How to start RPA

RPA solution has been the current trend for productivity improvement by using software Bot for rule-based task. RPA stands for Robotic Process Automation, which can be explained as:

• Robotic are programmed software which mimic human actions are called Bots
• A Process is a sequence of steps which lead to meaningful activity
• Automation is any process which is done by a Bot without human intervention

Business with high volume of repetitive tasks can benefit the most from RPA. There are some guides about how to properly start a RPA solution.

Four steps for RPA Implementation

1) Understand the business process

Identify the business process that will actually be most suited to RPA. Not only technically suited, but also operationally suited. Business process that is routine, rule-based, and relies on patchworks of system with a significant amount of similar work carried out in at least a small team, will be the best one for RPA. For example, in order to generate reports, staff need manually collect some types of data from system or web page, and input collected data into a document or another system, there are 5 staff handling roughly 12000 actions with each action taking 5 minutes. Then the RPA solution can replace the manual data collection and manual data input, at machine speed with no human errors.

2) Gather requirements

Generate function specifications based on detailed requirements for the chosen business process. Ask questions listed below will be important and helpful to requirements gathering.

- What are the applications used (Java, SAP, Web, Excel)?

- What are the screens in the applications that contain the data?

- What are the data to collect? Structured? Unstructured?

- What are the exceptions?

- What are the outputs?

3) Build bots

Using the function specifications, design and build Bots.

4) Document what have been built

Good documentation will be helpful for future solution scale up and improvement. Start RPA journey with one process then gear up to more, for each process, document what system or website are involved, and indicate what more can be achieved.

Our Approach

The above 4 steps are summarized by our technical team using their experience, and are followed in each of our RPA project. The standardized approach ensures a smooth solution implementation to end users, and maximizes the RPA solution benefits.