JifJaff Nine Pillars of Automation – Pillar One: RPA Maturity Assessment

Over the coming weeks we will discuss how the “JifJaff Nine Pillars of Automation” facilitates successful Internal Robotic Process Automation (RPA) delivery.  The pillars provide RPA standardisation focused on self-sustainability, strategy, and continuous improvement.  This week is focused on Pillar One – RPA Maturity Assessment.

JifJaff is a specialist in building Client RPA COE (Centre of Excellence) through the building blocks of the “Nine Pillars of Automation”.  Internal automation delivery is the long-term strategic approach to ensure RPA is embedded into the organisation, and automation ingrained into the culture of the organisation. 

The JifJaff Nine Pillars of Automation provide the foundation, scalability, training, approach, structure & governance to deliver RPA internally through a robust framework.  This approach provides a clear line of sight crucial to achieving business benefits, ROI and thereby tackling common RPA scalability challenges.

 

How the RPA Market Has Evolved

Business and IT leaders everywhere understand the necessity and importance of the value of Automation though Robotic Process Automation (RPA). As RPA has matured the true competitive edge now hinges, not on taking the Automation leap, but on how organisations actually do it i.e. RPA approach, strategy, maturity, vision, governance, structure, accountability & deliverables.

 

The business world and technology landscape have both changed dramatically in recent years. For one thing, business software can do a lot more than it used to. Automation software has moved far beyond what was previously possible.  RPA attainable benefits include:

 

• Reduced business operating cost & increased operational capacity
• Standardization
• Improved resilience
• Reduction in head count
• Free staff to be more creative or customer facing again
• Access to more data quicker
• Improved customer & quality of service
• Improved security and governance
• Maximise legacy system usage

 

An outcome of all implementing RPA is the line between Business operations & IT departments have become distorted. Business & IT are now involved with RPA, from process identification, business case adoption, assessment, feasibility, build, delivery, to running critical BAU operations.

An organisation without a solid strategy and centralised Automation Centre lead to governance and security issues. The discussion around Automation centres of excellence is relatively new, but forward-thinking organisations have already used the Centre of Excellence model to transform the way they operate.  Automation Centres of excellence provide a robust framework for different roles to work together in a structured way so each can contribute their unique skills to furthering the objectives of the RPA strategy.

It enables an organisation to scale RPA at the enterprise level through common technology, standard processes and procedures, and a governance model. It provides a scalable foundation to allow an organisation to redistribute process automation knowledge and resources across future deployments. 

 

RPA Scalability Challenges

• Cost to Implement through specialised RPA consultancies is cost prohibitive
• Unable to identifying & rank processes suitable for RPA.
• Unable to rapidly scale RPA processes across the business post POC phase
• Internal RPA Team capability does not have the correct skillset, capability and/or approach.
• Unstructured RPA documentation and approval gates.
• Lack of Steering guidance, control & structure
• Unable to maximise Bot capacity, Bot collaboration and or Management metrics to justify the ROI and/or future RPA funding
• High production defects with unclear escalation paths
• RPA Implementation time takes too long

 

Centralised Automation Excellence Business Outcomes

Having a Centralised RPA COE function will drive business outcomes & provide a clear line of sight for business benefits.  Key components are as follows:

Governance: Establish policies, procedures & standards for bot qualification, development & deployment to meet audit, regulatory, information security requirements.

Technology: Select the right automation tools & organise the maintenance and support of these tools. Drive integration of RPA into the fabric of IT Service Management.

Processes: Execute and monitor the complete lifecycle of RPA from evaluating automation opportunities to deploying bots into production with scalable support structure.

People and Culture: Analyse and effect the changes to human roles by RPA, from organisational change management to redefined job descriptions.

Organisation: Define the organisational structure of the COE itself, clear roles and responsibilities for all team members covering all aspects of RPA.

Nine Pillars of Automation

The JifJaff RPA Maturity Model support organisations in accelerating implementation and enterprise roll-out of Robotic Process Automation within the organisation.  In order to scale RPA, key aspects and governance must be taken into account.  An optimised RPA delivery roadmap consists of fundamental components – The Nine Pillars of Automation:

Pillar One – JifJaff RPA Maturity Assessment of Customer Current RPA Footprint

We understand organisations are in different stages of their RPA lifecycle, knowledge, and expertise. The first step to optimising internal RPA Delivery is an evaluation of the organisations current RPA footprint and overall RPA Maturity and this is the first of the “Nine Pillars of Automation”. 

Client Business Outcome: JifJaff provide an assessment & scoring of current RPA Maturity (based on the Capability Maturity Model (CMM) – CMMI Institute), highlighting key areas for recommendation to achieve “Best Practise Automation” and facilitate internal scalability for larger RPA programme of works.  This includes annual assessment to rank “RPA Maturity” to ensure the team is achieving “Continuous Improvement” through year on year comparisons.  The structure of the 3 Levels for RPA Maturity Model is covered below:

Level 1 – Initialisation:

This is the typical entry level that is just building and RPA strategy and operational capability. The client is making initial steps to understand the suitability of RPA for their processes, delivery environment and clients. A Client operating at this level is typically uncertain about the potential for RPA and how and where to make the necessary investments to bring this technology into the mainstream of their operations. The RPA Team maturity is at an early stage with key areas of the RPA software development lifecycle not in place. Maturity level associated to a RPA Pilot / POV’s

Level 2 – Mid Maturity:

At Level 2 the client has built an initial capability within RPA and has realised the benefits in efficiency, quality and cost that RPA can bring to some of its core processes and capabilities. Having realised part efficiencies, the client is now ready to centralise RPA capabilities with a clear strategy and vision. Level 2 may also capture the efforts to improve upon the benefits and pain points already realised through the RPA delivery at Level 1. The RPA Team maturity is on the right track, with key principles implemented and preforming to a very good standard with a number of processes performing BAU functions with reduced FTE.

Level 3 – Optimised Maturity:

At this level, a client has made a fundamental strategic commitment and investment to redesign its commercial and delivery operations around RPA. A client with Optimised Maturity has put RPA at the heart of their strategy and is investing in changing their talent capabilities around RPA rather than building RPA around existing talent capabilities as was the case at the lower levels.

The RPA Team and all of the software lifecycle principles are in place to facilitate an extensive run & maintain high volume of automated processes in terms of scope, build, support, post-go-live and technical infrastructure.