Six Steps to Get Buy-In for RPA in Your Business

Like most companies today, your organization is likely facing increasing demands to do more with less. Responding to the pressures of the business, you have examined robotic process automation (RPA) as a potential solution for handing off repetitive, manual, and time-consuming tasks. Based on your research, you know that RPA uses software robots to communicate with business systems and applications, leveraging a scalable, digital workforce to automate tasks and enable greater organizational performance and efficiency.

You have also discovered the use of RPA has grown significantly, especially within the current environment, across industries and functions—from financial services and insurance to human resources, call centers, and healthcare. In fact, a report by Deloitte indicates that up to 50 percent of the tasks performed by employees are considered mundane, administrative, and labor intensive, so RPA technology will replace up to 20 percent of repetitive duties by 2025—freeing up the workforce to focus on more strategic jobs. This shift indicates that RPA is here to stay.

What you need now is a way to prove that RPA software would provide value to your organization. Simply, you need to get leadership buy-in and show the ROI that would result from investing in an RPA solution. So where do you start? Let’s take a look at six ways you can get buy-in for RPA in your business.

1) Start by Understanding What RPA ROI Means

Identifying what a return on investment looks like for RPA software is critical to creating an effective roadmap for leadership buy-in, organizational adoption, implementation, and support. That’s why you need to first learn what it takes to create the right metrics for your organization and discover how ROI metrics play a role at every stage of your process. Find out how to create the right metrics for your organization from the Understanding RPA ROI Guide. This step-by-step guide will help you work through financial justifications for RPA, including implementation and recurring costs, and enable you to develop an ROI-centric automation roadmap. 

2) Identify Specific Processes You Want to Automate

When you plan your RPA journey, you want to look for the highest-volume processes that would have the biggest impact on your bottom line. These are not limited to one department, so make sure you investigate automation opportunities spanning your entire enterprise. Sometimes it’s best to start small and determine the best place for automating processes in your organization, then scale later.

Consider processes like report generation and distribution, employee onboarding, claims processing or other essential use cases. Ultimately, your organization’s RPA journey is up to you. But knowing and understanding the transformative role that automation has played and will continue to play in the future—and finding a robust RPA solution that grows with you—is vital for how you plan to move forward.

3) Determine Your RPA Budget

As you consider RPA solutions for your organization, it’s important to make sure you have a budget in mind so you can identify the RPA technology that will give you the biggest bang for your buck. It will also enable you to realize value faster and guarantee a successful implementation. Begin by asking yourself these four key questions as you determine your budget and decide which solution will provide the most value.

4) Do Your Homework When Analyzing RPA Solutions

The next step for gaining buy-in is to analyze RPA solutions in the market. It’s important to have all the facts and fully research the solutions that will best fit your budget and your needs. Ensure you have taken time to gather reliable information that will empower you to make a decision to pursue digital transformation through RPA in your business. Check out the RPA Buyer’s Guide that provides a summary of RPA trends, benefits, and automation options, poses critical questions that you should ask as you research your options, and shows you how to get the most out of an RPA software trial.

5) Build Your Automation Strategy

The key to gaining a competitive edge through automation is finding software that meets your unique current needs and scales to your future vision with minimal additional cost beyond your initial investment. Once you’ve shortlisted RPA solutions, then learn how to build an automation strategy for your organization that delivers real RPA ROI. Take advantage of our exclusive Robotic Process Automation Toolkit that offers actionable insights, tools, and resources—right at your fingertips—to optimize RPA in your organization, including a weighted matrix to prioritize automation opportunities, best practices guide to pinpoint which automation method to use, and an ROI calculator to identify and calculate your RPA ROI.

6) Pilot a Use Case, Then Measure Results

Trying an RPA solution before you go all-in not only lets you test out RPA, but also helps you find the right solution for your unique organizational needs and get comfortable with the software. Look for vendors that can offer end-to-end process support, while also having the capabilities to become fully operational quickly. Also, identify which factors to plan for when evaluating the ROI of RPA software in our Maximizing RPA ROI Guide.

Because you have defined ROI metrics that determine success, you should also be able to easily measure the results of your pilot use case. Examine how the automated process went, document what went well, and what you think could have been improved. Then compare the costs of implementation, deployment, and maintenance against how much time is saved, how much accuracy improved, and how little human intervention is required. Show the effects of the status quo versus the potential RPA solution to reveal the results of your analysis. Doing this will enable you to determine if you want to move forward to gain approval for investing fully in the RPA solution.

It's Time to Build Your Case

With all the pressures of the business today, it’s up to you to take the first step toward gaining buy-in for an automation solution that increases efficiency, reduces errors, and decreases the manual burden on employees. Make sure you invest the time to ensure you can show the ROI of RPA even before you make the financial investment.