The 3rd Robotic Process Automation in Shared Services summmit was held on December 1 - 2, 2016 in Braselton, GA. If you didn't make it to the event, you can still enjoy the key takeaways from our Community Manager, Rochelle Hood! For more information, visit www.sharedintelligence.com.

1. Key Takeaways and Highlights from
December 1 – 2, 2016, Braselton, GA

2. Hi there!
I’m Rochelle Hood,
your Community
Manager for

3. Background
Last week at the second SSON’s North American summit dedicated to
RPA in shared services this year, it was impressive to note the growth
since the July event in the number of organisations in attendance
who have moved from discovery / purely educational stage to the
planning stage.
The content shared provided guidance on establishing an operating
model for implementation, support and management of RPA
capabilities. Infusing RPA as a tool into continuous improvement
programs was also an area of focus among many organisations.

4. Panel discussions and practitioner presentations included
insights into the stages of building an RPA framework
comprised of completing a ‘fit’ assessment, planning and
managing a successful pilot, and considerations for
maintenance and support going forward.
The following are the key takeaways and highlights from the
summit’s chairman, John Willmott, CEO of NelsonHall, and
myself.
Background

5. 1
In your business case, suggested
practice not to equate savings to FTEs.
Instead, focus on time savings and
efficiency gains. Conduct time studies to
establish measure and also use this metric
to prioritise items on the request list.

6. 2
RPA is a tool to apply to the
change needs of your enterprise
and to solve business problems
– start with this in your approach,
selection of processes and measures.

7. 3
Realise you have a new role as
sales, marketing and public
relations to educate stakeholders.
Be prepared to be a broken record,
sharing the RPA story over and over
again wide across the organisation.

8. 4
Utilisation of cute robots or
humanise transition to robotics by
naming your ‘bots’ within the initial
change management process.
However, be sure everyone is aware in
the end that it is software, not a
machine.

9. 5
Involve vital stakeholders early and
don’t underestimate the roles that
risk, legal, information security and
internal audit play in the strategy,
planning and adoption process.
Get them involved early to avoid a stall
in your pilot or proof of concept.

10. 6
Develop a strong partnership
with HR and your internal
communications teams
to aide with the change
management plan and efforts.

11. 7
Tools must be easily understood by the
business – there’s no reason for learning
new technology to be feared.
Seize the opportunity to select tools that
are easy to use and develop.
Shared services can now shift the paradigm
of selecting a tool and throwing it over the
wall to IT by leveraging Process Engineers
within the business and partnering with the
development operations teams in IT.

12. 8
RPA is a natural fit with
shared services
as we are the process people, the
efficiency people and the ones
who make people’s lives easier.

13. 9
RPA is a definite fit when you don’t
have one ERP for whole company.
Recognise it may be a ‘pot hole’ filler
to more easily fix gaps and lack of
integration between systems versus
waiting on long, expensive IT projects
to fill the gaps.

14. 10
Use case videos
are powerful to generate buy
in and support change
management.

15. 11
Align Continuous Improvement
(CI) and automation.
RPA is one tool.

16. 12
“It’s amazing what people are
inspired to do when you take the
waste out of the process.”
Once you show employees how RPA
will remove mindless, mundane tasks
from their day, the excitement
catches on like wildfire.

17. 13
Interesting relationship
with IT
– need them on your side to industrialise
the scale (can do one Proof of Concept
(POC) without them); keep them informed
if you do the POC, get on and do it; then
get them involved with videos,
governance.

18. 14
Education:
Senior managers think you’re
going to bring in something with
mechanical arms and legs. Tell
them what RPA really is.

19. 15
It’s reasonable to achieve 20%
automation savings
over 3 years;
further on in your journey you
should be looking at around 50%.

20. 16
Standard IT test data and
scenarios won’t do it.
Create a scenario to run, stop, run
and have a person press the button
before anything goes into production.

21. 17
Create a COE based on a Subject
Matter Expertise (SME) model and
a structure that works best for you.
Developers can come from IT,
operations or process environments.

22. 18
Change management works both
ways. IT and shared services both
need to keep each other informed.
IT have application changes going on
which are important for your project
team to be away of.
A sound practice is to complete a joint
technology roadmap with automation as
a part of it.

23. 19
Monitoring “bots”:
Operations need to manage the
bots and treat them just like
employees for reporting,
scheduling and comparing
productivity.

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One last thing…