Lessons learned and business case for a rapid RPA

Lessons Learned and business case for a
rapid RPA
Lee Ward and Mohit Sharma
GROW FOR TOMORROW
15th December 2016

© 2016 Mindﬁelds. All rights reserved. Webinar 15th December 2016
2
Speakers
Mohit has over 20 years of experience working in Strategy, Corporate Finance, and Risk
Management Solutions for Deloitte, PwC, and EY. Mohit has authored and published one of
the first and most comprehensive research on Robotics and Process Automation. Mohit
provides advisory services to leading global financial and non-financial organization in US,
Australia, UK, and India on their journey for Automation and Artificial Intelligence. Mohit
loves cricket and food, in that order. Mindfields has done more than 9 RPA live projects in
Aus, and 2 in USMohit Sharma
Managing Director
Mindfields
Leanne (Lee) Ward is the EGM for Commercialization of Business Services for a leading
global Infrastructure and Facilities Management company . She is an evangelist of RPA in the
business as a way to reduce cost, increase productivity, eliminate rework and most
importantly improve employee engagement through removing mundane activities. Her vision
is not to just use this as an internal tool, but also as part of services delivered to external
clients. Lee is a technologist at heart and sees this as the start of the journey through
business 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 and
meeting people who are hopefully at least as interesting as the bots!Leanne Ward
EGM
Leading Infrastructure
Management Company

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Agenda
People >>>> Process >>>> Technology

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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

© 2016 Mindﬁelds. All rights reserved.
Webinar 15th December 2016
Mindfields Business Mode (Click here to watch video)((link to video)
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© 2016 Mindﬁelds. All rights reserved.
Webinar 15th December 2016
Our Value Proposition
Thought Leader in RPA
Domain
Independent and Vendor
agnostic
RPA software agnostic Advisory focussedSuccess based pricing
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What is Rapid RPA ?

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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

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Why did you should choose Rapid RPA?

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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.

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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.

15

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

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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

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Questions

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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?

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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?

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GROW FOR TOMORROW
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research@mindfields.net.au
www.mindfields.net.au
For more information please contact us at research@mindfields.net.au

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