, PAteam, different from other RPA and tech providers. We believe in putting people first and we come armed with a healthy distrust of the buzzword solutions that are often put in front of us. We take the time to understand you, your people, and your customers. With that understanding we can then start to look at the processes a bot can tackle. Asking why isn’t always comfortable but it is essential.

We really dislike the trend in tech of slapping features on software that a user base never actually asked for just because it’ll look good on a product data sheet. We want to give you and your business material benefit, offering tailored advice and technology which improve how you work and what you can give your customers.

If that sounds like something you’re interested in then get in touch for a chat, just expect us to find out what you really need.

We’re going to tread very carefully in this blog for two reasons.

Firstly, we don’t like buzzwords very much but sometimes they are a handy way of grabbing attention to talk about interesting topics.

Secondly, we don’t want you to think RPA is going anywhere – but we want to give you an idea of the future. RPA and (in the future) AI are fantastic technologies that we want to help you seek out and bring into your business.

That said, RPA, in its current form, is not the future

Bot Extinction

We don’t want to undermine all our hard work or make you think it isn’t valuable. RPA right now offers businesses a great way of reducing repetitive work, saving money, and improving quality. However, the pace of technological improvement means that we need to stay ahead of where we find ourselves at the moment.

Hyper automation is a combination of three things: Business Process Management, RPA and AI. It’s a fluffy word, we’ll admit, but it does show a particular drive from businesses to find the key technologies they need to access in the future to have an edge. And while true AI is still a way off, functional AI that can perceive and make decisions for itself is getting closer.

Seeing Is Believing

Document recognition and understanding is a big drive for AI. There is a huge amount of work which goes into reading and collating information. Being able to automate this has huge upside for businesses.

At the moment you have to define a template where all the fields are and tell your bot where to look and what to look for. With AI and Machine Learning, a computer can ‘read’ the information from the page without prior knowledge of what it is going to be looking at.

Hello, Operator?

Take the classic automated voice on the phone telling you “We may record this conversation for training…”. Well, that somewhat trite and hackneyed auto-voice is evolving… and transforming into something quite special.

In near real time, an AI can transcribe the content of a call and begin to detect the emotion of the caller. Imagine how this could work in a call centre environment. The AI would function as the frontline operator, able to pass calls onto a human call handler to help customers. In this way, rather than remove a task, AI can extend the capability of a human.

Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

Right now we are automating processes. In the future, bots are going to be able to provide insight and be predictive rather than just being completely procedural. We’re all in on RPA, AI, and Business Process Management so if you’ve got any questions, or think that you want to go further with bots then let us know – we’d love to hear from you.

The idea of empowering people with tools that they can easily access to build RPA is fantastic. We’re 100 % behind anyone learning more about the technology.

But (and it is a big ‘but’) the impact of putting someone who has next-to-no training into a position where they can affect your business at a process level is not ok.

Today we’re talking about citizen developers and why you need to watch out for them.

No Code, Some Problems

Citizen Development is the idea of using a distributed network of individuals who create RPA bots using publicly accessible UI automation tools. These individuals can have any background, and providing they have a good working knowledge of computing, they will be able to create bots which can be put to work. Think of them as an open-source productivity tool.

UI automation tools enable them to build a simple flow that understands where on the screen you need to click, type, or extract information. For those that have written macros before, these tools have a similar level of complexity. Because of the lack of training required to get started, the cost of development is often lower – but don’t be sucked in by that.

Don’t Be Fooled

Hidden behind the lure of cheap development from a wide network of easily accessible people is the real danger – their lack of experience. It’s hard to understate how important this is so we’ll say it again. The lack of experience that untrained citizen developers have means they probably aren’t going to have great business acumen; let alone understand the intricacies of your operation.

This type of development can create a real burden for your business – rather than leveraging RPA to remove manual tasks and save time. Because these people aren’t trained, they don’t have an awareness of every step surrounding automation.

How will the automation be maintained? How will the automation be adapted if the process changes? This adds a lot of work for your existing IT team as they are going to have to work with and maintain RPAs that aren’t future proofed or even built to the right standard in the first place.

Power To The People

It’s a great concept to empower people with technology, but it just isn’t as easy as many are making out. In the same way there aren’t citizen mechanics, you can’t expect people who aren’t well trained to perform well at a complex task. Even with the documentation that comes with these pieces of software, there is no provision of contextual training to show the user how to think about processes and automation.

Ultimately, whether or not you use citizen developers is down to agility versus control. Do you want to react quickly or react well?

Power to the people, absolutely, but don’t let go of the control you already have on your quality. Sure, citizen developer programmes have their problems, but they’re also a great way of identifying competent candidates, who – with the right training – could be some of your most valuable employees. If you want expert advice when it comes to RPA, or want to find our more about our beginner’s training programme, then drop us a line before you reach out anywhere else.

So your business has identified a process which is repetitive and would benefit from RPA… that’s fantastic and you’ve got our attention! But do you know how you’re going to put it in place?

Structure isn’t a very sexy word, but without it, your bot isn’t going to get very far. Even if you understand how your business works, how are you going to get that across to a developer who doesn’t know your business?

A solutions architect is a handy fix to this problem so if you want to know more then read on.

Mind The Gap

We’ve looked before at the disconnects between business leaders, their goals, and their IT team. This is true as well in the relationship between business leaders and external developers but for slightly different reasons.

The internal party – the business leaders – know their business inside out but often don’t understand the technology they want to employ, and vice versa for the external developer. This lack of common knowledge leads to misunderstanding, which in turns stumbles into poor development.

Documentation plays a key part in communicating the vision of an RPA development. A good process design document is going to allow a business to define every step of a process and give context to the developer to automate those steps.

Unfortunately, more often than not we see developers who have little to no experience in business and so even with a well written document they can’t always run with it.

Feathers In The Cap

With a solutions architect you have an individual or team who is well versed in business and the needs and common pain points of a company. At the same time, they also have the technical knowledge needed to see a business through the lens of a developer. This combination of skills creates someone who can skate between the two camps – who understands what is required as well as how to achieve it.

Now, we would love to work with you on your RPA and bot development but we understand that you might have someone in mind already who you trust as a developer. That doesn’t mean we can’t help you. Our team is built from solutions architects who have the backing of experienced developers. In this way you can use us as a middle ground between you and your nominated developer.

Together We’re Better

All of this is on offer because we’re in it for the long haul. We want to start partnerships off in a way where we immediately demonstrate our value. Often, we provide this sort of advice at the beginning of a relationship as a way of developing trust with new partners and by and large it comes with no cost. Again, we aren’t interested in dumping RPA into your business and then never answering the phone – we want to help.

It might sound trivial but without asking the basic questions about a process you can’t develop effective RPA. It’s a false economy to rush into this technology without understanding exactly what you want to do with it. We’re here to help you get on track wherever you are on your journey, so get in touch with us today.

Automation journeys which fail normally do so because of a lack of understanding – so let us help you. With the brilliant folks over at NICE we’ve written a whitepaper – ‘RPA Reality Check’. It gives you all the info you need to get started with RPA. We wanted the material to give you simple, straightforward answers which will help you avoid the mistakes we’ve seen other companies make.

Get Out What You Put In

Not only is it a great piece that condenses the core ideas of RPA deployment into an easy format, it also suggests some best practices that you can take into your own business. One notable suggestion is the idea of walking before running. Too often we see companies throw money, time, and energy at RPA hoping for results – without really having prepared for it in any way.

RPA does require investment but with the right planning you can generate fantastic ROI. We recently wrote a piece on ROI, and if you really want to get into the nitty gritty we’ve even made a calculator that you can apply to your own business.

Riding Shotgun

All of these resources are great and we regularly get positive feedback on them from clients. But most, once they’ve read the material, want to get started for real. That’s where they need a partner – to guide them on their journey.

We never tell our clients which way to go, we just help them find the best way to get there. We never suggest how much a client should or shouldn’t spend, we just help them predict their return on investment. Most importantly, we don’t encourage chargeable revisits or high consulting fees. We stay with them at every stage until implementation is right.

Picture of Health

All this starts with our free health check. We find out where a company wants to get to and identify how RPA can be applied to their current processes. To do this we benchmark them against the other clients we have worked with to show where they are right now.

By keeping as much of RPA in-house as possible customers also benefit from bridging the normally separate camps of business leadership and IT.

Ultimately, deploying RPA in your business requires careful planning. The work you do before implementation is going to have the greatest impact on the whole journey. The whitepaper is ready for you to read whenever you like, but once you’ve taken the key points from that you may want to take the next step.

That’s where we come in, as your guide we’ll help you get where you want to go, so reach out to us today. Also for small questions, don’t hesitate to call or reach out to us on LinkedIn.

The classic clash in companies nowadays is between business operations and IT. Thankfully we can say with some confidence that RPA actually can act as a bridge between the two -– unlike some other tech.

Business objectives are often worked toward by constant, agile adjustments in processes. Conversely, IT is often slower and more methodical in its approach. These polarised positions can produce conflict within a business with the relative push and pull of each position being a constant battle. However, RPA has the potential to help both camps find common ground – and real value.

Origin Story

RPA was initially thought of as a great idea because of the lack of programmers in tech. RPA would help free up existing programmer time by allowing non-programmers to create bots – which can operate autonomous processes with less human intervention. Now, however, we see that RPA is often used when a solution is needed quickly – most commonly because business needs change.

RPA gives IT the ability to get on top of a problem far quicker than a more traditional solution. In fact, depending on the situation, RPA can give an IT team the time they need to design and implement a longer term solution. It’s flexibility as a tool is being leaned on more and more – and business leaders and IT teams alike are coming to depend on RPA, mainly because it can be deployed quickly and developed almost indefinitely.

Thinking Ahead

Viewing approaches as tactical versus strategic, short term versus long, gives a nice frame for the potential of RPA. We’ve recently worked with a tax authority who sees surges in public contact around tax deadlines. In just over a week, we’ve been able to put in place a bot which could support the contact centre helping them cope with their increased traffic.

Longer term, because of this initial success, we were able to develop a system which would handle all the digital tax submissions, automating what has historically been an incredibly labour intensive process.

Good Decisions From Good Data

Now, RPA can be mistaken as a quick fix – a band aid – but just like a house renovation it doesn’t matter how well you paint the walls, if the foundations aren’t sound the whole thing can come crashing down. The basis of all RPA development should be on a detailed understanding of current processes and outcomes. Without that, the chances of good ROI drop significantly.

It really comes down to the classic project management balance – time, cost, and scope. More and more, IT teams and business leaders are able to find common ground and value in RPA as it helps bridge the gap between tactical decision making and long term technical planning. In every time frame RPA has the ability to give great benefits providing the planning for it is done right. For us, we can see that any technology that brings people together is powerful – all the better if it helps a company perform better.

RPA is growing so if you want to find out more about how it can help you, bring your company value, your teams together and make your customers happier then get in touch with us today.