Instead of the abundant returns and quick time-to-value that companies were sold on, RPA programs have struggled with crippling bot outages, errors, and labor-intensive maintenance that has prevented scale and diminished the business value their digital workforces were supposed to deliver. One reason automation initiatives have failed to achieve their objectives is because there are hidden risks to RPA design and delivery that if not addressed, stunt growth and the levels of ROI that are expected.

They include:

• Poor process selection – Automating processes that are under-utilized or too complex, leading to RPA maintenance and support headaches downstream.
• Failing to optimize processes before automating them – Simply put, automating bad processes leads to bad automations.
• Leaving islands of automation untouched – Siloed, independent automation programs within the same organization result in duplicated mistakes and inflated costs.
• Over-automating – There’s been a rush to automate for various reasons—the complications the pandemic presented is a prime example. Quick wins however, are short-lived as rushed design and development produces fragile automations that break.
• Using outdated and inefficient mechanisms to communicate automation design - There is little logic in investing so much care and sound practice into automation design, only to package it into a paper-based, archaic vessel like a PDD (Process Design Document) or SDD (Solution Design Document) which often result in missed requirements, and bad, fragile bots being built.
• Failing to map dependencies - A common reason bots break is because of a change to the UI of a system that the automated process interacts with. Most of the time, these errors and outages can be traced back to a major automation design flaw many RPA programs are guilty of: the failure to connect automated processes with their dependencies like the legacy systems and applications they interact with.

The way to avoid these hidden risks and reduce the burden of RPA maintenance is by building the right, higher-quality bot, the first time. Blueprint’s Enterprise Automation Suite – the world’s most powerful automation design and management solution – provides the collaboration, visibility, and capabilities to do just that.

In Blueprint, all stakeholders converge in a centralized repository to optimize and align on RPA candidates and connect those automations to all dependencies like regulations and systems, facilitating proactive change management that maximizes RPA uptime.

All this information is then packaged in a Digital Blueprint and automatically synced with the RPA tool you use, providing your developers with the visibility and precise guidance that leads to the right bot being built, reducing outages and maximizing your returns.

Proper automation design and delivery practices are essential but will only get you so far. The right solution, like Blueprint, is what’s needed to stop fighting maintenance fires, and realize the full potential of RPA that you were sold on.