work rules into conditional statements that the bot could follow (Hallikainen et al. 2018). This is opposed to a director of operations or IT who could potentially only coordinate one side of the equation. In highly global organizations, there is also a question around the amount of leverage regional executives would have in influencing and capturing processes outside the scope of their entity. In this way, RPA should be enacted in a controlled ecosystem at a local level or by a top‐down approach from executives with similar skillsets to a CIO with the same amount of leverage to enact change. Regardless of whether an organization decides to build out its RPA program internally or have a consultant to support, the organization's IT department must be engaged and educated to facilitate negotiations and build the business case (Hallikainen et al. 2018). Having buy‐in from a cross‐functional leader and the support of IT will be key to the success of your project.
Process Mining and Process Mapping
Once you have decided who will lead your project, the next step is to start to understand which tasks could use an RPA bot to help create efficiency. To do this, leading RPA consultants recommend that you first do an audit of your processes through process mining and then map current processes. In some cases, there is a software that can sit on your computer that will mine the clicks and keyboard strokes of your staff to learn the most common behavior and map the steps for you. By observing the human handling complex cases, the RPA system can learn. There is also an obvious link with process mining (van der Aalst 2016; Kerremans 2018). For example, RPA vendor UiPath and process mining vendor Celonis collaborate to automatically visualize and select processes with the highest automation potential and subsequently build, test, and deploy RPA agents driven by the discovered process models.
UiPath and other RPA providers often offer process recorders that could speed up the time it takes to capture and map out processes manually by having the software record actions, such as mouse clicks and keyboard entries, of a human user (Frank 2015). RPA bots also can interact with multiple systems simultaneously and can even work with humans and indicate a need for further assistance (Hallikainen et al. 2018). Whether you decide to mine and map your processes before you choose your provider is probably best dictated after some preliminary budgets on how much you are willing to invest with your RPA provider.
Choosing the Right RPA Provider
With the people and processes now in place, you must pick which RPA provider to partner with. Blue Prism, a leading RPA provider that has been given credit for inventing the acronym RPA, was launched in 2001, and subsequently, there have been over 45 providers that have entered the market as of 2017 (Lacity and Willcocks 2018). As a buyer, this leaves a daunting task of trying to figure out which provider is right for you. Many of the providers and the products they offer that could be considered RPA are drastically different in terms of the upfront and monthly costs as well as the amount of human input needed (Hindle et al. 2018). Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism, and UiPath are widely regarded as the top three RPA providers and offer different levels of engagement depending on how much training you want to do yourself. Consultants often specialize in one of the above and are even willing to give you a free proof of concept. Other leading RPA providers include AutomationEdge, Cognizant, Conduent, Kofax, Kryon Systems, Pegasystems, and Softomotive.
Change Management Considerations
UiPath stresses the importance of establishing a center of excellence, a group of IT‐savvy professionals who have the bandwidth to learn and champion this project, in any company that has decided to implement RPA. Within the center of excellence, they identify several roles to help support adoption, champion the setup and maintenance of bots, and analyze bot performance. One of these roles is the RPA change manager who should be tasked with overseeing the onboarding of stakeholders in using RPA technology. UiPath emphasizes that one of the most effective tools for these change managers is clear and open communication. By keeping stakeholders informed on the RPA adoption process and how they will be affected by it, the change manager will be much more successful in leading employees through the change. Managing this change is vital since any stakeholder that hears about bots being used to automate parts of their tasks will likely become fearful that they are being replaced. This fear would be rooted in their lack of knowledge of what the role of RPA is. This is where a change manager can step in and reassure the employee that the bot is not an AI solution meant to replace them, but more of a tool that can eliminate repetitive, rules‐based tasks, thus allowing the employee to focus more on value‐added process. If this point is not communicated well, employees will become fearful of the technology and unwilling to learn about or undergo training to use it, thus affecting the change manager's ability to manage the change. Clear and open communication to stakeholders is critical during the RPA journey to ensure stakeholders that the solution is not meant to replace them (UiPath, n.d.).
RPA Implementation Announcement
Whenever the prospect of automating tasks is brought into a business, concerns will arise among employees that they could potentially be laid off after being replaced by automation. Any company hoping to adopt RPA will likely have to deal with these concerns. How this is handled is extremely important since employee onboarding is a necessity for RPA to be successful. Opus Capital is a venture capital firm that manages over $1 billion in assets and was able to successfully implement RPA to handle the processing of new employee relationships and changes in employee payment details (Hallikainen et al. 2018). As news of RPA implementation moved through the payroll department, concerns grew among the employees. One employee stated, “Yes, I had these thoughts that … a robot is coming here to sit down there and do the typing, and then I would lose my job” (Hallikainen et al. 2018). The supervisors of the pilot dealt with these concerns by emphasizing to the employees that these bots were not meant to be replacements. Their functionality is limited to repetitive tasks, and there is still a great need in the organization for human workers who are better equipped to deal with cognitive tasks due to their adaptability which the bots lack. The supervisors framed RPA adoption as a way to free up employees from repetitive tasks. A supervisor at Opus Capital was quoted saying “[The robot] will free time for other type of work [by humans] that a robot could not do … it will [therefore] bring a positive change to everyone's workload” (Hallikainen et al. 2018). In addition to making this clear early in the process, it is also important to try to get employees involved in learning about the technology so they can be advocates themselves.
The abovementioned is a best‐case scenario as there is always the possibility that some workers, whose jobs are entirely replaceable by the RPA bots, will no longer be needed. In a case study done by the KTH Institute of Technology, it was found that 13% of the clients of RPA providers laid off employees as a direct result of RPA implementation and another 13% offered retirement to some workers during the adoption process (Sandholm 2019). In addition to layoffs and retirement, 19% of these companies slowed their recruitment initiatives after adoption (Sandholm 2019). In an ideal world, RPA would not lead to any kind of reduction in full‐time employees, which also is typically the case. However, it is undeniable that for certain positions, RPA will lead to layoffs and repurposing of staff. Employee concerns thus seem somewhat justified, but it must be kept in mind that if an RPA bot can replace them, their job could be anyways outsourced to a BPO center.
As a company goes through a digital transformation, assessment of staff is critical. Staff with the technical skill to work with RPA or staff with analytical, critical thinking, or creativity skills should be identified early in the process to avoid talent waste. It is advised that senior management and human resources align with RPA project leaders to identify the potential risks of the project and come up with the right messages for the workforce. Finding a balance of what information to share and when to share it could mean the difference in retaining key staff.
Liberated Knowledge Workers
Once RPA has been implemented and is running smoothly, employees will have been freed of some of their rote and repetitive work tasks. Employees will be able to concentrate their efforts on higher‐value tasks that require cognitive and interpretive