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It is a common situation that most shoppers face while buying packaged goods online. Due to high demand many daily used products go out of stock in retail sites. But it is more annoying to experience longer time in any shopping website due to lack of clarity about how to select and pay for a product. Direct-to-customer (D2C) is the new trend shaping the consumer-packaged goods (CPG) industry across the globe. Primary reason being low entry barrier, which is enabling private label brands to appear in the market with frequency higher than ever. However, not all brands could sustain the race of attracting consumers to their brands. It is more due to the marketing strategy they follow than the quality or features in the products. Drawing consumers to the products is the primary major challenge in this business model. Second major challenge is ensuring continuous availability of products, which means ensuring an uninterrupted supply chain process. If we introspect more into the primary challenge, we find three reasons underlying. First one is all about understanding the need of each & every customer and designing product as per their requirements. Second is keeping a tab of competitors’ offerings in the marketplace. Third is using information related to earlier two cases to develop personalised buying experience for every customer. The only solution that could help us resolve all these problems is data. Data is the ammunition in this expanding war of customer acquisition and retention. Collection of data about customers’ preferences and competitors’ new offers, storing those data and using those effectively are of primary importance in building a successful D2C business model.

If we go deeper into this, we find that next level of challenge is identification of data. It is customary for every marketer to understand and find the type of data one needs to understand customers’ requirements. Parallelly, one needs to find the data required on competitors’ offerings to strengthen the grip on the marketplace. Once understood, firms should think about the resources through which all these data can be collected and stored. And finally, how these data can be used to generate insights about customer’s behaviour.

To help firms in this journey, digital technology services are on the rise. The advent of intelligent automation has equipped the software service providers develop digital tools to understand the ongoing trend and find which areas need more focus to make the business run profitably. Robotic process automation (RPA), cloud technology, Artificial Intelligence (AI) based algorithms and machine learning (ML) programs are examples of digital tools which have paved the way for technology focused CPG firms to monitor their businesses closely and engage consumers more effectively. Every consumer has a different and unique way of shopping. Therefore, engaging with each consumer through the right channel, right promotion and right offer is undoubtedly a critical task. In top of that increasing penetration of mobile technology has brought all category of consumers at the same place and at the same time resulting in an extra level of complexity in data collection. Therefore, developing a robust data storage facility is no more a choice but a necessity for managing such increasing diversified consumer base. 91¶¶Òő through its rich experience of working with multiple CPG consumers can provide both on-premises and cloud-based database solutions to manage terabytes of data on a continuous basis.

Once the data storage facility is set up, suitable data collection resources should be developed to ensure uninterrupted data feeding to the repository. Whenever a consumer engages in any purchasing activity through online channel, millions of data are transferred to the marketing firm. Multiplying this with number of available channels, nearly trillions of data are needed to be handled every day. Hence, the solution is to have resources having the capability to find relevant data in any format from any channel and incessant feeding of these data to the storage facility. 91¶¶Òő’s intelligent automation team can develop any customised intelligent bots using robotic process automation (RPA) for collecting data from any channel at any time with 100% efficiency. Not only from websites, but these bots can also even identify the necessary data from any document in any format. This can help the firms analyse multiple purchasing invoices to figure out average purchase value for any customer.

After collection the data, next important steps are identification of relevant KPIs and development of analytical models for the purpose of understanding the status of ongoing business and generation of insights about customer’s buying pattern. 91¶¶Òő has a dedicated analytics team who has developed analytical models as per business need and has helped firms understand consumer journey at every touchpoint starting from exploration to procurement of any product.

After data management the next critical area where D2C firms should put highest focus is managing the supply chain of entire processes. If designing products as per consumer’s need is the primary challenge that D2C firms face now-a-days, then the next big challenge is taking these products to the consumer’s doorstep. The solution that addresses this concern is smart supply chain. Although most of the firms engage third parties for delivery of products, making the products available to delivery partner’s warehouses or distribution centres need a thorough monitoring of supply chain. 91¶¶Òő’s Industry 4.0 and Digital team together provide efficient and effective supply chain solutions with the help of Internet of Things (IoT), RPA and AIML. Not only our solutions ensure automated monitoring of entire supply chain process but also can eliminate the redundant processes, reduce the energy consumption at intermediate stages wherever possible and build models for optimising selection of packaging materials.

The problem that Sanaya faced at the beginning of this article could have easily been avoided had the brand manufacturer focussed on these issues and collected data about Sanaya’s buying pattern. Also, they should have ensured availability of the product at retailer’s site by adopting smart supply chain practices. Emerging digital technologies like robotics, artificial intelligence, cloud technology and IoT are a blessing for firms. However, leveraging these technologies to maximise the profit and capture the market share needs a blend of expertise & experience over the years. 91¶¶Òő’s rich experience of working with global CPG manufacturers in multiple channels and multiple regions for diversified products have helped develop suitable digital technology-based offers for D2C firms. In an industry like CPG where competition has been a paramount concern from new product perspective, emergence of D2C practice has made the situation more complex. To compete successfully and lead in the marketplace, firms must embrace the digital tools for navigating through the wave of unlimited new products.

Author:

Debal Chakraborty,
Principal Consultant

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With rapid adoption ITIL framework, the focus shifted to services and management (business outcomes). This resulted in a gradual change from IT Helpdesk to IT Service Desk, which is now equipped with multiple channels that end-users could use for requesting support services. It has also enabled and empowered the end-users to solve a certain level of issues themselves.

Technology has made quantum leaps over the past decade, but the majority of the organizations continue to operate with the dated model when fewer things went wrong with IT. The onset of the pandemic in early 2020, drove the CIOs to think digital and move towards an operation that encouraged “Shift-left” and “Remote”.

The modern Service Desk Operations or “SDOps” (as we like to call it), offers an intelligent “first line” of entry point into IT Organisation comprising of Artificial Intelligence (AI) enabled automated solutions that users can access with Zero-human touch. To reduce the involvement of human agents, it is anchored around self-service and self-healing initiatives. Some of these enabling tools/ trends are listed below:

• AI and NLP powered Chatbot – Empowering the end-user to converse with a chatbot to get their issue resolved via self-service
• Digital Experience Management (DEM) – allows organizations to develop a deep, continuous understanding of each employee’s needs across the entire digital enterprise. The DEM platform is capable of Service Desk diagnosis & remediation, Root cause analysis, Proactive Endpoint Services, and Asset Optimization
• Automation and orchestration capabilities – From the use of simple scripts to the use of RPA for simulating human-like activities for resolution of issues
• Integrated IVR based telephony – AI-based telephony option to intelligently redirect the calls to appropriate resolver groups
• Remote support and Augmented Reality – enables users to leverage both smart technologies and a remote expert at a world-class service desk to resolve their issues

Adopting a “shift-left” approach enables issue resolution close to the end-user, thereby, bringing in an enhanced end-user experience and reducing the wait time. This directly impacts the cost of dealing with the incidents and enhances the services levels. The productivity of the business end-user improves significantly, and they are motivated to resolve the issues themselves, rather than reaching out to the service desk.

What the future holds?

Post pandemic, organizations have begun to realize the power of “shift-left”, which results in minimum human interaction and resolution closer to the users, at the IT service desk. This has propelled a rise in the adoption of AI-enabled capabilities, automation, and knowledge management capabilities. AI interfaces will eventually become an integral part of SDOps in the next few years, providing the end-users with a self-learning robotic bot as an alternative to a human agent. This will lead the way in Value Demonstration, enhancing and enriching End-User Experience.

As we move ahead, the operational cost for running an IT Service desk is expected to drop as AI interactions will mature and provide round-the-clock support to end-users without the need to have human agents covering a 24×7. Moreover, AI-based interactions at Level 0 going to cost less, thus, incentivizing the organizations to drive adoption of new technologies at the end-user level. The rate of technological development in the current day and age would result in IT Service Desk becoming more of a facilitator ensuring that all the end-user services ‘just work’.

91¶¶Òő’s E³ framework provides a strong foundation for the ‘Digital Workplace’ to be leveraged, a differentiated framework for transforming the end-user workplace. This framework comprises of

• Experience: Identify User experience journeys through Value Stream Mapping
• Efficiency: Drive Extreme Automation for an efficient self-service experience
• Effectiveness: Accelerate adoption for benefit realization

Author:

Abhimanyu Pandey
Lead Consultant – INFRA,
91¶¶Òő

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With enterprises adopting Work From Anywhere reality, and with the advent of the digital age, Digital Workplace has truly evolved to be digital and is here to stay. Digital Workplace solution needs to be envisioned with end-users forming the core of the solution. It is crucial for an organization to ensure that each end-user has a seamless workplace experience regardless of time and space.

To build an effective Digital Workplace solution with the end-user being at the center, it is imperative for an organization to focus on persona-based services. To achieve this, a well-planned discovery exercise needs to be initiated. Discovery has to be an iterative process that gets refined progressively and incrementally with continuous user feedback.

Accurate Persona mapping is the base for creating truly customized and efficient digital workplace solutions for different verticals.

• Personas are end-user prototypes that represent the requirements of groups of users, with users aligned with the enterprise’s business goals and therefore exhibiting a specific set of user characteristics. They act as ‘substitutes’ for real users and help guide decisions on strategy, functionality, design, and development
• Personas help in designing the solution by identifying the user motivations, expectations, and goals responsible for user behavior. They are based on knowledge of real users and imitate the end-user in the digital world
• Personas also provide a reliable and realistic understanding of how a business could expect a group of employees to embrace the new solution

The problem

The primary reason for discontentment within enterprises that deploy digital workplace solution is their one size fits all approach irrespective of the users’ requirements, their industry segment, technological maturity, and its user’s willingness to adapt to change. The ever-changing technological landscape combined with work from anywhere has made it challenging and complicated for workplace solutions to provide a consistent end-user experience.

Some of the top industry-specific persona examples include and not limited to:

Banking

Supporting on-demand customer requests and managing high customer expectations in remote work scenarios arising due to pandemic-induced lockdowns. A digital workplace solution curated for Banking Professionals enables them to connect with the banking systems remotely and securely for transactional activities in a seamless manner. The solution enables unified collaboration within the staffing ecosystem easing the processes such as inter-departmental approvals, financial transactions, and reporting.

Manufacturing

Managing and maintaining production capacity and other activities with a lower workforce and quick turnaround in case of breakdowns or IT issues. To facilitate remote resolution, the production engineer should have access to event logs, live execution system status, and augmented reality-based smart remote support. Digital Workplace solutions can enable the engineer to seamlessly resolve the breakdown through persona-driven access.

A well-researched and regularly updated set of end-user personas allows in preparing a solution that can manage the scale and complexity of the modern workplace while ensuring end-user delight and cost-saving. 91¶¶Òő’s E3 framework builds a strong foundation for the ‘Digital Workplace’ to be leveraged, a differentiated framework for transforming the end-user workplace. This framework comprises of

• Experience: Identify User experience journeys through Value Stream Mapping
• Efficiency: Drive Extreme Automation for an efficient self-service experience
• Effectiveness: Accelerate adoption for benefit realization

Author:

Shreet Das,
Pre-sales Lead, Digital workplace,
91¶¶Òő

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The number of organizations deciding to pay a ransom has risen to 32% in 2021 compared to 26% in 2020 (). Even after paying for Ransomware, only 8% of them got all their data back, nearly a third, 29%, couldn’t recover more than half the encrypted data. However, on average, only 65% of the encrypted data was restored after the ransom was paid. Approximately 37% of global organizations (more than one third) said they were the victim of some form of Ransomware attack in 2021 (IDC’s “). 92% who pay don’t get their data Back (.

We all know that Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability are the 3 pillars of security. Integrity of Data is an important dimension, which means that data has not been altered in an unauthorized manner when data is “at rest, getting processed, or in transit”. Here we will be focusing only on “at rest” Data related to Ransomware. It’s evident that, while there is a high level of efforts required to prevent “Attackers from getting in” or “escalating their privileges within system” the best bet for an organization remains to “Protect their critical data from unauthorized access and destruction”.

Ransomware attacks focus on encrypting any data to which they could get write access, including the backup system. This may also happen due to poorly implemented permissions that exposed backup data stored anywhere. This makes Ransomware attack more effective because organizations can’t recover data from backup systems.

The big step towards getting data protected is to have isolated, immutable backup of data which is not accessed in general and have very strict administrative access authentication, authorization adjustments for a set of admins. There was a time when data backup on physical tapes were kept off-site to be protected from any Data center physical damage as part of BCP/DR approach. That was one of the best ways to ensure data integrity. We should leverage Cloud offerings which are equally effective to protect data from any Ransomware attack.

Now let’s discuss about immutable backup methods which will be the key ask here. Azure has introduced Blob storage options to operate like an Immutable storage and enables users to store business-critical data in a WORM (Write Once, Read Many) state for a defined time interval. While in a WORM state, data objects can be created and read, but cannot be modified or deleted for a user-specified interval. By configuring immutability policies for blob data, customers can protect their data from overwriting and deletion. Another benefit of Azure Blob storage is having a legal hold, which stores immutable data until the legal hold is explicitly cleared. When a legal hold is set, objects can be created and read, but not modified or deleted. It’s important to understand how immutability is implemented and whether it is truly WORM, even if OS administration accounts are compromised.

Those who are on AWS platform, can use AWS Backup Vault Lock to prevent (accidental or malicious action) any user from deleting their backups or making changes to their backup lifecycle settings. AWS Backup Vault Lock (S3 Glacier) improves customer’s security postures and ensures a mechanism for restore, even in a worst-case scenario like total account compromise. Another service that’s useful for data protection is the AWS object storage S3, where you can use features such as object versioning to help prevent objects from being overwritten with Ransomware-encrypted files, or Object Lock (S3), which provides a write once, read many (WORM) solutions to help prevent objects from ever being modified or overwritten. 

You can use Compliance retention mode if you never want any user, including the root user in your AWS account, to be able to delete the objects during a pre-defined retention period. You can use Legal Hold as an infinite retention period. Once applied it is not possible to delete any object until the hold is released manually (only by users with special permissions). Every backup within the retention period is an immutable backup with point-in-time restore capabilities. Also, we have S3 MFA delete-enabled bucket option which safeguard from permanent delete of an object version or change the versioning state of the bucket.

Similarly, GCP storage containers with Bucket Lock offers write-once (WORM), immutable storage to meet your compliance standards and ensure your data’s integrity while offering instantaneous access for quick restores. As part of protection, once you lock a bucket, you cannot unlock it until all objects are out of the retention period. Retention policies prevent the deletion or modification of the bucket’s objects. Applying Bucket Lock to a storage bucket in the Archive class can help you achieve WORM compliance for long-term data archival as well.

Apart from introducing immutable backup options which provide a secure storage for your data, we all know initial steps such as to keep multiple copies of data backup (keeping data off-site), use a standard practice of Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) for administrative accounts, separation of administrative roles. We also need to enable encryption of the data and segment the workflow so that authorized systems and users have limited access to use the key material to decrypt the data. We know that network sharing protocols work well for general-purpose file sharing. However, minor mistakes in permissions can lead to data being exposed. In place of using them, we recommend using object storage APIs, for example Amazon S3 compatible APIs, virtual tape libraries, or keep storage as “local” to the backup server (do not access over a network sharing protocols).

Interesting part to understand here is, the technology which was initially introduced for a security compliance requirement to keep the golden copy of any data for later auditing or reconciliation, has taken a shift to be also used to safeguard from ransomware attacks to maintain integrity of data. Cloud storage is an economical solution because resources are readily available, is scalable, and multi-tiered.

Author:

Deepak Kumar,
Cloud Practice Head,
91¶¶Òő

The post Keeping your data protected from ransomware attack in the new era appeared first on 91¶¶Òő.

While intent to implement RPA is growing, there are budget cuts to contend with. Organizations have therefore turned cautious, chiefly because they cannot identify the processes, they should automate to unlock the ROI, efficiencies and the bottom-line growth promised by RPA. 

The path to successful RPA implementation is not always evident—and there is justified anxiety that the wrong decisions could produce sub-optimal returns. Processes in the functions like Finance, IT, HR and Procurement usually contribute to maximum number of use cases. Precedents could be one way to resolve the indecision.

Keep efficiency, effectiveness, and experience the focus

Organizations have a variety of stimuli that propels them towards RPA adoption: to drive efficiency, enforce compliance, create a fungible workforce, stay ahead of technology, increase the life of legacy investments, and improve employee morale. However, in the most immediate future, organizations considering RPA would do well to apply the technology to solve their most immediate business problems (see figure 1).

Figure 1

91¶¶Òő has worked with several customers across industries that illustrate the business problems that make ideal use cases for RPA:

• An airline customer wanted last minute emails received for cargo bookings to be turned into orders in their cargo system. They used RPA to solve the problem
• A US-based fashion house wanted to convert spread sheets coming in from designers into a Bill of Material and thereafter into purchase orders. RPA was the solution
• A banking customer wanted real time testing to be done for 300+ mainframe scenarios for new products. RPA-based testing enabled faster time to market

For organizations considering RPA, another way to resolve the problem would be to adopt RPA if it is a customer facing process. These processes always deliver value higher than others.

Get around the uncertainty 

It is natural to be anxious about making investments in RPA. The technology is transformative but unfamiliar. Our experience shows that organizations are most concerned about selecting the right platform, they are unclear if their processes are ready for automation, if their business cases can withstand the test of time, and how quickly they will see ROI. 

• Rule of Five: Our advice to organizations dipping their toes in RPA for the first time is relatively simple. Identify five processes that run across five application used by jobs that follow business rules and have little movement. We call it the Rule of Five. It provides a safe and quick test ground to understand what works for your organization and what doesn’t
• Process characteristics: The other approach to identifying the right use cases is to look at RPA to address tasks with a high volume, that are sensitive to speed, that are generally error prone and have irregular labor demands
• Part of digital transformation: Many organizations are gravitating towards the thought that RPA is not just a way to mitigate costs or improve operational efficiency but as a key component of their digital transformation agenda (added to the list of strategies that include data, analytics, social, and mobile)

Going wrong is not failure – it is learning

A CPG customer got 91¶¶Òő to help identify process that could be automated. After process mining and value modelling, we identified 10 processes ripe for RPA. The customer wanted six automated. However, we soon realized that not one of the six could be automated because the process templates were not standardized. The program had to be put on hold, the processes standardized, and the program re-started. But failure is not always a reason to bring an RPA program to a halt. It is often an indicator of a need for course correction. 

Another CPG customer opted for a “fail fast approach” and started RPA implementation using a low scale product that did not touch their ERP. As adoption increased, SAP users in the organization also wanted to implement RPA. The customer realized the need for a product with larger capability and chose Automation Anywhere.

Anxiety around RPA vaporizes as adoption increases. Typically, organizations with less than 10 bots have challenges around process selection and business case creation. Organizations with 10 to 50 bots have challenges around governance, establishing operating models and modifying processes for automation. Organizations with over 50 bots cement an automation first cultural and nurture an RPA talent pool that ultimately sees the emergence of citizen developers.

Learning from experience

Our experience of working together provides insights that are worth sharing. When we decided to provide every one of our 9,000 employees with a bot – called Digital Buddy – we got Automation Anywhere as the expert services partner to assist in developing the bots and in managing change. We knew that our young and agile workforce wanted IT to help them move at speed. Our employees were eager to get their hands-on new technology and learn how to subsequently apply it to solve customer problems. Internally, we also realized there was more work than available skills. All the pieces necessary for RPA to find acceptance and deliver value fell in place. 

Today, we have the expertise to deliver RPA projects to customers using an extensive bot library, through our automation-as-a-service offering and a catalogue of automatable processes based on experience. 

Tomorrow’s economy will be led by digital workers that leverage RPA, with humans required for more cognitive work. Learning to tread the pathway to successful RPA implementation is therefore an urgent need today.

Author:

Sumeet Pathak,
Senior Director, Digital Innovation and Solutions,
Automation Anywhere

Mayank Jain
VP, Business Consulting Group,
91¶¶Òő

The post Pathway to successful RPA Implementation appeared first on 91¶¶Òő.

The trend will force organizations to bring heightened attention to delivering exceptional end-user experiences on one side and building new support services and processes on the other to enable smooth remote working (see Table 1 for ‘What has COVID-19 changed?’). This is because users can no longer visit ‘tech bars’ (areas dedicated to IT support teams) or expect support teams to come to their desks to resolve issues. The problem is compounded by organizations’ having relaxed their norms around personal devices while, simultaneously, they have become cautious about their IT spends.

From SLAs to eXLAs

Organizations must work around their traditional notions of what comprises end-user experience to meet rising expectations. The old-fashioned concept of SLAs will need to be replaced by Experience Level Agreements (eXLAs) because users want everything faster. Organizations too are waking up to SLAs being misleading, resulting in undocumented productivity loss. For example, a user may log a ticket for a technical problem for which the SLA could be 20 minutes. A 100 such tickets every day for a mid-sized organization would work out to over ~500-man days lost every year. Meanwhile, the support dashboard would show “all green” because SLAs are being met. Invisible to management, users would have experienced the frustration of long waits and loss of productivity (see Figure 2 for what users do when faced with slow support).

The way to change this is to connect user experience and productivity. This can be done by leveraging automation and self-help and self-healing processes. Consumers—and we all are consumers—have become accustomed to managing tasks like “change password” and “install application” independently. Over the last decade, we have been doing this on our mobile phones with routine ease. But organizations are not geared to provide the same experience. The first thing you hear in an organization at the slightest hint of trouble is, “Have you logged a ticket?” The ticket is the center of service and experience. Not the user.

But when experience and productivity are connected using automation and self-help, there is a dramatic improvement in user experience (see Figure 3 for the change in user satisfaction between hands and feet support and self-help/automation).

The trick is to move the user to the core of the support process. This is where structuring the “new normal” begins (see Figure 4 for the structure).

In the new normal, interactions with users must move a notch up. They must become multi-lingual and intelligent. This can be achieved by using AI-enabled chatbots that don’t just refer to an FAQ but execute solutions for the user. This can also be supported by intelligent IVR that goes beyond the “Press-1-for-password-reset-and-2-for-agent-support.” IVRs can be made intelligent to identify the user by name with voice bots using natural language processing (NLP). These interactive bots should ensure that users need not refer to several apps, say from Workday and PeopleSoft or the intranet and a website but they should be contained to deliver app outcomes from within these bots. The user must not struggle to navigate to sources of information. Instead, the system should become a single window for all information, binding all information as a single source of truth. Finally, the system needs a strong wrapper of governance to take care of how data is managed and shared.

Levers to create the new normal

Most mid-sized organizations would have automated up to 10% of their support processes. The target should be to have self-service systems, automation and bots to manage in excess of 70% of these processes, freeing up time for agents at the service desk to attend to complex troubleshooting. The path to achieving this is by using six levers of transformation spanning self-service, intelligent automation, etc. (see details in Table 2).

How does the organization know that its efforts and investments in delivering user experience and support for remote employees and distributed workforce are effective? Currently, the processes to measure the impact of interventions are long-winded and complex. These processes need to be simplified, without which organizations will continue to get responses from two polar ends of the experience spectrum: those who are extremely unhappy and those who are extremely happy. This creates misleading perceptions. Instead, eXLA should be measured besides SLA covering channels such as chatbots, live agents, email, and instant messenger. To ensure that effectiveness can be measured the use of “Digital Experience” platforms becomes a must and compiling data from end user devices on performance and intelligence becomes important. In addition to this user sentiments should be captured in form of the response from users which can be collected using simple methods like gestures – thumbs up/down, likes / dislikes and smileys. Regular SLA metrics are always an important element to complete the 360 degree view. These can be translated into scores, providing more accurate insights into user experience. 

What does the new user experience look like?

An example of a typical session using an intelligent AI-driven bot helps understand how new support systems need to work. Assume that a user logs into the system to seek assistance with installing an application. Instead of dashing off an email to the service desk (or calling a service desk and waiting endlessly in a queue), the user interacts with a text-based chatbot that has identified the user by name. The bot presents a list of the top common queries to the user. In this instance, the user selects, “Install app” and the bot immediately lists the applications authorized for the role and which are not currently installed on the user’s system. The user selects the right application and the bot completes the installation. At the end of the processes, the user clicks on thumbs up/ down, like/dislike button to provide feedback.

A non-IT use case helps appreciate this further. Assume you are the user and you want a list of holidays. The chatbot lists holidays applicable to you using your role/ location/place of work. The bot understands that you may want to apply for leave and therefore presents you with a “My leave balance” prompt. You click on the prompt and the bot looks up your leave balance, displays it, and helps you complete a leave application. At the backend, the bot looks up a variety of systems from the intranet for the list of holidays to Workday to complete HR processes. You need not switch applications and hunt around for links. 

When the bot encounters a query it cannot respond to, the session is handed off to a live agent. The agent gets a copy of the entire interaction history with the bot and can understand the context of the query. The query can then be resolved using several channels from SMS to social media. 

At the back end, the interaction is captured on a dashboard as a new problem for which the knowledge base has to be created/improved so the bot can handle it independently the next time, without having to escalate it to a live agent. 

Organizations must up their game with remote/distributed work becoming a reality. End-user experience will play a major role in determining if your remote working initiatives succeed or not. If they put the user at the center of the process, success will be assured.

References:

Author:

Sujoy Chatterjee
VP, Infra Managed Services,
91¶¶Òő

The post End-user experience and remote working during COVID-19 & beyond appeared first on 91¶¶Òő.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has caught the attention of CXOs who are grappling with the  business impact induced by the COVID pandemic.   It is no longer a luxury but a business imperative to bring in automation in order to save time & costs, gain efficiency and provide more work-life balance to employees by allowing them to focus on higher value tasks while the bots take care of the mundane, repetitive tasks.

This frenzy has led many organizations to take the plunge into automation with most of them being at some stage of either piloting RPA or having deployed a few bots in production. It all seems very lucrative and thus very high expectations are set from the onset about the success the bots will bring for the company. But then, reality strikes, and most companies see that the outcomes aren’t really what they had expected. There are issues in scaling the bots beyond the initial few, issues with maintenance and frequent modifications required for handling different scenarios and paths for the same process, and updates required when the IT systems undergo a change. This results in a long and steep learning path for the companies that brings with it the frustration and a misdirected agony towards the usefulness of RPA.

But is it really the bots that are to be blamed for the problems being faced by such companies? Why is it that RPA is working like a charm for some companies while others are struggling to crack the code? 

It has to do with the way the successful companies look at (read as: treat) bots.

By humanizing bots and incorporating the following practices, companies can  derive maximum value from the investments made in RPA.

Treat them as  digital employees and name them

The premise of ‘Virtual Workforce’ is based on treating bots as digital employees. It is only natural to think so about bots. After all, the bots work 24×7, doing tasks that are   repetitive and mundane for humans. But treating them as employees and naming them gives them more mind space and top of the mind recall during change management. When employees name their digital assistants, they think of bots more like junior team members who report to them and help them with their daily tasks.

Give time and team to maintain the bots and look after them 

Just like humans, bots can also fall sick and have breakdowns. What’s important to note is that just like humans, there is a reason behind their falling sick. In most cases, the reason tends to be associated with change management aspects. When there is a process change in the traditional world (where people are managing the processes), documentation upgrades and training are part of the change management plan. This helps the operations teams to manage the changed processes effectively. But this is often not the case with automated processes. By thinking of bots like people, the team thinks about them during change management and caters to their needs just like the needs of people being impacted by the change. This makes sure that they are looked after, and the team keeps getting the benefits they originally got by keeping the bots working.

Build resilience into the bots

Processes can break for several reasons, whether being done by humans or bots. It could be due to bad data, unavailable source/target application, network connectivity, or any number of other reasons. Just like humans take alternate routes or steps to resolve the issue and move forward, so should the bots be able to. But bots won’t do this until they are trained  on it. Many a times, bot designers and developers consider only the ‘happy path’ while building the bots. When creating or training the bots, the ‘unhappy paths’ or ‘exception scenarios’ should also be considered, and the bot should be trained on what to do if such a scenario occurs. This not only keeps the bots running more efficiently, but also reduces maintenance and support efforts when they hit the ‘unhappy path’ because there are proactive actions built into the bots to handle such situations.

Manage the performance of bots like it’s done for people

People performance management is one of the most important aspect that is taken up in every organization. We pay a lot of attention and effort to make sure our people have the right toolset and mindset to perform at their best possible levels. Seldom does it ever happen for the bots deployed in the organization. By making sure that there are people assigned to monitor and manage the performance of the bots, we can make sure that the bots are performing at their best possible levels. With the new age automation platform, this is quite easy as they come with built-in performance dashboards and bots that monitor the performance of process bots and run diagnostics to make sure the overall performance is at expected levels. In addition, staff in the different business units with live bots can also access real-time dashboards that display the performance of the bots deployed in their unit.

Measure the success by number of automated process

Another common practice in organizations implementing automation is to measure the success of the program by the number of bots deployed. We often come across news flash about how an organization successfully deployed 100 RPA bots in 6 months’ time. Ideally, this should not be the measure of success. The true measure of success should be the number of processes automated by the bots. Don’t think about how many bots are deployed. Think instead, about how many processes can be run with a bot. When humanizing it, think of how many tasks or jobs a person can do in a day, then expand that across the bots running 24×7 and think of how many tasks can the bot do.

Conclusion

Initially it might seem a bit far fetched to think of a bot as a human and to take into consideration of the bot when thinking of process optimization. The business units need to work in collaboration with IT to make sure the bots are set up in a way that maximizes return on their investment. 

While looking at optimizing a process, planning for it with the bot in mind is different from planning for it with a human in mind. When optimizing a process with a human in mind, we would look to reduce the number of steps. When optimizing a process with a bot in mind, the more important factor should be the efficiency the bot brings, even if it means having a greater number of steps. 

Remember, the bot doesn’t mind doing more steps in a process since it’s executing them at a much faster pace than human. If the overall efficiency of the process improves, then that is a  trade-off that we should be in favor of. 

In short, giving bots names gives them a profile that has top of the mind recall and makes sure they are considered during the change management process. Also, when designing the bots, building fail safe mechanism by considering exception scenarios goes a long way to keep them running. Performance management for bots, just like for humans makes sure the company is getting its targeted  ROI and like humans, focus on how many processes the bot can handle rather than how many bots the company has.

Making the above mentioned psychological / behavioral changes to our outlook towards RPA bots can go a long way in improving the efficiency the bots bring while making sure the company is getting back the  ROI on the RPA initiative.

At 91¶¶Òő, we take this psychological approach and have embedded it into the DNA of the company’s approach to RPA. That is the reason why we have embarked on a journey to provide every employee (~9500) with a personalized digital buddy  that will make their life easier. And we have been able to successfully deploy close to 20 digital personas for various functional roles to help people in their daily work. Talk to us if you’d like to know how 91¶¶Òő can help make digital workforce a reality for your company.

References:

1. Everest Group – RPA Annual Report 2018 – 
2. The Future Digital Work Force: Robotic Process Automation (RPA) –
3. Gartner’s 2019 Predictions for RPA Offerings –
4. Optus brings bot needs into IT change planning –

Author:

Tanmay Prakash
Senior Principal Consultant, 
Business Consulting Group, 91¶¶Òő

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