The document discusses the importance of having a Center of Excellence (COE) for robotic process automation (RPA). It emphasizes that a COE should focus on collaboration, organization, and evangelization. For collaboration, the COE team should include both IT and business representatives and foster successful RPA development and deployment life cycles. In terms of organization, the COE should leverage outside expertise, establish documentation standards, and continuously plan ahead for licensing needs. Finally, the COE should evangelize RPA by championing the technology, bridging gaps between business and IT, and sharing best practices.

1. You Can’t Spell
RPA Without COE
DAVE JACKSON
IT Project Lead for Reynolds Services

2. You Can’t Spell RPA Without COE
Everything you hear about having a COE is true!
Is it Center of Excellence or Center of Expertise?
Theme for this learning lab is going to be:
• Collaboration
• Organization
• Evangelization

3. COLLABORATION

4. COLLABORATION - 1
• Effective top-level sponsorship for the
journey is important!
• Middle management support of RPA is
also important.
• Cascade down throughout organization.
• Don’t let the tail wag the dog!
• COE should be a core team who
teaches, facilitates & guides both IT &
business users.
• COE should foster successful &
repeatable life cycles of RPA
development, testing & deployment.

5. COLLABORATION - 2
• Have two or more folks share the COE
leadership role.
• Have one person from IT & at least one
person from the business.
• Culture & operational styles can vary –
that’s OK.
• Engage security & audit teams early.
• Know where to find technical expertise.
• Proactively engage with the experts.
• Make sure IT architect is part of team.
• The AA software may not be the only
new technology that you encounter.

6. ORGANIZATION

7. ORGANIZATION - 1
• Don’t go it alone!
• Leverage outside expertise at least for
launch & certain key milestones.
• Training curriculum can be reused.
• Great opportunity & challenge for
COE to conduct subsequent RPA
training classes.
• Establish & document a baseline
workflow from concept to production.
• Be as detailed as possible with your
documentation.
• RPA will be new for everyone in the
business.

8. ORGANIZATION - 2
• Tweak your internal processes as
needed.
• There will most certainly be lessons
learned along the way.
• Develop a security model that
addresses how your BOT’s will handle
sensitive data.
• Continuously plan ahead for creator &
runner licenses plus hardware needs.
• Keep in mind, ERP vendors & cloud
providers are adapting their licensing
models to RPA.
• Attention to detail is very important.

9. EVANGELIZATION

10. EVANGELIZATION - 1
• Always be a cheerleader and a
champion of RPA.
• RPA will be new to everyone.
• Enthusiasm is contagious.
• IT users will be moving out of their
comfort zone as they work more with
business processes.
• Business users will be moving out of
their comfort zone as they work more
with IT processes.
• RPA deployments will challenge some
long-standing methods & practices.

11. EVANGELIZATION - 2
• COE team will constantly need to bridge
the gap between technology and the
business.
• COE should foster best practices and share
lessons learned.
• Bring developers together regularly so they
can learn from each other and you can
learn from them.
• Encourage the use of all of the on-line
resources provided by Automation
Anywhere.
• Don’t view your COE role as one of just
governance.
• Being successful means going well beyond
that.