A Framework for RPA Success: Lessons Learned from a Blue Prism Masterclass

How to Blue Prism a process? Yes, soon this phrase will become very common rather than how to use Blue Prism’s Digital Workforce to deploy Robotic Process Automation (RPA) in order to automate the process.

RPA is the application of technology that provides organizations with a digital workforce that follows rule-based business processes and interacts with the organizations systems in the same way that existing human employees currently do.

I started my journey in RPA back 2012, when I delivered my 1^st engagement with a global bank where I successfully deployed RPA to automate manual processes across various customer facing and back-end banking operations.

I recently had an opportunity to attend a Blue Prism ROM® Masterclass: Delivering RPA at Scale on Thursday, March 1, 2018. The event coincided with one of the biggest festivals that is celebrated with joy across India (i.e. the festival of colors namely HOLI, we witnessed the full house with 130+ attendees at the event held at JW Marriot Hotel, Bangalore).

The event started with the opening remarks and as welcome note from Neeraj Gakhar, VP Global Strategic Partnerships and Head of Sales for Blue Prism in India. Neeraj apologized for not being able to accommodate 250+ waitlisted registrations, there were 145 people attending this event.

Along with Neeraj from Blue Prism, the event was attended by Neil Wright, Executive Vice President, Professional Services; Richard Hilditch, Chief Robotic Operating Model (ROM) Architect®; Bindi Basan, Head of Professional Services, APAC and Shail Khiyara, Chief Marketing Officer & Experience Officer, Blue Prism.®

Post, Neeraj’s session, 1^st speaker was Neil Wright, who mentioned that Blue Prism is not only the “inventor” of ROM® but an organization that has delivered multiple projects with running over 1000+ software robots.

In 2001, Blue Prism was co-founded by Alastair Bathgate and David Moss, and has been pioneering Robotic Process Automation (RPA) ever since.

Based on +10 years of customer experience, Blue Prism has delivered enterprise grade RPA across multiple geographies and industries. The company is acknowledged not only as the “inventor” of RPA but as the market leader as well.

The product has been continuously evolving to reflect latest learning setting the standard of rolling out of RPA at scale across the globe.

Blue Prism has a strong partner network and a user-friendly training program.

Blue Prism’s Digital Workforce – run by the business, but built with IT governance and security – enables employees to focus on higher-value work while autonomous multi-skilled software robots tirelessly perform error-free rules based admin transactions

Blue Prism technology eliminates costly and manual processing steps and time-consuming integration by providing a scalable, accurate and secure digital workforce.

Blue Prism’s Robotic Operating Model (ROM®) – Architecture & Planning

Why ROM®?

To deliver and maximize business benefit across the enterprise. ROM® is a framework and operating model with a vision to create a digital workforce in organization.

ROM® – Automation Delivery

• Identify, quantify and prioritize processes for automation.
• Operations team configuring the own processes using software development discipline
• Introduce processes to production early in the delivery lifecycle
• Continual evolution (Not build & run)

ROM® – Key Challenges

• Today, most of the people don’t know their processes that well they think they know their processes.
• Test environment is much different than the production environment

Operationally Led CoE – It encompasses IT supported Enterprise Infrastructure and focuses on below –

1. Vision
2. Organization Design
3. Governance & Pipeline
4. Delivery Methodology
5. Service Model
6. People
7. Technology

RPA Maturity Model

Maximizing the business benefits with RPA requires cultural adoption across the organization in conjunction with building the skills and procedures required for the digital workforce.

Three Stages of RPA Adoption

• Establish Capability
• Industrialized – Replicate & Ramp Up
• Institutionalize – Deliver differentiated performance

Blue Prism ROM® event highlighted the success of marquee clients like American Express, Cappco, Investo, Liberty Videocon General Insurance,
MetLife, Nokia, Northern Trust, Mashreq, Shell who are supported through the company’s partner ecosystem.

Post Neil’s session, we had Ganesh Iyer, CEO India Operations from Symphony Services which is a GOLD PARTNER with Blue Prism. Symphony Services is into consulting, implementation and managed services.

Ganesh stressed that in Symphony they follow SAVO (Simplify, Automate, Virtualize, Orchestrate) methodology.

He spoke about his approach about building the RPA CoE by following the 5-step process as listed below –

• Understand scope & Vision
• Operating Model
• Roles & Responsibilities
• GAP Analysis
• Mobilization & Training

He stressed on the key lessons learnt by Symphony for RPA deployment –

• Selecting the right industry scale RPA product
• Follow a structured, disciplined, documented approach
• Get the resourcing right (Blend of Business & Technology Knowledge)
• Having the right governance model in place for this change
• Start small, check and scale up

Later, another session, Richard Hilditch, Chief Robotic Operating Model (ROM) Architect®, from Blue Prism spoke about RPA Capability Creation. Richard stressed that confidence breeds success and success breeds growth.

Post Richard’s session, Vijay Shankar, Partner EY who was an external speaker at the event spoke about EY being a Platinum Partner with Blue Prism for Capability and Gold Partner for Service having already deployed 400 software robots running internally along with 600 running externally across different clients. He emphasized that before deploying and running software robots at client’s location, you should develop internal expertise saying, “walk the path, before you preach”.

3 Fundamental Themes to Develop an RPA Program

• Embed culture of Automation within the organization
• Capability to deliver things to scale
• Technology

Common Pitfalls

• Tech driven and not business driven
• RPA is a hammer but not a nail
• Getting the execution wrong
• Managing change

Vijay stressed that building a delivery capability is easier but driving that organization wide is difficult. The companies need to think both pre- and post-production, how to manage the bots.

Vijay spoke about The 6 dimensions of EY’s CoE in a box:

• Define structure and the operating model
• Implementation/Execution & Operations
  1. Utilization of software robots
  2. BCP
• Governance & Reporting
• Change Management & Communication
  1. CoE should drive right culture adoption
• Technology & Innovation
• Enablement & controls

Bottom-line: Look for Value, Plan Well and Scale

It’s better to start with a business process – a quick win that’s easy to implement. At this stage, you need to demonstrate that RPA works and delivers real returns. This will enable CXOs to embed RPA, help their organizations to develop confidence and adopt the ROM® culture to scale up the bot deployments and realize benefits by Blueprisming their process without any leakage in efficiencies.

By Vartul Mittal

Vartul Mittal has 11+ years of strong Global Business Transformation experience in Management Consulting and with GICs with a remit to drive understanding and deliver Business Operations & Technology Strategy solutions globally. He has lived and worked across multiple countries and cultures involving senior client stakeholders from various industries like Financial Services Sector, FMCG and Retail. He has delivered engagements for Fortune 500 organizations such as Coca Cola India, Kotak Mahindra Bank, IBM, Royal Bank of Scotland, Standard Life Insurance, Citibank and Barclays. Vartul Mittal is also renowned speaker on Robotics Process Automation, AI and Innovation among Top Universities and International Conferences.