- The key to success in any venture
is getting the right people aligned and on board.
It's the same with RPA programs.
In fact in my experience, RPA requires
a greater level of cooperation than usual so heed this call.
The key to RPA success is collaboration and communication.
If there's one area where I spend
a lion's share of my time,
it's here, helping firms design their teams,
select the right players, develop the capabilities
and organize centers of excellence.
Let's review the key stakeholders you'll want involved.
At the highest level,
we'll discuss business stakeholders and IT stakeholders.
Let's look first at the business and process side.
One role you'll always see is
the Subject Matter Expert or SME.
SMEs are the employees who are experts
at the process you're automating.
They know the process inside and out
and it's their job to teach the RPA team what each step is
and then validate that all the relevant information
has been captured faithfully.
The SME also plays a critical role later on
in user acceptance testing.
Now in some deployment scenarios,
the SMEs are the RPA team.
Enterprises have the SMEs learn an RPA tool
and then automate their own processes.
This individual do-it-yourself approach much like
the era of Excel macros is not something I generally suggest
unless the initiative is highly structured
and governed and closely managed.
When working at the granular level of complex processes,
validation from all parties involved is crucial.
This is why team leads or similar roles
like process owners are important.
Team leads are the people who manage the SMEs.
They often provide a higher level of process validation.
Team leads also support by helping collect process metrics
using their expertise to ensure that the needs
of the business are met.
Then we have your project managers.
Like any other business project, these stakeholders
help interface and communicate all things project-related.
Project managers are essential to facilitate progress
during development and to handle
important issues when they're raised.
Now as I mentioned, your IT team
is another critical set of stakeholders.
I always emphasize the importance
of early IT involvement and it's for a good reason.
You don't want to surprise your IT team here.
From my experience, senior IT managers
can be skeptical of RPA and will have lots
of questions about how it interfaces
with the existing technology
and complies with their security standards and protocols.
So I repeat, IT stakeholders
must be involved at the earliest stages of an RPA program.
There are several roles
that may be relevant to your initiative.
One is infrastructure support staff.
This team is responsible for running the servers
and machines that RPA requires,
making sure that the automated solution
has a stable environment in which to operate.
Similarly, application-specific personnel
are responsible for the upkeep and development
of individual software applications in play.
Information security personnel
are always good to have in the loop as well.
RPA often requires interactions between user accounts
and the transfer of potentially sensitive data.
As a result, including them in discussions
can help the RPA team align
to security protocols and minimize risks.
Then you need to consider who will maintain
the RPA solution once live.
Whether this is handled by an internal center of excellence
or you choose to outsource this to an external
service provider, looping them in is conducive
to a smooth handoff of responsibilities.
Of course, don't forget to keep project sponsors
and executives in the loop.
After all, it's probably their budgets you're spending.
So they'll want to know it's being spent well.
With all of these different stakeholders in mind,
it's even more important for each person
to have a good understanding of RPA
and ensure that stakeholders understand
the benefits of RPA and how it can help
to streamline processes and control costs.
One way to accomplish this might be
to get them to watch this course.
It's what we designed it for and remember,
your primary role is education.
While robotic process automation has been a brilliant a name
to gain the attention of a massive global market,
it does still confuse people into thinking of
robotic arms on shop floors
or see C-3PO handling your accounting.