{"id":29022,"date":"2019-12-19T10:23:02","date_gmt":"2019-12-19T10:23:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digileaders.com\/?p=29022"},"modified":"2019-12-19T14:19:38","modified_gmt":"2019-12-19T14:19:38","slug":"why-intelligent-automation-so-often-fails","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/digileaders.com\/why-intelligent-automation-so-often-fails\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Intelligent Automation so often fails to deliver its promised benefits, and how to fix it"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier this year, Gartner claimed that the worldwide Robotic Process Automation (RPA) software market grew by 63% in 2018 and RPA software revenues are expected to reach $1.3 Billion in 2019. Yet, although process automation is no longer a \u2018new\u2019 technology, and significant improvements in recent years have supported wider access to benefits, the rewards can still be worryingly elusive.<\/p>\n

In this article, I will discuss why so many organisations are still failing to deliver even part of the promised benefit from RPA and Intelligent Automation programmes, and why, in the worst cases, businesses are simply adding cost to their operations in the form of license fees.<\/p>\n

I firmly believe that Intelligent Automation is worth the effort. Success can release value from operations with greater accuracy, improved customer service and tighter compliance at a fraction of the cost. So, what makes a company, team or project a good fit for Intelligent Automation or a disaster waiting to happen?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start with some success stories. Large corporate examples of best practice such as GSK moving to a centralised delivery model and securing significant benefits for its business<\/a> units or Nokia with over 60 \u2018digital workers\u2019 active across operations support and their supply chain<\/a> rightly inspire admiration and interest. Both these firms, and many others, have built effective internal capabilities that more than pay for themselves.<\/p>\n

However, there are also many large and well-established organisations that have not seen the return on investment they expected. I recently visited the RPA Centre of Excellence of a huge US-based company that had invested just over $900k in their Intelligent Automation capability; building an extensive team of developers with a solution architect, IT BRM and so on. Their \u2018return\u2019 on that investment? The c.$130k of \u2018released\u2019 time estimated in the business case? None of which had been realised.<\/p>\n

In that case, there were many reasons for such a large disparity, but when I arrived as a trusted advisor on that project, I also realised the causes I was seeing weren\u2019t unique to this organisation.<\/p>\n

So, below are several reasons Intelligent Automation and RPA programmes often aren\u2019t delivering the value they should be:<\/p>\n

1. The wrong processes are being selected for automation.<\/h4>\n

Companies can often focus on \u2018quick-wins\u2019 and the \u2018low-hanging fruit\u2019, but in reality, the true benefits come from automating complex end-to-end processes with significant labour requirements.<\/p>\n

2. A business engagement model that isn\u2019t fit for purpose.<\/h4>\n

In which case, often senior support is required to re-state the value of automation to the business and encourage their active participation.<\/p>\n

3. Development work that is not to the requisite standard.<\/h4>\n

This means more resource is spent on maintenance and exception handling than it should be. This is a people issue and requires additional training, effective knowledge management within the Centre of Excellence and behavioural change management to address.<\/p>\n

4. The vanity project hangover.<\/h4>\n

It\u2019s likely that many of the Intelligent Automation capabilities and projects you\u2019ve experienced or are in the process of running started as POCs or vanity projects. While there\u2019s no reason why they can\u2019t mature brilliantly and deliver substantial business benefits, they must be thought of and planned towards alignment with the business\u2019 wider IT and business strategy. They might also be a great POC. They could scale effectively, move towards more robust standards and be deployed to tackle a business\u2019 wider issues that would in turn dramatically increase their impact.<\/p>\n

What can you do if your Intelligent Automation project isn\u2019t delivering what you expect?<\/h4>\n

The reality is that nobody is doing this perfectly, even good companies can improve. Programmes lose their way for a wide variety of reasons, but they will always require the same things to get back on track:<\/p>\n