- RPA has robot in its name.
You've got to admit that's cool,
and it's no doubt one of the reasons
the RPA concept has caught the attention of so many.
But I wanna share a few thoughts
as it relates to the concept of the robot.
First, the tool is important,
but it's not the central player.
You've heard me say this before, but I say it for a reason.
I was lucky enough
to be in the right place at the right time,
and have enjoyed being part of the RPA community
since its earliest days.
I've watched with fascination
as enterprise after enterprise begins their RPA journey
by seeking proposals for software.
Many have not yet thought through
who will own the initiative,
where they'll house it, what processes they'll prioritize,
not even what the success criteria are.
I liken this to buying a hammer
before you're clear on the task at hand.
The coolest and shiniest hammer won't do you any good
if your task ends up requiring screws.
Next, while picking a good tool is certainly important,
a great RPA tool deployed without solid communication,
change management, stakeholder management,
and change control is destined to fail.
Trust me, I've seen this happen too often.
Don't miss the forest for the trees.
Now, this next one might shock you,
but robot is a meaningless measure
of scale, scope, and transactional capability.
You might have 50 assisted robots on desktops,
and I might have two unassisted robots hosted in the cloud.
That doesn't tell us
who's accomplished automating more complexity,
nor who's added more value to their firm.
Stating a goal about how many robots
you wanna deploy in the next year
is not very useful,
yet the number of robots that you have
seems to be the unit of measure
that people are wielding as their credibility badge.
It shouldn't be about how many robots you have.
In fact, it should almost be the opposite.
If you can transform and digitize an operation
on a small footprint of technology,
then you may be in a better place
then somebody who's deployed thousands of robots.
The point is, it's about realizing the benefits
we covered earlier.
Finally, while the robot concept sets you up
to buy cool clip art, fun T-shirts, and lots of desk toys,
it can have the effect of scaring the wits
out of the enterprise delivery teams.
In the early days of RPA,
we would hide the name
in fear of raising the ire of HR or labor unions.
RPA is somewhat more accepted today, but tread carefully,
and be conscious of the fact
that people are sensitive about automation impacting them.
Be aware of this when branding and announcing your efforts.
I'll finish this topic with one final point.
Perhaps one of the most interesting things
I've seen in organizations that adopt RPA
is how they treat their new digital labor colleagues.
Without fail, every single organization
that I've helped adopt RPA does one thing in common.
They name their robots.
So start brainstorming names now,
and yes, Rosie is already taken.