“Don’t blame your RPA tool, the tool isn’t going to make or break the journey”

PEX Network takes five minutes with Sean Flannery, RPA General Manager at HCL Technologies who is responsible for delivery of RPA and innovation to European clients. He explains that the reality with RPA is a lot of people blame the tool when the project doesn’t go well.

Why did you decide to attend RPA & AI week 2017?

I joined HCL six months ago, I joined from another service provider, they were deemed to be a market leader, so I thought in all honesty that I was going to HCL to start their RPA practice from zero. It turns out, HCL are at least on a par with that other leader, it’s just they haven’t told anybody about it.

So, one of the things I instigated was we need to start telling people what we’re doing. It’s great that we’re terrific, but if nobody knows about it, it’s not much good in terms of attracting new clients. So, one of the key things is we’ve got…Siddhartha’s one of the keynote speakers [at RPA & AI week], he’s explaining our three lever business process management (BPM), which is one of our mechanisms.

“I mean the reality with RPA is a lot of people will blame the tool when the project doesn’t go well; it wasn’t the tool’s fault.”

The problem was you didn’t identify the right opportunities, and you didn’t groom those opportunities, and then you blamed the tool. So, what we through our experience on the business process outsourcing side, we have 85 clients, so we’ve worked with them. Not everything worked from the beginning, but through that, we’ve learned this three lever BPM process, which is all about identifying the right processes, grooming those processes for automation and then any of the tools will be able to bring them home. So, what we’re doing here is we’re introducing the world to three lever BPM, but also letting people know what we know, what experience we have and how we can help them.

What are your key pieces of advice for those looking to start their RPA journey?

I saw one of the keynote speakers earlier today quoting Einstein. If he had a problem, if he had an hour to fix a problem, he’s spend 59 minutes formulating the problem, fully understanding the problem, and one minute working on the solution. And this guy applied that to RPA, which is you really need to spend a lot of time thinking about it.

 I would disagree, I think people spend too long comparing Blue Prism against Automation Anywhere against UI Path against Work Fusion and I’m bound to have forgotten somebody who’s going to get upset.

“The tool is not going to make or break the journey.”

I’ll go back to three lever BPM; if you don’t identify the right processes, if you don’t groom them, the tool will fail. So, they spend too long figuring out what’s the right tool; I think get in there, do a proof of concept, prove to people that this thing can work. That will generate the momentum.

Seeing is believing; when people see this thing working through their applications, their applications that they know, that will build the momentum.

 “Roll up up your sleeves, pick a tool; there’s no wrong tool out there. Pick a tool, preferably pick HCL as an implementation partner, we’ll certainly see you straight but roll the sleeves up, get in there, start with the pilot.”

To move on from a pilot to scaling up to institutionalising, maybe you’ll need help getting started. Don’t follow the example that was given earlier today, they spent 12 months looking at the technology, that’s great, they can provide that feedback to the market, but really, just pick one of the tools, there’s no wrong tool out there.

Before getting started with automating your processes, it’s crucial to take a step back and assess whether your current processes are efficient and scalable. Deploying robots to run your process is challenging if there is no standard process to follow.

Download the whitepaper, 3 critical steps to make your make your RPA implementation a success, you will learn best practices in step one of your RPA deployment cycle. You’ll see how to best run the discovery process through evaluating your current business process, prioritizing your automation needs, and aligning the organization around the RPA initiative.