Thomas van Brouwershaven, 1ai Digital
Welcome back to our RPA journey with Thomas. In this installment, we delve into a critical aspect of embarking on your automation journey: setting your goals and vision. Like charting a course for a grand adventure, defining your objectives and direction in automation is key to a successful and fulfilling experience.
Identifying the Why: Understanding Your Processes
Before you can set goals and a vision for your automation journey, it’s crucial to understand why you’re embarking on this path. This begins with a deep dive into your existing processes. Whether you’re representing a business, department, team, or are an individual contributor, each process you’re involved in plays a vital role in contributing to your company’s success.
Consider each process as a piece of the puzzle. What does it accomplish? What value does it bring? What are its pain points, bottlenecks, and inefficiencies? Identifying the ‘why’ behind your processes helps you appreciate their significance and sets the stage for meaningful automation.
Choosing the Right Processes for Your Journey
As you begin your automation journey, it’s essential to select the right processes to automate initially. While it might be tempting to start with quick wins, such as short processes that take only a few minutes, it’s often more impactful to choose processes that make automation tangible. These are the processes where you and your team will notice a substantial difference when automation is applied.
Selecting processes that are timely and require significant manual input is a wise choice. The primary reason for this is to garner direct feedback from your team on how automation is helping them and which areas need improvement. At the outset of your journey, building trust in automation is essential, and tangible results foster confidence in the automation process.
Setting Goals and Crafting a Vision
Identifying the first processes of your automation journey is the first step in crafting a vision. These are the first short term goals that will accelerate the automation journey and contribute to the vision. Once you’ve identified the processes to start your automation journey, it’s time to set goals and craft a vision. Your goals should be clear, measurable, and aligned with your organisation’s objectives. Think about what you want to achieve through automation, whether it’s time savings, cost reduction, improved accuracy, or enhanced employee satisfaction.
In my experience, starting with five clear processes that were timely and required significant team input laid a strong foundation. As the team noticed the time gains and efficiency improvements, enthusiasm for automation grew. This paved the way for expanding automation efforts and exploring the full capabilities of RPA.
Strategising and understanding where you want your department or team to grow is vital. Engaging your team members in the process by assigning them specific automation goals not only incentivises their participation but also taps into their expertise. By involving every team member in the journey, you harness the collective power of your team to contribute to the success of automation initiatives.
In conclusion, setting goals and crafting a vision in automation is about aligning your efforts with your organisation’s objectives, choosing the right processes for automation, and engaging your team in the journey. A well-defined direction and active team participation can propel your automation journey to new heights.
Navigating RPA: Insights from Thomas’s Automation Odyssey
Hope you enjoyed this blog! And in case you missed it, herewith the first blog in the latest series where Thomas shares his personal experiences, insights, and expertise in the realm of RPA. Thomas brings a unique perspective to the world of RPA. His journey is not just about technology; it’s about the transformation of work, the evolution of industries, and the empowerment of individuals. Throughout this series, you’ll gain access to his treasure trove of experiences, from the early days of RPA implementation to the cutting-edge developments shaping the future.
Get ready to explore the power of automation, understand its impact on businesses and society, and discover practical insights that can help you navigate the exciting world of RPA.