Subscribe
BTOES Insights Official
By
March 13, 2021

RPA & Intelligent Automation Live - SPEAKER SPOTLIGHT : Automate, Invigorate or Obliterate?

Courtesy of 's Mark McGregor, below is a transcript of his speaking session on 'Automate, Invigorate or Obliterate?' to Build a Thriving Enterprise that took place at RPA & Intelligent Automation Live Virtual Conference.

12-Feb-19-2021-02-46-39-76-PM

pillar%20page%20line%201

Session Information:

Automate, Invigorate or Obliterate?

The rapid rise in the fortunes of RPA vendors, means everyone is talking RPA, but does it scale, is it the right automation approach, are you solving the right problems? And where best to start? These are just some of the key questions you need to think about before rushing in. Doing the same things faster and cheaper is rarely a recipe for long term survival.

There is no doubt that recent events have driven most businesses to a crossroads faster. Changes that may have taken years are now occurring in months and weeks. But assuming your business is moving past survival mode, you now need to focus on thrive mode. Making and executing decisions that will ensure you thrive in the world of opportunities that lie ahead.

In this session we will discuss

       - Why Thinking Before Acting Could Save You Time, Money and Heartache.

       - Key Technologies You Need in Order to Apply Automation Smarter.

       - Scaling RPA and Building for Change

       - The Risks You Face When Rushing to Automation Too Quickly.

        - Effective Change is a Do With not a Do To Process.

As a strategy consultant, Mark has worked with users, vendors and consulting companies, and is frequently called upon to advise and just these sorts of questions.

Session Transcript:

I'm introducing you to your next speaker, if I may, And if I could ask Mark to join us on screen. Mark, Hi Mark, how are you.

Good to see.

Mark, some of you may already be familiar with the, he's recognized, also a consultant and coach marks.

Been active in the process management and architecture space for nearly 30 years, doesn't look a day over 25, so it's hard to believe that thought very true.

Mark spent several years as an analyst at Gartner and has worked for many of the significant vendors in the process market, Um, he has written a number of books on process management, including people centric Process Management.

Something of a tools guru.

Mark has what some of his former colleagues at Gartner suggest is unrivaled insights into the types use a nature of today.

And, today, he's turning his attention to process automation, and its place in the broader process management landscape. So with that, I'm going to leave you in the capable hands of Mok, and hand over the presentation.

Mark, over to you.

Thanks, Brian, and good morning, afternoon, evening, everybody.

So for some of you looking at your calendar invites, you might be thinking, Well, this wasn't quite the speed, because we had in mind. So I confessed today I'm playing the part of a late substitute. But, hopefully, substitute, that, still deliver some, some value for those of you looking to get a better handle around the use an application of RPA.

In true style, for those of you that know me, then, I'm going to be coming at it from a somewhat sidewise perspective from some of the things that, uh, so you might have in mind, Or you might hear for some of the other speakers.

Let's start right off the bat with the topic that I thought of this morning when Brian reached out and thought, well, how can I make.

We'll talk about RPA and intelligent automation. But we're so quick to jump on the automation by bandwagon. You know, actually, we're not necessarily question whether the processes is just and automate. Is it a change a bit and automate, or do we need to just obliterate the process and not bother doing any of those things?

So, let me just get the slides working. OK.

mark-1

So, the angles I like to come up to start us off with is to remind ourselves, It's all about the customer.

You know.

So, so, often, when we think about automation, we think about what we can do and how we can push things around me, how much of the automation, that some of you have looked at, is actually pushing work from yourselves to the customer. It looks good, right?

We've driven down costs or, hey, we're doing all the right things, but, you know, keep pushing the work constantly as a customer, and I may decide to simply fire you and go spend my money somewhere else. You know?

Here, we've got examples of some companies that were great, no longer exist. and, of course, even some of those that are existing, so we'll look at the as does the tesco's and essays resume resale is in the UK, under tremendous pressure. The business model has changed, and they've been pretty slow to adapt.

And who knows, whether, in the longer term they will stay around will succeed or whether they will fall into the history of those customers, or companies that just didn't actually think about obliterating, that processes in that business model.

Coming up with something new, they simply focused on how do we do what we already do, put it in a different way.

So, that's one thing I want you to think about when you're looking at that automation silver bullet.

Is it just going to simply slow down your demise, or is it actually going to make a big difference in that you're going to become the disruptor?

The other language that I want users to have in mind, before we even look at some of the technology pieces, S, the customer experience versus operational excellence, I mean, you know, today, we're all talking about RPA, intelligent automation, machine learning, artificial intelligence, et cetera, et cetera. We've got buzz words coming out of areas like never before.

The automation piece is not new. We've been looking at automation system very days. We started in computing.

The challenge we have now is that a lot of the focus is either, we have people focusing on that backend, so that creating this wonderful, smart call, not from an operational excellence perspective, yet, it's still actually pulled by a horse from the customer's point of view. Or we get those that say, Hey, you know, I'm gonna create this wonderful, new, mobile automation experience. The customers are gonna love it.

When we look inside our organizations, It still feels like we're pulling out a wooden caravan.

We've just got this complete disconnect between what people think of as customer experiences and what they think of that as operational excellence.

And somehow, when we're looking at the rounded areas, where and how best to apply automation, we've got to start bringing these worlds together so we can actually pull, pull the modern caravan with a model, you know.

And if you don't believe me, the disconnects between that customer experience technology approach with the backend makes sense.

Then here's a story that I that I plucked out from some press last year where Home Depot Plan to spend 300 million on wonderful, new digital technologies. We're going to enable colon, kleck services for customers, is going to be fantastic.

Yet, within six months, their CEO had to go back to the board to get an extra one point two billion, because they hadn't thought about what it was going to entail to build the new distribution centers, and totally overhaul the order fulfillment process.

So I was looking at one page without looking at the second page, and I worry that for many of you, you may make the same mistakes, with all PII.

It reads quick and easy and cheap to fix, and let's get something in there and get something happening we can worry about tomorrow, tomorrow, except that you never worry about tomorrow. You never get to go back.

When you do get to go back, the problem suddenly becomes much bigger than you thought.

So, before we start automation, we need to think about the processes and the way we think about processes.

So, here's some stuff, and I didn't mention in the introduction and nobody, Brian. So I work with a number of different vendors. So Abby is one of the vendors that I work with.

I work with some others here on borrowed some stuff from them, from the state of the process, mining, and robotic process automation report by hat.

Were 39% of companies think that they've got rigorously THG processes.

Btog CTAAnd yet, 51% of people suggest they deviate from those predefined processes to meet customers' needs.

So think about that for a moment.

Firstly, it suggests that only 61% I've got riggers think they've got rigorous processes.

The people are actually going out. And ultimately, because if we don't have the rigor, then we can't go apply an RPA.

It's gonna, as it says robotic, it's gonna do the same thing over and over again.

But if people are having to deviate to meet customer needs, now we've got a problem.

Because the robot doesn't care about customer needs.

Cut the robots, simply going to do the same thing over and over.

So we've got a bit of a challenge there, in terms of, well, even if we're going to apply RPA, we need consistency in doing that.

And process mining is one of the technologies.

I'm going to talk about, some of the other technologies that we can use because we need a smarter way of doing it.

Because one of the things that Forrester found from the survey last year was that 50% of people suggest they didn't have sufficient end to end visibility.

Across the flows to actually manage and monitor what robots were doing. So they didn't know when robots were doing the wrong things.

So we've gotta have something in place. So let's look at that technology landscape and say, OK, we know that we need to do. Or be able, what all the other technologies that we might want or need to put in place.

So, the plainly, the buzz word game frequently. And, indeed, I'm sure we're going to have plenty of other speakers talking about these topics in the session tonight. We're going, hey, people to them, and connecting, process mining. But we're going to talk about ....

Some will talk about putting process intelligence with RPA.

But not very often, will they talk about the process discovery, which may or may not be as simple as using the process. Mining and toss money, maybe be all the time.

Rarely will people talk about modeling. The different scenarios.

Rarely will they talk about saying, well, actually, we're going to capture this task, whether that's with the task mining lives, comes, as part of the, or whether that's all smiling separate from the ..., or doesn't really matter Most people doing tasks mining.

I literally saying, I want a robot, and it's going to help person X, dou Y Now, I'm going to go and find the best person for doing that. I'm going to record them. There we go, set it up. We program the robot. Away, we go, we rolled it out.

But the trouble is, that may not be the same way that other people do it. We think it is, but we don't know.

So, are you coaxing enough Insights from a not different users?

I'm bringing those together and running a detailed analysis to work out. Is there a common way of doing it?

Because it may, well be, there isn't a common way of doing it, or is it not sufficiently common, but it doesn't actually make a good candidate for RPA.

Other aspects to it.

Of course, if we start modeling the full process, we might find, an, many of you may have already found this.

Good, actually, you've taken on both RPA, but forgotten or the learnings of lean, and you've simply move the bottleneck from one part of your process to another.

So you think you've increased productivity of one particular person. But actually, they're one of many in a chain.

All you've sent me, John, is, moves a cue from one place to the other.

If you don't take the time and look at the overall process, then you won't know whether RPA is the right approach.

And I think that's where, in my mind, at least, the use of intelligent automation, is an interesting concept. Because the intelligence from it comes at a couple of different levels.

Intelligence, at one level, from vendor speak is all about saying, well, it can learn these things, and it can make decisions by itself.

That's great.

But really, the intelligent automation is saying, we think, as an organization, we kinda need to benefit from automation.

We need to apply automation in a far more intelligent way to ensure that we optimize the home.

Email Graphic Virtual Conferences (4)-1And this is an area where, Excuse me, we go beyond the process, mining, text mining. And we look at more of the process intelligence type products, which have grown out of process and sales mining, don't get me wrong.

But they had greater degrees of analysis, they bring greater insights, in particular, process intelligence brings in monitoring.

So, we're gonna put in the role, so when they look to the other automation, we can actually start monitoring so we can see whether we're having the expected improvements.

The expected effects are what, the downtime, but, better still, I wonder how many people are running simulations, because simulation can be A an expensive thing to do, but it doesn't have to be. We can run much lower cost simulations as well.

What would happen if we move this bottleneck from here to there?

And many RPA projects that I've heard about, people wish they'd run the simulation first, because what actually happened was they put it in bolts.

They found that the problem moved, and they weren't sure why they weren't getting the expected gains.

Then, when they run the simulation, they realize that actually, they either apply the bots in the wrong places, or actually providing health as many bots here. Some other automation down here actually created the full flow.

So, we need tools that are going to be able to analyze those processes. Remember, I said at the beginning, don't want to automate?

Do I want to dig right or ..., And it all starts with that process analysis, or whether we're capturing processes from systems with process mining, whether we're recording user's interaction with systems or toss mining.

When we bring that data together, we've got some really rich insights that will enable us to actually look at the process overall.

And, particularly, when we're thinking about it from that customer perspective, we may actually find that there was an awful lot of things that we could just stop doing.

Well, I haven't specifically called out on this particular slide, the issuer's business rules analysis.

But oxygen, when working with organizations and doing very quick process analysis at high level, we discover that actually it's old rules they're getting in the way.

We thought we needed a new process.

We thought we needed to do automation, but actually, what we realized was, we just needed to remove legacy rules and legacy ways of working, and suddenly we can slow down the process and do more effective things.

Now, one of the things that you will hear a lot for, anyone was talking to you about the use of those two, these technologies in the vein of ... and intelligent automation is about being data driven.

I'm not so sure I can't speak for you guys, but I'm tired about being data driven.

I still believe that, sir, gut, feel, and intuition have a significant part to play in business, However, I do like the idea of being Dicer Enable.

So whether it's data that I complex to either prove or disprove my hypothesis, I'm really, really interested.

However, I don't want to be making decisions purely about data because the data tends to be looking in the past. We can look at some predictive stocks in the future. But even predicting the future is still based on the data of the past.

So when markets change, when pandemics hate, when people suddenly find themselves working from home when security becomes, oh, hang on a minute, how will you, data driven is not going to actually impact that. However, I do want to collect the data on risks, et cetera, so be data enabled, I would suggest.

So when I take those and I put them together in a slightly different way.

And I bear in mind that I have in my head, the fact that you don't, we don't want to use a robot or just a couple of robots.

We actually want to scale unbuild for change.

We want to be constantly changing, its most one thing that we've learn over the last 12 months, is that change really is coming out as far faster and fall than ever before.

And, I don't know what the next big change is going to be any more than most other people on this session.

But, I do know that it is going to be big, And we're going to have a lot more stuff to come. So, rather than just focusing over here on the right, on your RPA as another operational system, or, indeed, the, the the journeys?

We actually need to make sure that you've got something in place in whatever toolset works for you.

That addresses your ability to map processes to model processes, to mine them, to run that simulation, to be able to manage the process.

Because if you don't have a management system separate from the robots, then you've got a problem, because robots don't tell you what's going on.

They're just going to get on and do the same things over and over again.

So, you need that management and monitoring layer over the top of whatever issue you're going to use for automation, so that you can properly connect people, processes, and systems. So they're working in a seamless way to deliver the maximum benefit to your.

And in this respect, I suggest that success comes with connections rather than replacing. So we've got some vendors say, well, you know, you don't need that modeling pace. Because I've got a little bit of modeling in mind.

RPA solution, or I've given you enough mining in mile, PH, all.

All you've got the modeling vendors. It says, well, you can use whatever RPI evenly, you want.

No, actually, I want to know that I'm creating an ecosystem that can work and place together, and is perhaps broader than the topic of, of RPA and intelligent automation today.

Screenshot (4)And it applies to many, many markets.

But I think a trend that I would urge many of you to keep looking at, and monitoring. I'm seeing what's going on and thanked me about when you choose vendors in whatever markets you choose.

It's just think about the concept of ecosystems.

I think we're moving, fostering foster towards a world of loosely coupled ecosystem centric tools, rather than the vertical integration, which he has no a pretty unusual thing for someone like myself to say, because I spent a lot of my career taking disconnected to disparate tools within veterans, isn't bringing them together in the in the switch scenarios. So whether that's a lot of mega, whether symbolized popkin or whether it's a large, lots of ....

But I think we're coming to the end of that as a general rule.

A couple of exceptions.

I mean, I'd say with some of the technologies principally around me, task mining, process mining, I don't see a long term future for those as a standalone malki.

I think that it will become feature or capability that we expect in other vertical stacks.

So, think about how well, these tools can plug together into an ecosystem, play, don't get, um, Overlie bought in to a single vendor saying, yeah. Yeah. Well, we do that, because, you know, if I just take the toss mining as an example.

Um, there are very few RPA vendors that have tossed mining that will deal with multiple tasks, long running processes, record it against hundreds of different workers, all brought together for a more cheap mortgage of analysis, because it's not what they do.

They've already very focused on remote desktop recording, recorded user, put it in the bulk records to use it, put it in the bulk.

And that's in place for that desktop recording. And I think that, you know what, I would call desktop automation.

But I think, as many of you on the recession will have seen for yourselves, this is an area that's right for people at Microsoft, with the work that I've been doing in this area.

And we should expect the Googles and such like to, to cover that personal productivity, which I think is the really big growth area here, is around personal productivity.

So.

A couple of graphs I've used now for many, many years.

So, let's take a look at, you know, our traditional organization. We're sitting there. And basically, we're just doing things.

When we put in the RPA oxygen, we're focusing on the efficiency axis. Shall we move into that doing things, right? And that's good, I mean, that can be really, really useful.

But that just means that we're doing the same thing, but cheaper.

It doesn't actually mean that we're going to be more successful in the long run.

Now, interestingly enough, if we did less automation but we focused more on doing the right sales, with or without automation, in other words, be more effective.

Actually, we're likely, to be more successful, We're going to be more successful, principally because passed off. They're going to be happier.

Because we're making things right, then, we're enabling them to serve customers, et cetera, et cetera.

Now, of course, where we want to be doing is to make sure that we're doing the right things right, and get up into the top right hand corner.

But I wonder how many RPA initiatives, I'm really focused on doing the right things right. Not just looking at efficiency, but actually questioning whether what we're doing is effective, as well as being efficient.

And another way of looking at that effectiveness.

Efficiency, A's, OK.

So we want to get out there and thrive, Because if we just chasing the efficiency, then we're going to die slowly.

If we chase the effectiveness, even if we're not as efficient, we will survive, and by the way, the pop quiz, what's wrong with this picture.

So this picture has of course the die quickly and die slowly transposed.

The reason I usually find it amusing to use is, I pull this one off the Web.

It's a graphic that I created many, many years ago, and it's interesting to know when people borrow your work, because they also borrow your mistakes. So I wrongly labeled these boxes in the graphic that you use about 10 years ago, and it's funny that everyone themselves ..., copied it with the same mistake.

mark-1So reducing pain drives efficiency, but it's effectively striving, that great service.

So, I want you guys to be delivering great experiences to your customers, great experiences to your employees, and great experiences, geo stakeholders.

Because I know that if you focus on doing those things, you're going to thrive.

I'm not sure that survival is a good place to be, and there are a lot of people that, of discovery over the last 12 months.

Survival was OK.

An assignment crisis, but to actually move on beyond that, we need to change.

So I suggest that you think less about applying technologies for efficiency more about for effectiveness.

So whether we like it or not, whether we're going to do it, we're going to wind up with our robots.

But here's the thing.

For any of you in large organizations, I wonder just how many robots you might actually be hiring.

Because I don't think you're going to have all of your RPA and all your AI from a single vendor.

You're going to have different parts, too.

Different departments, different divisions.

So you rush off, and you decide that this is the vendor I want. You go in, and you tell them.

Good news.

You're hired.

Now, that's great.

You brought the robot on board. You've decided you're going to go to the effectiveness. You've got the robot on board.

Where do you go? next?

So this is myself. So, yeah, where do you go next?

Because what if you think about it from using a robotic workforce?

Well, it fits my workforce.

We sometimes use the buyer to retire scenario.

They said, Well, actually, if I was recruiting, I need to identify what skills are required.

So before I bring all my robots, I need to work out.

What skills do I want? Well, that's the process analysis and design. Which problems do I want to solve?

So when we think about it as HR, I need to do that, but I also need to be thinking about employee performance.

I run appraisals every year.

So my start off or even more frequently, well, what are you doing for robots? Did you have a performance assessment for robots? Did you work out what the equivalent was?

If you don't have monitoring, how do you plan are moving these things through?

So you need to have an appraisal system in place for your robots.

So, if you think about it, as an employee, you might be now running with 360 degree type feedback.

So, customers, partners, and all other proceso.

Where's your 360 degree for your feedback for your robot?

Email Graphic Virtual Conferences (4)-1Because just because the IT guy says, hey, it's working, exactly, as we said, doesn't mean to say that it's actually helping the HR manager in the way that they want it.

All the partners, all the customers, so keep asking the questions and keep changing it, and you have to put the systems in place because of course, your robot is a pretty passive participant in your review process because they have really shows that they're going to be in the right place.

Now I know that one of the later chalks is going to: Bleed persistence is going to talk a little bit about replacing robots, well, let's put that replacing in context for a moment.

Every robot that you put in place today, in my opinion, is likely to be replaced within 18 months to 24 months.

Technology is moving so fast and different from, you know, using your i-phone or whatever. Then moving on, the technology is moving so rapidly.

So, what are you doing for retirement planning?

How?

So, you're going to handle the retirement planning when the robot goes away.

How do you either scale up the new robot, you know, the new kid on the block, you're losing your millennials, getting the generation wise onboard.

How do you transfer those skills? Which skills needs to be transferred?

Which work needs to be changed.

So, these types of questions that you need to have in mind, So, even when you do decide to start adopting these new automation technologies, you need to know, look, you have the job description.

So, you have a performance system in place to measure against that.

And that you have plans in place for when the robot becomes too old, and it's time to send them off to the beach, too.

Go, drink, whatever it is, that they're going to be, drinking three and ..., whatever it is that gets them going.

So, think about those things, and think about what it is that you need to have in place to make sure you're in a good place.

So, moving on, it's something, I mean, you know, me know, this is something I'm passionate about, really, is that changes, it, is a do with not due to the process.

We spend too much time doing these things to people, Putting, I'm here from head office, We're here to help, and I've got this new robot that's going to take over a chunk of your work.

Well, when it is not in the chunk of what I think is causing the problem, what's going to happen when it takes over this chunk? What does it mean to me? How's it going to affect me?

Why don't I just get your vote? How do you want to do it?

And I think this is why the personal robot is possibly the way of the future.

I believe, is that we're going to move from corporate, putting in bots for specific tasks to a world where what we may actually do is to say, hey, tease your bot.

Here's how your bot can be programmed.

And now, away you go.

Here's ways that we can help you program, your robot, to do what you need to do, to help improve the way that you work, to deliver what you need. And quite frankly, for many people in this world to actually get a life domain account.

Say, how many of you on the call, but I wonder how many of you now are actually working more hours? Nevermind. Juggling the kid schooling and everything else, but are actually working longer hours because someone says, well, you've got nothing else to do, so you may do some work or when you say that commute time. So we'll just bring the commute time into your daily working time.

It's an interesting concept.

So, when we do bring in those robots, assuming that we're doing it, then I go back to, it's no point in bringing in the robots or other.

automation, from an implementation perspective, is not going to be adopted, because creation without adoption is just a waste.

Process automation needs to serve, everyone has these qualities from a typo, not just the center of excellence. How does it help me? Can I compare my performance personally with the rest of my chain, or other change doing similar work?

Is there a reason, know, as a divisional managers and reason for various geographies, skill levels, is it local working practices?

Does the way that my people work, compare with what I thought they were going to be doing? How do I get that comparison?

And, as I mentioned earlier, is that data is to support or disprove my analysis on hypothesis.

And then, as I've already mentioned, now, where do we focus on those continuous improvement efforts?

Because one of the challenges, or see, a world, where we increasingly rely on bots, is, how do we deal with 21st century continuous improvement, because we were all having to deal with quite a continuous improvement, process monitoring, and process monitor.

Giving you the ability to do more of that kind of analysis than we've ever had before, in ways that are less intrusive, and do not involve quite so many people in quite so many meetings. They don't replace them.

Screenshot (4)I'm looking at that small device.

So we have to put it in an environment, where we can still be reminding ourselves, we want change.

We want to be more effective, we want to be more efficient.

And we want to keep changing as we need to.

one of the things I'm finding interesting, and I'll just share with you guys, and you may have seen it in other markets, is that I think that democratization is the fastest, emerging differentiator in the world.

So, many of you will know that I spent just, over three years working with ... and the management team at ....

You will have seen the news recently of their acquisition, bias a pace. So, well done, Kudos to the guys that Greg Jail.

You will also have seen that I've worked in the AI space with the next.

So, those are companies I've had direct experience with, but if we also look at other areas, look at places like Slack, look at things like consumables.

We'll start to see, is, that's a trend of success where successful companies are focused on democratizing. So taking something away from a core group of people.

So if you like the RPA Coe eight, saying that she is not about ....

It's about everybody else getting involved.

How do we democratize it so everyone can get involved in improving their own work and their own way of doing it? Yes, you know, like an orchestra would need to be conducting to make sure the, the tune is being played correctly.

But one of the things that you might want to start looking at when you look at some of the other technologies and you look at the way you apply them in your organization, is is the technology enabling and supporting democratization?

Are you supporting democratization or are you still trying to keep a handle on things?

I'm risking going back and looking at no history of the the Mainframe Computing versus the PC scenario where you risked being rolled over by others outside of your co a, or outside of the ...

group who are going to start doing these things for themselves.

So you can either become conductor of the orchestra, and enabling all the musicians to to play.

Or you can stay in that control center and find yourself being marginalized over time. So just something to just think about.

Now, yeah, this is an image, which apologies if anyone finds disturbing in any way.

But it's an image that really, for me, sums up what we should be looking at.

When we're looking at this automation, we need to be helping our people do things they can't already do, to enable them to the things that they can no longer do, or things that we were never able to do.

It's about enabling, and supporting, and helping people.

This guy I'm sure, is moles and mildly appreciative of what robotic automation brings to him.

But when you look at the way that so many companies are applying RPA and IA today, just doing the same things, you know, doing the wrong things faster and cheaper than ever before.

So, please think about how you can help people do things that they can't already do. That's going to increase your productivity, that's why your top line growth is going to come.

And for those of you that think, well, hang on a minute, why did you keep going on about people, this especially more about RPA and automation, and it keeps going? Well, you know, you can ignore them at your peril.

So here I take a quote from Guide Spock, one point three trillion dollars into transformation initiatives, we're 70%, was on wastage on firewall programs $900 billion.

And the biggest reason, worse, they weren't effectively communicating the Goal, Strategy, Compass, Outlook with their employees.

And I would go on to say, and involving the employee's at the lowest practical level, enabling, facilitating, and leveraging that change.

So when we go through, with our RPA II, let's not make the same mistake the people deal with, often with ERP, with early days of BPM, asking you to do some workflow and other mainframe systems, because otherwise history is just going to keep the pacing itself.

Having said that.

We do need to be focused on the future.

This might seem a little counter-intuitive I've been talking about doing. Process mining, process analysis. Most of these things are of the future.

And I believe that you do need to look at the future the past, but only in the context and its relevance to the future.

Because we can spend ever analyzing the past.

But you need to design the future.

And you don't need a current state model to create the future state model.

But you do need a future state model if you wish to have a look at which parts of the current state all relevant or irrelevant, which parts will be changing and what the context of the change needs to be.

So I've got a couple of parting thoughts too.

To finish off with.

So a question for you.

So my question to you a little bit rhetorical, obviously, because we're not together in the physical world, is, what do you do when the robots go on strike?

Now, you may think, well, I'm not stupid. The robots don't go on strike.

Well, hypothetically, they do.

They either stop working because there's a software problem. They might stop working. Because the electricity is pulled out.

Well, there are a couple of examples.

Now, particularly in the financial sector, of organizations losing, let's just call it tens of millions, because hundreds of millions or millions can be hard to get our heads around, because when the robots stopped working for real, they couldn't bring in customer money.

Because nobody knew how you're transacting from a manual perspective.

The job descriptions were not written down.

The only people that knew how the robot did it was the robot, and it wasn't telling.

So, just be careful.

If you choose to ignore, put to one side.

My words of caution around having the job description or decoupling those job descriptions and those process maps and models, from the robot itself, you chew could be held to ransom by non working non functioning robo, ... no longer know how to do what the robot was doing.

And for those in the UK, or familiar with the UK now, because obviously that's striking more and more international deals. I think Ocado must be one of the most amazing stories of applying robotic technology, right?

Email Graphic Virtual Conferences (4)-1They're totally automated warehousing.

They're more of a technology company now than the grocery company.

But as the image already flips over to a couple of years ago, when they had a great big fire, they lost, and I'm just going to look up here, because I made some notes, they had a 10% drop in their share price the following morning.

They subsequently reported off two fires.

... losses are grown from something like 100 million to 200 million.

They've done some better now.

one of the problems was, going back to this image, when the fire started, nobody could smell the smoke.

So, when you put in your robotic solutions or around your business, please remember to ask yourself the question.

one, We've put in the automation replaced people, who's gonna smell the smoke?

So I've got no idea what questions have been coming in, so hopefully some have but I know that. Brian has been chomping at the bit. I've got some other resources, which I've taken from Abby.

So um, if people want to reach out, if you're interested. There's a couple of really nice white papers around process intelligence for RPA.

That's a really good impact of Kobi surveys that they did of employees releasing code with an automation together. So for anyone who's looking at how those things play together, then please feel free to reach out to me.

But then the last one that I also highlights from that survey actually, which is something that I don't think anyone else is touching on at the moment in the conference, is the connectivity between high D P.

Intelligent document processing and RPA.

Because I know from talking to some of the guys that I work with Abby, it's not an area that I'm especially knowledgeable, but actually, content driven processes is one of the biggest areas for automation.

And indeed, many of the leading RPA vendors do work with, with Abby for that IDP. So when you're looking at different areas, than content driven processes, is a really big and ripe area for the application of these types of technologies. So I'm going to just now stop sharing.

And invite Brian too.

Come back and join us.

And when he unmute, she'll be even better, It's good for him to do that, not me.

Yeah, you're absolutely right. I redraw the software, the embarrassment than yourself, Mark. That fantastic presentation is always hugely insightful, and so with a few minutes we have remaining, let's jump straight into the questions.

So, Martin asks, also, love the presentation, by the way, um, could you provide more details?

Why, on why process discovery is different from process mining?

I suspect we could go on for this for quite some time, but could you give us a brief overview why that is, in your opinion?

Yeah. So, it's a great question, and it's pretty nuanced.

So, process, mining, process discovery, from the process mining vendors perspective, they say it's one and the same thing, but remember, I'm old school and I resent the process mining process intelligence community, telling me that I no longer need workshops and post it notes. And I can do it all with process modeling.

Actually call. I can shoot any of them down in flames. So this needs to be a mixture, so I separate the two. So some discovery can be done through process mining. That is true.

But, you know, that process may span multiple systems which you may not realize until you start doing some manual work. So I tend to separate them out.

So some of that analysis and discovery, I still think is better done through workshopping through meetings and other forms of, Let's call it people interactions. Because I can't say physical anymore, because we can't do those at the moment, but one day, we will know whether a white voting.

So I just grohl due to be separate, so that we don't just assume just applying process mining is really discovering everything.

And your video is freezing burn.

Learn, all we're not hearing, or the video is freezing, occasionally, Brian, and we're not hearing you if you're offering up another question.

Mark, apologies. I live in a small village, which is probably providing me with somewhat chocolate box communication issues that I run to run into occasionally. So thank you for answering that one.

Martin has a question. Again, extra presentation and great insights. Could you give us some business case examples where I was scaled rights by Roy actually means effectively doing the right things that you said? Are there any out, any case studies out there, which we can draw on as we move forward?

Yeah.

There are some case studies, I've got, I apologize, mostly, I've got no one jumping into my head.

Interestingly enough, so if I were researching it and say, Gee, I wish I had the answer to this question right at my fingertips and you should go do some checking. I'll share with you Marcy, where I would go and search.

So I would ignore, in my first month, I would ignore searching the RPA vendee Case Studies.

I'd be looking at the case Studies from the process mining, or the process modeling type vendors, and looking at their case studies, because they have nothing to gain from selling lots of bots so so they can demonstrate how certain companies were more successful.

I mean, I've certainly worked with a couple of Telco and utility examples.

But unfortunately, why you don't want to be public and what it's done.

But they they've done it very, very effectively.

But yeah, what I would say, Martinis, I would be looking at the modeling and mining vendor websites.

I'm looking for case studies from their websites, where they have nothing to gain by promoting RPA because they don't have an RPA to sell it.

I mean, you know, if I make one exception, I would say that, from my experience, Blue Prism, I know work really well with a number of different vendors so I know they work with Abby. I know they weren't the scenario.

So they've probably got some pretty interesting stuff in terms of that ecosystem play, to get a greater level of result.

Fantastic, Thank you for that.

As a final one.

It would seem that robots need to have a a human backup ready to support customers.

I'm addressing the problems that robots can't really deal with.

That seems to be something that you would broadly agree with, already sort of nuances around that, or is that always going to be the case?

Well, think about, I mean the easiest way, I always think for all of us to think about this is to look at the automation in contact centers.

And think how frustrating it is when you press one to do this.

Press two to do this process. I want to speak to somebody, I don't have one of your standard queries and of course, the contact center advantage. Hey, it's much easier because now you just need to speak your query. We make it much easier for, OK, I want to close my account.

I'm sorry, that's not one of the options, and it keeps got I So now, they've got so clever.

They can get it to answer everything that they wanna walls, that nothing that we want to answer and we can no longer just hit zero to skip all the menus and get to a human being. Actually, these days, how many of those contact centers have got so small, that when we hit the wrong button, we'll just say, I'm sorry. Hang up on this.

Is that well, What kind of services that?

So, all I would say is, think about the way you're interacting with the suppliers you deal with.

I'd say, well, actually, we're just about to do the same thing, enforcing our workers through that robotic system.

That actually, we're forcing them to be human robots as opposed to having that flexibility. So, you gotta be really, really careful and ask yourself the question.

Yeah, the covert shop, I think, what's fascinating, is that the level of interest amongst the workforce, to have a robot help, is working really high.

But at the same time, those with robots say that they are the values they put on them is really, really low.

So, how do you, how do you get that mismatch? Well, the mismatch is, somebody else decided what they thought the robot should do for you.

Nobody actually asked you, which is the bits that are causing you the most pain, which is the work we'd like to stop doing, which would you like to spend more time doing?

And here's how you can enable the robot to do that, right? Because it may be that what someone thinks it's frustrating, someone else loves doing.

Fantastic. Mark, once again, thank you for joining us at relatively short notice, a fantastic substitute. And we look forward to hearing more from you as the series develops. If anybody wants to catch up with Mark afterwards, please do let us know. And I'm sure you'll be able to link in with him as well.

The next session starts promptly at mid-day. So I do look forward to having you join us where we will be joined by ... com, the President of Digital Services and Solutions, the Institute of Robotic Process Automation, and Artificial Intelligence. I'm sure that's going to be another really dynamic session. So, see you at the top of the hour, and look forward to catching up and take care. Bye-bye.

pillar%20page%20line%201

About the Author

more (18)-1Mark McGregor,
Author, Performance & Business Coach.

A former Research Director at leading IT industry analysis firm Gartner, Mark has an extensive background in enterprise architecture, business process management and change management, having held executive positions with a number of technology companies.

Mark has authored or co-authored four books on business and process management, including “Thrive! How to Succeed in the Age of the Customer” and “In Search of BPM Excellence” and  “People Centric Process Management.  Widely respected for his knowledge and views on business change, he is the creator of “Next Practice” and has variously been described as a ”BPM Guru”, a “Thought Leader” and a “Master of Mindset”. 

Mark is passionate about the people aspects of change, he has spent much of the last ten years travelling the world, learning, teaching and researching the cultural aspects of change and how executives perceive business and process improvement In this capacity he has literally taught hundreds of people and been fortunate to interview and interact with many CEO’s .

pillar%20page%20line%201


The Business Transformation & Operational Excellence Industry Awards

The Largest Leadership-Level Business Transformation & Operational Excellence Event

opex_assembly

business_assembly

Proqis Digital Virtual Conference Series

View our schedule of industry leading free to attend virtual conferences. Each a premier gathering of industry thought leaders and experts sharing key solutions to current challenges.

Download the most comprehensive OpEx Resport in the Industry

The Business Transformation & Operational Excellence Industry Awards Video Presentation

Proqis Events Schedule

Proqis Digital

Welcome to BTOES Insights, the content portal for Business Transformation & Operational Excellence opinions, reports & news.

Submit an Article

BTOES UNIVERSAL GRAPHIC - NO DATE.webp?width=1200&name=BTOES UNIVERSAL GRAPHIC - NO DATE
ACCESS 50 VIDEO PRESENTATIONS
Access all 75 Award Finalist Entires
RESEARCH REPORT 2021/2022
BTOES AWARD - NO DATE
BTOES UNIVERSAL GRAPHIC - NO DATE
Subscribe to Business Transformation & Operational Excellence Insights Now
btoes19.png
png
ATTENDEE - Proqis Digital Event Graphics-2
ATTENDEE - Proqis Digital Event Graphics (2)-1
ATTENDEE - Proqis Digital Event Graphics (1)-1
png

Featured Content

  • Best Achievement of Operational Excellence in Technology & Communications: IBM
  • Best Achievement of Operational Excellence in Oil & Gas, Power & Utilities: Black & Veatch
  • Best Achievement in Cultural Transformation to deliver a high performing Operational Excellence culture: NextEra Energy
   
Operational Excellence Frameworks and Learning Resources, Customer Experience, Digital Transformation and more introductions
  • Intelligent BPM Systems: Impact & Opportunity
  • Surviving_the_IT_Talent_deficit.png
  • Six Sigma's Best Kept Secret: Motorola & The Malcolm Baldrige Awards
  • The Value-Switch for Digitalization Initiatives: Business Process Management
  • Process of Process Management: Strategy Execution in a Digital World

Popular Tags

Speaker Presentation Operational Excellence Business Transformation Business Improvement Insights Article Continuous Improvement Process Management Business Excellence process excellence Process Optimization Process Improvement Award Finalist Case Study Digital Transformation Leadership Change Management Lean Enterprise Excellence Premium Organizational Excellence Lean Enterprise Lean Six Sigma Execution Excellence Capability Excellence Enterprise Architecture New Technologies Changing & Improving Company Culture Agile end-to-end Business Transformation Execution & Sustaining OpEx Projects Culture Transformation Leadership Understanding & Buy-In Lack of/Need for Resources Adapting to Business Trends Changing Customer Demands Failure to Innovate Integrating CI Methodologies Lack of/Need for Skilled Workers Lack of/Need for Support from Employees Maintaining key Priorities Relationships Between Departments BTOES18 RPA & Intelligent Automation Live Process Mining BTOES From Home Cultural Transformation Financial Services Customer Experience Excellence Process Automation Technology Healthcare iBPM Healthcare and Medical Devices Webinar Culture Customer Experience Innovation BTOES Video Presentations Exclusive BTOES HEALTH Strategy Execution Business Challenges Digital Process Automation Report Industry Digital Workplace Transformation Manufacturing Supply Chain Planning Robotic Process Automation (RPA) BPM Automation IT Infrastructure & Cloud Strategies Artificial Intelligence Business Process Management innovation execution AI Lean Manufacturing Oil & Gas Robotic Process Automation IT value creation Agility Business Speaker Article Systems Engineering RPAs Insurance Process Design Digital Speaker's Interview data management Intelligent Automation digital operations Six Sigma Awards thought leaders BTOES Presentation Slides Transformation Cloud Machine Learning Data Analytics Digital Transformation Workplace Banking and Capital Markets Data Finance Professional Services Education IT Infrastructure IT Infrastructure & Cloud Strategies Live Blockchain Interview Solving Cash Flow with AI BTOES White Paper investment banking Analytics Insight BTOES19 Consumer Products & Retail Enterprise Agile Planning Government Operational Excellence Model Project Management Algorithm Automotive and Transportation Banking Business Environment Digital Bank Enterprise architecture as an enabler Hybrid Work Model Primary Measure of succes Relationship Management Sales business expansion revenue growth Adobe Sign Agile Transformation CoE Delivery solution E-Signatures Electricity Global Technology HealthcareTechnologies Innovation in Healthcare Reduce your RPA TCO Transportation Accounts Receivable (AR) Big Data Technology CORE Cloud Technology Cognitive learning Days Sales Outstanding (DSO) Logistics Services Operational Excellence Example Risk Management business process automation transformation journey Covid-19 Data Entry Digital Experience Digital Network Digital Network Assistant (DNA) Digitization Drinks Effective Change Leaders HR Internet Media NPS Net Promoter Score Program Management Portal (PgMP) Sustainability TechXLive The Document is Dead The New Era of Automation Automated Money Movement Banking & Financial Services Biopharmaceutical Blue Room Effect Building Your Future Workforce in Insurance Business Process Governance Capital Market Creative Passion Digital Transformation Workplace Live Digital Workforce Digitalization ERP Transformation Finance Global Operations (FGO) Financial Services Software Frameworks Hoshin Planning Human Capital Lean Culture Natural Gas Infrastructure Natural Language Processing Organizational Change Pharmaceutical Pharmaceuticals & Life Sciences Project manager Supply Chain Management Sustainable Growth The Fully Automated Contact Center Transformation Initiatives Workplace Analytics eForms eSignatures 3D Thinking BEAM BFARM BTOES17 Big Data Processing Business Analytics Business Growth Centralized Performance Monitoring System Communication Creativity Digital Technologies Digital Technology Educational Psychologist Energy Management Health Insurance Health Maintenance Organizations Hospitality & Construction Human Centered Design Integrated Decision Approach Integrated Decision Making Intelligent Document Processing Kaizen Medicare Moodset for Excellence Natural Language Processing (NLP) Offering Managers Oil and Gas Optical Character Recognition (OCR) Pharmaceuticals and Life Sciences Photographing Price and Routing Tracking (PART) Process Design Document (PDD) Product Identifier Descriptions (PIDs) Python Quote to Cash (Q2C) Resilience SAP Sales Quota Team Work Telecommunications Text Mining Visually Displayed Work Culture master text analytics virtual resource management