Session Information:

Practicalities of RPA implementation in highly Complex and Regulated Markets

• Is RPA the right solution for the process?
• While on the RPA Implementation Journey!
• Things to look out for after "Go Live".

Session Transcript:

I am so excited to welcome our first speaker today. She is coming directly from one of my favorite cities in the world, Hong Kong, And I'm so happy to have you here with us, deputy, and I'm talking about ..., She is a change and transformation leader having two decades of experience with digital transformation and business excellence teams.

She is a certified ... Master, Black Belt, and the scaled, Agile practitioner.

She has experience leading transformation teams for leading global banks and business process management solution providers.

Her cross-industry, leadership, and practical experiences span travel, insurance, and financial services globally. It's a real honor to have you with us, Thank you so much for taking your time to share your wisdom and expertise with our global audience today.

Thank you, Josie, and I would want to appreciate you taking the time out introducing all the participants, and facilitating these sessions for the last few days.

My screen, so good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, everyone. I hope you've enjoyed the sessions with various speakers over the last two days. Today, I'm going to be sharing my learnings and my experiences on RPA implementations, from a very different perspective that was going to be as a change leader and a transformational leader who's implemented this in a real-life environment across complex markets. And operations set up in, in a region, in the Asia pacific region, specifically.

So this is going to be some of the learnings and experiences that we've had through the course of the session. There would be different aspects that I would cover. So first is, when you're looking at a transformation program. Is RPA the right solution for the problem that you're trying to address?

Is something that we would look at, then what I'd be a model to be used. So there are different options that we've seen through the course of the last two days of this conference. I could share my experience on the RP a model that we've used. It. It may not be the most suitable for all areas, but that's one of the options that are available. We will also be looking at an or be a pod structure that we used in the implementations that we've done, and I'd cover some of the things to look out for as a part of the implementation life cycle. So apart from your usual framework and governance that gets set up as a part of a program, there are some specific things you may want to look out for at the time of an initiation and mobilization phase. Then, there are a few things that you'll want to keep an eye out during the execution phase, And from a post implementation phase perspective is where some of the things that are important.

I will summarize with some overall observations, and then we move into the Q&A section.

Before we get into the details, I want to give a little bit of background around the transformation program that I was leading. It was a holistic program where we were looking at managing end to end customer journeys in one of the leading global financial services enterprise.

So, we want only looking at B in isolation, but we were looking at the whole technology and digital landscape from a short-term and a medium-term perspective.

We were also looking at the location strategy on how we want the teams to be placed, along with different channels of getting business and transactions. So we're looking at call centers, our locations or brand, because that will present mobile applications and websites as different channels. So it is a holistic view of the transformation that we were looking at, in which RPA rules, one of the tools that were available for us.

Having said that, let's look at any process that we are looking at before we look at a solution or technology to solve that problem. I can take an example of an account opening process. So typically, if you noticed and an account opening process, you have a lot of forms to be filled in. In the old setup, you have paper forms. There's a wet signature that is required on those forms. Then the customer or the member has to go into a branch to submit the application.

These would then get dispatched by a career to a central processing unit where the documents are manually checked. And if the documents are complete and correct, the account is open for the member, and there is manual data entry into the system that's being made. If there is a complete documentation, then you ask the member or the customer for the documents that are pending. And then, if everything's fine, the account gets opened. And a welcome letter gets generated, printed, and posted. This is a very old way of doing things, it's not very convenient for customers and members, because of the travel in the back and forth that's there.

It's a very manual process, paper based, and had a very high turnaround time.

Now, when we are looking at a medium term, or a futuristic view of this process, to make it stay true, frictionless, and foster, there is a holistic view that could be taken, and there are different technology interventions that happen. So, they could be concentrations of digitally capturing customer information. They could be a possibility of a digital signature being taken. Submissions could be online, either on our website or mobile app.

If there is need for documents to flow for regulatory reasons, physical documents, A workflow implementation can be considered OCR as a tool is available to check the information, and the entry into the system about customer details could be done by our API as an interface. And then at B, as one of the tools, could be implemented for generating the welcome letter.

So, if you look at this new process that then gets implemented, there is no need for the customer to physically visit the location or branch. It's much faster and with less errors and mistakes. So the key takeaway that I want to share from the sliders, when you're looking at any transformation, implementation or a technology intervention, look at the process from an end to end perspective, in a holistic view. And then, choose, what are the solutions that you want to implement it?

The choice of solutions would typically depend on the budgets that you have available, the skill set capability that you have available, the timeframe that you have available to implement these solutions. And, you know, what's the scope of the implementation?

But the very essential part here is to streamline the process, make it efficient, and then look at technology interventions. So again, these are some of the examples of tech interventions they could be played around with mixed and matched. And there is AI ML, also, that could be implemented. So there's just one view, but RPA plays an important role. And typically we've seen RPA could just be implemented in standalone processes as well. But the most efficiencies that we've seen come out of the interventions is when you look at it from an end to end perspective.

So this is this is one of the learnings that we've had where we've looked at customer journeys end to end.

The next topic that I want to cover, that we consider from the program perspective was setting up of the .... This is one of an important decision that an organization needs to make when we're choosing to implement any technology. So there are different options that are available. There is no right answer here. Again, the decision on what you could choose depends on the budgets that are available. the scope of your implementation. The scale at which you want to implement, and the timeframe that's available to do this transformation?

So, there are different models that are available. one is a window based model, which typically, what we've observed is very fast to scale up. Resources availability is fastow trained resources. We're very familiar with the skill set than the RPA tools that are available.

Overall overhead costs of the solution is low and it's fast to ramp up, at the same time, it's fast to ramp down, and, but, if you're going to do a multi-year program, then my observations vinas, it works out a little expensive, then, in House program, due to the cost of resourcing.

The other example is an in-house capability setup, but, the observations that we've had with respect to an in-house capability set up is, it takes time to identify resources, get them trained on the tools, and get them certified, and make them productive and efficient sustain. And that's a problem because we've seen resources move into other roles, or leave the organization. But, this again is a common problem with vendor resourcing as well. The benefit is continuities. maintained because, you have that capability developed and retained in house, which is important as you will see from a post implementation perspective.

From a long term perspective, it works out more cost effective. If you go through a long term view than vendor resourcing slightly expensive. So, it becomes a little cost effective solution. The other important aspect is, it also is a tool that's available for talent retention and certification. It's something that team members aspire for employees as powerful, and if you have top talent, and you want them to diversify the skill set, then this is a good thing to invest in the employees. There is a lot of value on loading of the automation tools and the industry, and these resources come at a premium. So that's a good investment in talent retention for the employees, as an example.

For the program that I was working on, the auction that we chose was to go in for a hybrid model, because it was a large-scale program. And we wanted to start implementation. So, identification, training and certification of resources were taking time.

So we worked with a vendor to start with a pilot wave, with a few set of projects where we can demonstrate quick wins while we were building up our internal capability. So typically we've we've seen a hybrid model that has worked best for us and the other benefit of having a hybrid model is it is easy to them, up and down the resourcing requirement of a program depending on the volumes of projects that get identified. So typically any transformation program would have peaks and troughs and having a hybrid models has helped us balance those peaks and troughs with the support of the vendor that we engage with. So, so that's one of the models that we chose to go ahead with it. It may not be the only solution, but it's something that worked very well for us.

Then the next topic that I want to cover is typically how an RPA board get setup. So in the program that we've, we've set up, this is the way our pod was configured or managed, and we had multiple such pods setup. Typically, we had one pod working on a project at a given point of time, and once that project got done, they moved on to another project. The composition of our pods was we had a project manager, who, at a point of time, manage 4 to 5 projects. Because that was the capacity that was made available from a project management perspective. We had an RPA mentor assign, because the configurator were newly trained, and they needed support from a technical expertise perspective. So we had an RP, a mentor sign, and add peer mentor at any given point of time used to mentor 7 to 8 projects.

Depending on the complexity and the size of the configuration required, you would have 2 or 3 RPA configurator assigned to a project.

And because the configurator aren't necessarily subject matter experts on the process, we had a process and the assigned. The process of me was a part of the team which process we are trying to implement an opinion on. And the ... cross SME needn't be a full time deployed on the spot. They would continue supporting the BU activities, and there would be spending 20% of the time on on the RPA bots. So this is an example of how we had some of our pod set up. And once this project was completed, then they would move on to another project implementation.

In terms of some of the things to look out for. So as given with any other transformation program, you've seen, there is a framework that is set up. and there is regular governance to track on risks, issues, dependencies.

And, you know, if there are any, slippage is that are happening, but few of the key things beyond that, that we recommend we keep an eye on, is the process review. It should be end to end.

And it has to be streamlined and standardized before you start with RPA discovery work on it.

The perception is everyone knows the process and the standard, but when you actually start documenting it, you realize that there are different versions of process in people's mind. It's important to actually finalize a process before the configuration actually starts on that.

The other important aspect is, when you have the solution design ready to have it reviewed with the SMEs, and if you have a compliance and team and a risk team in the organization, then they look at it. But also from an IT architecture perspective and an InfoSec perspective, the reason why I say this is important is typically organizations will look at something at a medium term. But they're also going to be a long term view from a technology architecture perspective and understanding how RP, if it's an overall technology strategy is very important to get that for you and have that reviewed from the IT architecture.

From an execution point of view, you everyone has project plans and tracks milestones. Typically what we've seen with RP implementations is it runs into the, especially in covert times, where resource availability becomes tricky, people get pulled into all directions, and availability becomes a challenge to, specifically, we've seen projects over, and it's important to keep an eye on delivery timelines. And if there is, delays look at the causes, and mitigate that.

We've also seen instances of process changing rapidly, due to changing in the regulatory regulatory environment, in the industry, or due to changes in the way businesses operate. So if there is any changes to the process, we need to go back to the drawing board, look at the solution, and reconfigure, configure some of the bots. So, again, this is going to be an important aspect to look out for.

It doesn't end with implementation and the bots going live. There's going to be a need for ongoing maintenance, and keeping an eye out on downtime.

There are times when system upgrades happen, and there's some bit of tweaking to the configuration that is required. So, while planning for any RPA implementation, it's important to keep an eye out on the, the post implementation support help desk and management of the activities. That is also component of BCP that needs to be kept in mind. For any reason, if there is outreach for long periods of time, and the process needs to be manually hand book as the BCT plan. There's sufficient confidence to be given to that aspect as well.

So these are some of the things that we've kept in mind while implementing our ... space.

Overall, the observation is that it's, it's a good tool to have in the toolkit when you're doing large scale digital transformation implementations Depending on the ski school scale size.

It can it's a good tool to be considered typical processes or setups where we've seen RP being used in instances where there is a high volumes process so that is similar kinds of transactions in high volumes with large activities remaining the same, The processes largely stable and the Iran frequent changes made to it.

There is availability of possibility of the RPA bots to connect to different systems in the organization, because that is, data sources are different. Getting the data, transaction processing, and then posting it onto another system. It is only efficient. If the organization allows the bots to talk to different systems within the organization. Some of the organizations which are highly regulated, do not allow the bots to do that. It brings down the efficiency of what we are trying to do, so that's an important concentrations.

Always consider it, along with other technology into phases, like digital data capture, OCR, API, or AI and machine learning, in isolation by itself. It can help process a part of a transaction, but they would still be manual intervention is required, before and after, which may or may not be efficient in the scenario. So that's something that is important to keep in mind. And it's good from a medium term outlook, typically, a lot of organizations are considering moving onto mobile apps and having more advanced technology being implemented. But if there is an immediate need that needs to be addressed, while a long-term plan is, is being worked out, then it becomes an important bridge to help lead this. There are also other instances where we utilize this, when there is a volume surges due to covert times where certain transactions, I've seen increases in volumes and having bought process this round. The clock is helped us tremendously.

So these are some of the observations and learnings I've had from the last two years in the implementations that I have done. I think now we can open it up for Q&A.

Fantastic dip to thank you so much for, for that, view, off of true practitioner zeal on how RPA and intelligent automation of impacts The other end of the of the spectrum here, Which is the the ones who are living with the technology. I always say that you know, I've had a future for all of my life. And one is is an advisor or another one is done Implementer, and it's a lot easier to advise than it is to implement things. And, and we have We have to live with the consequences of our advice When we're implementing.

So, I have some questions that came up during your presentation. And the first question I'm going to relate to you. Yeah, it has to do with Governance. You know, if I am, especially from an organization that's implementing RPA, you know, for the first time. Or maybe just scaling up my RPA implementation.

Wow, you know, you talk about a lot of very important things. You talk about understanding the process and Joanne to having process ownership does not a large extent. And then, identifying, you know, maybe the high volume stable processes, where we're intelligent automation, makes sense. It gets to a point that, you know, organizations that larger, there are disjointed.

There are all sorts of people trying to make decisions at different levels of knowledge and understanding, um, talk a little bit about governance and, and I mean governance, not rubber aquatic standpoint. It's about making decisions in the organization when it comes to RPA.

Do you see governance being more centralized, decentralized, to be effective? And, you know, who are, who should be overseeing, you know, the program, if you will?

What is your perspective that, as a practitioner, thanks to say, and this is a very pertinent question: When it comes to large organization, which works in silos across multiple departments, accountability becomes very important, specifically, if things go wrong. Once a solution is implemented. So, I can share what, what we've done as a part of a program. It was a multi market program. A regional program, which cut across different functions in a financial services setup, which is a highly regulated industry.

So, at a program level, we set up a governance which has a typical stirring committee where the decision gets made on the solutions, but also important is, considering this is a technology intervention because what would not work in isolation, that is, there is a production environment.

There's a testing environment development environment that's required through the life cycle, less, you know, post implementation support that is required. So, we had a lot of support from our IT organization in ensuring that the solution that we are implementing the vendor, we've chosen, or the automation tool, which is in line with the industry standard in terms of approvals. It was done as a part of the project governance, where we have a project sponsor who signed off on the solutions. But, that was just from a program program perspective. When it comes to implementing the solution, if you looked at the account opening process, it would cut across sales distribution operations. It cuts across the whole spectrum and organization. There is a head of each department who would sign it off in each of the market that we've implemented, and not just from an IP perspective, but from an end to end perspective.

The complexity, the complexity it brings in is a matrix organization. So you have market level sign offs, but you also have functional signals, where there would be a product or no and the product owner would also sign off saying, yes, I agree from the solution at an end to end perspective, from a medium term timeframe. Maybe when we're looking at long-term timeframe, there is another view that we look at.

Yeah. It certainly can, can be quite complex in it as just setting matrix organizations, and that governance can become essential, just so that it doesn't become completely out of control. When it comes to implementation. What have you found to be the most challenging phases? I mean, there is a level of excitement in, early on, about, you know, the possibilities of creating value by implementing this intelligence solutions.

Um, but then there was the reality of implementing this, the solutions and the complex and the complexities of implementing in the, in the EU.

Exceptions, that are inevitably got to deal with in the process.

Poor understanding of the process, Sometimes. I mean, there are a lot of difficulties in the implementation, and then there is a next stage, which is the maintenance.

You know, after you put this in place, you know, or their business changes that will affect the process that may impact the automation in your practical experiences across many industries.

Tell me a little bit about each one of those phases. And the, you know. Or, maybe just, what has really stood out to you as something that, if you're not experienced, this is something that's going to happen, that you don't expect, that, that you should be aware of. Is there, like, you know, share a little bit of your wisdom about someone who has done it and it has suffered the pain of implementing.

What have you learned when you actually had should do the implementation?

Yes. Again, this is a, this is an important question Where change practitioners on ground start implementing things. If it cuts across multiple departments, getting everyone to have a global vision becomes the most challenging part. Everyone has a different view from a future state perspective. Maybe someone wants it to be a best in class you know a solution which would be everything done on a mobile app instantly, without any breakages in our process. But it comes at a cost, and it requires certain timelines and that capability need to exist in the organization. So. Well, that could be an ideal state, where we all want to go to the fact of the matter is maybe the run as much funds available to implement it. And maybe capability is not available.

So, we would need to take it a step by step approach, OK, let's step back to this journey, and then you know, we aspire to go to like a best in class journey so one of the biggest challenges is getting everyone to have a common view. of how the future looks like. one, that's important. Second, depending on the complexity of an organization, the amount of approvals at X, to get something proposed and agreed, is cumbersome, and for all the right reasons, because, we do not want the systems to go down and it impacts customers. And there's media, reputational risk, and you know, the regulators risk involved there. So, the amount of time it takes to get the approvals and to get a solution designed signed off takes a lot of time.

But the fun part starts when the actual configuration stats, and we start to see demos and things start to walk, and you know, the bots being implemented. So, what does help, in that cases, pickup small, bite sized, manageable projects show early wins and get people onto agreed to see the benefit, and, you know, the light at the end of the tunnel, as we call it. Once people start seeing that, then they start getting motivated and start supporting it. But, getting everyone aligned to a common use, the most challenging part that I have observed.

And, that's very, very, very helpful. So, thank you for that perspective. What about: How, how do you I'm curious about maintenance of ERP implementations.

What? what have you found to be most challenging about maintaining the systems after they're implemented?

Is it, you know, pretty easy, and most of them don't need much maintenance, or you find that there's actually quite a bit of work Because, know, the processes are not, you know, you know, static. They are dynamic. They get updated by, regulations, by internal you, know, directives. And the and the external environment is also quite volatile. So, how does that all impact the RPA implementation that you have done? And the maintenance that needs to be done on the system.

Yes, because we've had quite a few bots being implemented in our setup. We have a dedicated Help Desk team that's available to provide support in case the bots go down.

So there is sufficient investment that's required, so the perception is just stacked, get the bots up and running, and then forget about, it doesn't work. There is certain investments that have to be kept in mind from a maintenance perspective, as well. And it's, it's an ongoing activity, like with any other IT systems and technology systems. There is, the running cost, that needs to be factored in. Typically, there is also a component of BCP in case, the time required for the systems to go up, and running is longer, and your processes are time sensitive. You need to have that capability or capacity available for someone to pick up the work and actually do the transactions. So, both these aspects need to be kept in mind. With that view, we've seen some of the non critical or non time sensitive processes being used to be executed by the bots.

Farewell. 1 1. 1 final question here that we have in the front of the oddest, which I think is an interesting one, is the human side of the intelligent automation implementation. What is it? What has been the impact, and your experience on, on the professionals who are having this Steps Automated.

Because, of course, to talk on the RPA provider, they're gonna say, oh, it's wonderful, because people now are going to have time to do this, more creative, high level things.

That sounds really good.

But for someone who's doing that job and all of a sudden comes in a bot that's doing that, whether it's rational or irrational, whether the full, most of the time to the full job is not automated, But a portion of it is automated. How it's done can create a lot of fear in the organization, fear of job losses, insecurity.

Um, how have you dealt with those type of situations and the human side of implementing intelligent automation?

Yes, this is a very real problem that we have to balance. And typically, as with any change or transformation, it brings a lot of anxiety with the team members where the change is happening. What, what has helped us is clear communication, and explaining asked what is the scope of the change, why there is a need of the change to happen, and how that will be managed. What has helped us is, we keep the teams and work in all the conversations that we do. And if, if it's a high performing team, we also look at this as a skill enhancement for the team members. Because that asked me expertise is important in implementation of the RPA.

So we we look at these team members as potential configuring those where they will help us with configuration.

So what we've seen past successes in is when we want to develop the capability in house, the the team members and volunteers to upskill themselves, configuration skill is a niche skill set in the market. And it adds value to a person's resume. So we've seen a lot of team members volunteered and want to get upscaled and certify in the skill set. It also helps with personal learning and development. And once these implementations are all war, because we do this across markets, we've used these configurator, who've been trained on this new skill skill set, to implement it on some low processes, across other markets, as well. So it's been a win-win situation for us, where the team members have also gained something out of it, along with digitizing of the processes. And there is a lot of new transactions that keep coming into the organization so people who get redeployed in doing other work. And, at the same time, upskilling themselves, it's worked well.

Excellent, JP, deep to thank you so much for taking the time. You're in a very different time zone in Hong Kong right there right now. And we appreciate you being up here with us and sharing your wisdom and practical experiences, which are invaluable to our community. So, thank you so much for, for doing that, for us, and participating in this in our conference.

Thank you, say goodbye.

Thank you, ladies and Gentlemen. Our true practitioner and leader of implement implementation leader of RPA in intelligent automation, across travel ish global insurance and global financial services deeply is a leader who understands the end to end processes, and the key process for organizations, and how to best approach those processes for intelligent automation.

So, we're going to be taking a break now, at the top of the hour. We're going to be following up with a speaker who is focus on the last question, that I just share it with ..., which has to do with the impact of automation on humans, and most specifically, he calls it noble automation who isn't always actual the title of his most recent book. I'm talking about our great friend and author.

Christopher Hodges and the Christopher is going to be talking about how noble how tos Nobel automation to improve your business.

And this stop the great resignation.

And the great resignation, as you know, where talent is leaving is redirecting their life and careers.

And that's having a significant impact organizations. And the leaders are graphic grappling with the challenge of automating while retaining top talent. So, sometimes, there's a bit of a, of a challenge there when you're automating things that were done by humans and then the humans may feel like, you know, I'm not an as needed in this business anymore because you're automating what I do. So does it have to be that way, What Chris is going to talk about, is that actually doesn't have to be that way, may actually be the opposite, that we will be more engaged with the, right. Automation is going on in our businesses, as we engage our workforce, intentionally, and with a common purpose and goal. So don't miss a session, I'll see you back at the top of the hour with noble automation and author Christopher Hodges, Thank you.