Two Key Enablers for ROI in Robotic Process Automation
I spoke with Peter Quinn, who orchestrated the highly successful Robotic Process Automation (RPA) implementation at a large wealth management firm, about some of his insights and lessons learned. In that discussion, two of his methodologies stood out to me. That’s because they’re great examples of key enablers for achieving superior business outcomes through RPA. His methodologies for funding the implementation and for change management led to capturing greater ROI from RPA.
In our Pinnacle Model™ research at Everest Group, we investigated more than 200 leading companies undertaking RPA adoption. While the cost savings from RPA were similar across all the enterprises we studied, we found that Pinnacle Enterprises™ – those that achieved superior business outcomes – achieved a significantly higher (4X) return on investment. In addition, we found a sizeable gap in generating high impact in strategic areas (78% for Pinnacle Enterprises as opposed to 49% for other enterprises). Moreover, it took the Pinnacle Enterprises fewer months to achieve ROI from RPA than the other enterprises. Understandably, our study found 67% of Pinnacle Enterprises are highly satisfied with their operational optimization through RPA, compared to only 21% of the other enterprises we studied.
Funding Approach
As I’ve blogged before, budgeting and funding initiatives are big constraints in digital transformation. Quinn explained how his firm overcame these challenges. From day one, he formed an automation governance committee comprised of people from all the business units and operational units, the IT organization, an attorney, business manager and the account manager from the firm’s existing BPO service provider. This helped gain senior leaders’ commitment to the initiative. The funding began with some modest initial seed money from the executive level to get the automation initiative started.
Read more in my Forbes blog: https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterbendorsamuel/2018/05/30/two-key-enablers-for-roi-in-robotic-process-automation/#1c9b12d85b22
