lessons learned and business case for a rapid rpa

Lessons Learned and business case for a rapid RPALee Ward and Mohit Sharma

GROW FOR TOMORROW

15th December 2016

© 2016 Mindfields. All rights reserved. Webinar 15th December 20162

Speakers

Mohit has over 20 years of experience working in Strategy, Corporate Finance, and RiskManagement Solutions for Deloitte, PwC, and EY. Mohit has authored and published one ofthe first and most comprehensive research on Robotics and Process Automation. Mohitprovides advisory services to leading global financial and non-financial organization in US,Australia, UK, and India on their journey for Automation and Artificial Intelligence. Mohitloves cricket and food, in that order. Mindfields has done more than 9 RPA live projects inAus, and 2 in USMohit Sharma

Managing DirectorMindfields

Leanne (Lee) Ward is the EGM for Commercialization of Business Services for a leadingglobal Infrastructure and Facilities Management company . She is an evangelist of RPA in thebusiness as a way to reduce cost, increase productivity, eliminate rework and mostimportantly improve employee engagement through removing mundane activities. Her visionis not to just use this as an internal tool, but also as part of services delivered to externalclients. Lee is a technologist at heart and sees this as the start of the journey throughbusiness process automation and artificial intelligence, much of which is yet to be developed.Her interests include fitness, reading anything on new technology, investing in start-ups andmeeting people who are hopefully at least as interesting as the bots!Leanne Ward

EGM Leading Infrastructure Management Company


Agenda

People >>>> Process >>>> Technology



Particulars Time

Webinar and Speakers Introduction 1 minutes

Session 1 : Leanne (Lee) Ward’s presentation (What, Why and How of Rapid RPA) 15 minutes

Session 2 : Business case 10 minutes

Session 3 : Lessons learnt 10 minutes

Session 4 : Questions 20 minutes

Closing Statements 2 minutes

Polls during the webinar 2 minutes


Mindfields Business Mode (Click here to watch video)((link to video)

5

Artificial IntelligenceRobotic Process AutomationMachine Learning

Educate

Execute

Consult

Research


Our Value Proposition

Thought Leader in RPA Domain

Independent and Vendor agnostic

RPA software agnostic Advisory focussedSuccess based pricing

6


What is Rapid RPA ?




Quick wins

Business case should stand up on its own

Implementation time frame with less than 4 months

No bureaucracy

Talk and walk straight (with focus)

Rapid RPA has following attributes?

No frill consultancy

Agile framework

Simple to Moderate process

Simple to use RPA tool


Why did you should choose Rapid RPA?



Where it all began..

Firstly, our culture and my direct boss work the way. So we could….

• FFF – first fail fast

• LAD – learn, adapt and deliver

Business Services commercialisation – growth agenda, however:

• Cost structure not competitive

• Clients would not tolerate errors/rework

• Time duration for some processes was too long

RPA could be a differentiator for commercialisation – potentially eliminating expensive integrations/APIs

Engaged with Mindfields for a high level study and business case constrained to Business Services and to complete a Proof of Concept.


How did we execute Rapid RPA ?



How we do it ?

Step 1: Spent Dec 15/Jan 16 doing extensive research (holiday time in Australia)

• Read all the vendors websites/case studies/sale pitch (about 40)

• Read vendors corporate material and googled for whatever I could find as part of a “due diligence”

• Contacted vendors of interest

• The sales pitch felt too good to be true - low risk, high speed, little investment. As the fairy dust settled all around, decided we needed independent advice.

Step 2: Engaged with Mindfields for a high level study and business case constrained to Business Services and to complete a Proof of Concept.


Step 3: Broken the program into phases – works better with our culture to deliver “something” sooner, a bit more 6 months later etc.

Our processes were important, but not so critical that we would stop the company, affect the stock price etc.

Settled on 5 processes for phase 1:

• Employee On boarding

• Vendor Reconciliation

• Support Resource Allocations

• External Debtors Aging

• JAMIX (front office catering-SAP app)

Break RPA project into small pieces


First 30 days: Business case and Proof of concept (PoC)

Step 1: Mindfields did RPA Assessment and Roadmap

Mindfields assessed 30 processes – all back office business services at this point – ranged from 20-250K savings pa

Outcome

We selected employee on boarding and vendor reconciliations for 2 proof of concept.

Step 2: Selected 2 tools for PoC

Mindfields advised on the selection of RPA tools meeting

Our business and IT requirements

Outcome

Used UiPath and Automation Anywhere to do the pilots

• Both were successful but in hindsight not that helpful

• Issues were surfaced around the data input sources as test data was used

• Some involved re-shoring of work from an existing vendor….more on that later


The Art and Science of the detailed Business Case

Pre-project: Business case and POCs with Mindfields

Phase 0: set-up costs. We came up with a concept of Minimal Viable Design (MVD) to get going. Mostly capitalised over 5 years.

• MVD turned out not to be “viable” – a FFF.

Phase 1: 5 processes, 4 Months from selection to UAT.

• We came up with an iterative, collaborative approach which falls under FFF.

• Breakeven to script/test.

• Annualised savings> Annual run cost

Phase 2: 12 processes (and growing by popular demand) – will be done in sets of “5”.

• 80% time on BRD, testing data sources are what we think they are

• 20% coding (T&M not gain sharing at this stage)

Phase 3 (parking lot): latent demand


Lessons learnt



Lessons learned

• We are heavily outsourced – all IT infrastructure to one offshore vendor

• Some processes to another offshore vendor

• Little IT knowledge is retained – set standards and monitor compliance

• Gaps – security and credential setup; architectural design; BCP considerations

• RPA is a problem for offshore providers

• If you can retain RPA capability in-house until the market matures

• Most of our delays post UAT are vendor related. Skills are not there in enough quantity to support customers at an acceptable level of risk. This will change.

Working with Outsourcing Vendors


Other scars (lessons)

• Take all the hype and halve it

• Spend time to inform and educate people on RPA –simplify it – remove the “Robo-Language”.

• Process documentation will be lacking and knowledge lost as people move on

• Business don’t necessarily understand data structure that well – test what they tell you

• People will feel threatened – be open, honest and supportive

• Environmental changes are difficult eg: moving to SAP in the cloud in 60 days


Questions




What processes are well suited for Rapid RPA and what are not?

How ‘rapid’ should a Rapid RPA be?

Please provide examples of processes you have ‘rapidly’ automated and Why?

Questions?

What is your governance model for Rapid RPA ?

What did not you know when you started that you wish you would had?

What are tips for managing Internal dynamics?

What has been your vision for RPA in your organisation when you started the journey ?

What role would you see a consulting firm would play in Rapid RPA?

What has been your experience being ? Any tips for new starters and established players?



How do you get offshore providers to do RPA?

How owns the benefits?

Should business case be process or organisation specific ?

What are your views on treatment of Setup and scripting costs for Rapid RPA in business case?

Questions?

What is your views on different pricing model proposed by incumbent and non incumbent vendors?

What is your future vision of Rapid RPA in 6 months an 18 months?


GROW FOR TOMORROW

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