Embrace and enjoy
The potential for those who master automation is phenomenal. Both for the company you serve, and for you as an individual. We've customers in many lines of businesses who've already realized immense benefits.
Beware of the Trojans
When it comes to deploying software robots, the threat of Trojans doesn't come from a wooden horse, or malicious computer code. It comes from the consultants who sometimes succeed in making themselves indispensable.
Major benefits
Every company we know of have administrative processes that would benefit from automation. Some more than others. Some where it generates totally new business opportunities.
swisspartners — an international wealth management company — replaced an expensive outsourcing strategy with advanced in-house process automation. Major savings, better quality, more flexibility, and improved compliance are some of their immediate benefits.
Beware of the Tojans
When you introduce process automation you should engage with specialists. Specialists come with valuable tool specific knowledge and real-life experience from other organizations. Consider to what degree you want to rely on external specialists for future adaptions, or if you want this capability in-house.
LB Forsikring — an award winning Danish insurance company – upgraded to a third generation digital mailroom solution. Now the superusers easily maintain all the business rules themselves. No need to involve external consultants, when you want to learn the robot new tricks. Important when handling letters, emails, pdf’s, and uploads by the millions is a part of your core business.
Respect the plumber
Robot process automation is brilliant, but not the answer to everything. To quote Abraham Maslow "I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.". Some of your processes are important enough, and predictable enough to be built into your IT infrastructure — your plumbing. More efficient, and more reliable.
At Midtfactoring — the biggest independent factoring company in the Nordics — they do a lot of process automation. Some using robots, others as part of their basic infrastructure. When credit scoring is a crucial part of your business, having it done ‘the right way’ pays off. The core IT systems at Midtfactoring and their insurance provider are tightly integrated using web services, and the service runs 24/7/365.
Remember the rest
When you are looking to automate, it's so easy to forget the rest. The exceptions that cannot be handled automatically. Don't. Make sure that you've a reasonably efficient process for those as well.
Kemp & Lauritzen – a Nordic construction and engineering company — implemented a highly automated invoice processing solution. Lots of focus on automation, including the nudging of suppliers to provide more than 80% of all invoices in XML. Maximum automation. Still they keep focus on handling the invoices in need of manual processing efficiently. For every invoice you mess up, you waste whatever automation saved you with the previous 100.
I hope the above gives you valuable input on how to streamline your organization. We see robotic process automation go hand in hand with our more people centric smart process applications. Like the Chinese philosophy of yin and yang — you'll need both to be complete.
