- We've now covered the potential benefits
and values of RPA in some detail.
Use these parameters in developing your own business cases.
They'll serve you well.
But before we move on from the discussion
of benefits and benefit calculations,
I wanted to touch on the other side
of the business case equation,
the costs of an RPA program.
Each organization will have
its own business planning approach and metrics.
So this is meant to be more directional than prescriptive.
But no matter your process,
you'll want to remember a few important, broad categories.
The first is the technology involved.
You will be purchasing RPA software licenses
that can have terms of up to three years,
in which you pay for the software license each year.
But there are many variations on this theme.
Some vendors have platform fees.
Others have different fees for their different robots,
attended and unattended.
And if that's not enough, the space is rapidly evolving.
Expect to see many as is service
and utility-based pricing models in the near future.
Now that you have the software accounted for,
you'll also need to be sure that you have the right hardware
and IT infrastructure for the tool that you're using.
Each tool vendor can help suggest
the best infrastructure for their tool.
And finally, don't forget to account for the time
from the business partners, IT partners,
and perhaps service providers
to help set up your technology environment.
The second area to include is the operational labor
to run your program.
You'll need to decide if you're going to fully
dedicate resources to implement your automation,
or will this be quote, unquote, other duties as assigned,
for someone in the IT or operations group?
You may decide to have business analysts,
continuous improvement professionals,
or project managers as part of the team.
Using a partner to help you set up your RPA program
or run for you, is also something to consider.
More on that later.
Third, an area too often overlooked is the ongoing costs.
Without a good grasp of these, you won't be able
to calculate the total cost of ownership
of RPA in your organization.
Your digital workforce needs ongoing monitoring,
maintaining, and retraining when processes change,
and they do change.
This is not set it and forget it technology.
You'll need to know how you're gonna care
for your new digital labor.
And the rules of thumb on exactly how many people
you need to do that are not exact.
They often don't consider how to include
the costs of process upkeep, how many bots you have running,
or what times of day your robots run.
For that reason, I don't subscribe to rules of thumb here.
You'll need to figure this out over time
or with help from an expert.
Finally, there are other things to consider, as well.
If you choose to deploy your own RPA,
you need to factor in the cost of basic,
advanced, and applied tool training for your team.
You'll also wanna approximate job redesign
and reskilling costs, if you plan to reassign
those who have seen their work automated.
And you'll wanna think about having a budget
for a formal communication plan
as you roll out your RPA program.
Communication is yet another area that is often forgotten.
But rest assured, we'll cover that in a moment.
We've explored a lot of material in this chapter,
including benefit types, benefactors, and cost categories
you should consider in your business case.
We'll make these available to you
as a handout in the exercise files.
So now that you've considered all of the parameters
you need to calculate the ROI of your RPA initiative,
the next step is a crucial one.
Picking the right processes to automate.