6 Ways to Steer Robotic Process Automation Toward Success
Experiences from more than 50 industry professionals have yielded insights on the role this technology will play going forward.
Supply chain practitioners are getting better at applying robotic process automation (RPA) to increase productivity and release personnel from tedious, repetitive tasks so they can take on more value-adding work. Practitioners are also becoming more adept at identifying the pitfalls that can diminish RPA applications’ gains or even derail them.
Some 55 professionals from a wide range of companies — all members of MIT CTL’s Supply Chain Exchange — participated in a virtual roundtable on October 16, 2020, to talk about process automation and share their RPA experiences.
Automation is yielding benefits
In basic terms, RPA involves the use of software bots to automate repetitive, rule-based tasks. The process is nowhere near as straightforward as it sounds, but companies reap some gains from these applications.
A leading electronics manufacturer represented at the roundtable achieved productivity increases of 30–40% by using RPA to automate last-mile delivery processes. The company experienced a surge in failed product deliveries owing to incorrect addresses caused by customers changing their work locations during the Covid-19 pandemic. Correcting the addresses and rearranging the deliveries was expensive, annoying for customers, and difficult to tackle manually. Automating the process has proved to be an excellent solution.
In another application, the company achieved a dramatic improvement in customer service response times. Fielding customer queries about the status of orders was reduced from up to 24 hours to around five minutes by using a bot to retrieve and send the relevant information to buyers. The customer-service personnel who fulfilled this role were reassigned to other tasks.
The company has built on its initial successes and deployed RPA to automate approximately 300 business processes and capture some $6 million in annual savings. Others at the roundtable were not as advanced in their RPA journeys. Another manufacturer has deployed eight bots in areas such as procurement planning. In addition to raising productivity levels, the bots have enabled this company to improve process accuracy.
In a survey of roundtable attendees, seven participants reported that adopting RPA has improved process productivity in their organizations by 21% or more. Eleven respondents said that the improvements amounted to 10% or less. The sample size is small, so we can’t draw definitive conclusions from the survey, but the results indicate what companies have experienced when implementing RPA projects.
What to watch for in robotic process automation
The roundtable also provided valuable pointers for companies planning to launch RPA initiatives or those who have implemented early-stage projects. Here are some examples:
- Make sure that your target processes are the right candidates for automation. Look for non-cognitive, rules-based processes that follow clearly defined, standardized steps that lend themselves to automation. Be wary of processes in need of reengineering; there is no point in automating inefficiencies. Try to start with small-scale use cases to build experience and confidence in the technology.
- Don’t underestimate the amount of ongoing human support that RPA-driven processes need — even relatively mature ones. Roundtable participants reported that bots are likely to malfunction to some degree and should be monitored. The estimated life span of a bot is 1–2 years.
- Managing bots as if they are unpaid employees helps to approach their deployment rigorously. In one company, bots are registered in the HR system as part of the human workforce. One reason for registering them in this way is that bots can be given the credentials required to access secure data.
- As described above, RPA applications’ performance can be measured in various ways, including their impact on process productivity and accuracy. Several companies at the roundtable pointed out that established supply chain metrics such as on-time delivery can also be used to evaluate bot performance.
- RPA is not only a process automation tool; it can provide valuable insights into the efficiency of your processes. A participant company is using RPA applications as opportunities to evaluate processes and generate ideas for process innovations.
- As is the case in most supply chain management areas, finding the right talent to drive RPA projects can be a challenge. One roundtable participant explained how his company recruits and trains graduate-level software engineers for its RPA programs. Another company puts more emphasis on internships to find the skilled individuals it needs. Several attendees said that there is sometimes a sizeable discrepancy between the capabilities described in résumés and what individuals can deliver. This issue can apply to consultants too, and one company asks candidates to present case studies to help verify their stated skills and capabilities.
Will human-robot hybrid solutions gain favor?
If the roundtable discussions’ tone is anything to go by, RPA is developing apace in the supply chain domain and offers potentially meaningful benefits.
Participants were asked where they see automation efforts taking place over the next three years. Most respondents maintained that the predominant resource would continue to be in-house RPA teams, although robotics-as-a-service garnered significant support. An attendee with considerable experience in implementing RPA projects suggested that combining these two options will gain ground. While some of the work associated with RPA — such as bot construction — could be undertaken more cost-effectively by expert third parties, the core task of automating processes needs to remain in-house.
Sergio Alex Caballero is an MIT CTL Research Affiliate. He can be contacted at sergioac@mit.edu.
The Analytics of the Future: RPA Virtual Roundtable event was open exclusively to members of MIT CTL’s Supply Chain Exchange. The next event in the virtual Analytics of the Future series is scheduled to take place on November 18, 2020, and will focus on predictive analytics. Information on this predictive analytics event is available here.
For information on attending the MIT CTL virtual roundtables and membership of the Supply Chain Exchange, please contact Jim Rice, Deputy Director, MIT CTL, at jrice@mit.edu.
