The reason for this is rather simple: scaling is necessary for leveraging the full-fledged benefits of automation. In order to scale your RPA deployment, you need to ensure coherent usage of “smart automation” platform capabilities, like process orchestration, cognitive capture, intelligent optical character recognition, etc.

This opens the door to end-to-end intelligent automation, which is applicable of more complex processes then the basic, rule-based ones.

Intelligent automation strategies for scaling your RPA deployment

In what follows, we will list some strategies which are meant to help you scale your RPA deployment to enterprise level, thus enhancing the likelihood that you do make the most out of the automation journey.

1. Support the development of a transformational mindset with respect to RPA across your company

Make sure that the automation project has the requisite, enterprise-wide support from the people who work for your company. Establishing a Centre of Excellence (CoE) is the focal means to this end because, on the one hand, it centralises governance and decision making, and consequently it can provide the enterprise-wide buy-in that you need. The CoE enables a coherent, tactical journey towards at-scale deployment of intelligent automation.

Additionally, the Centre can offer a collaborative platform for the IT and business departments of your company to work together towards shared goals. As we discussed in an article about scaling enterprise RPA, you should keep in mind that longer term scaling makes IT involvement even more necessary, to ensure technical flexibility as well as cyber security along the way.

The CoE is also a helpful tool for increasing the effectiveness of your compliance programs and security standards. Last but certainly not least, a CoE helps to build and maintain consensus regarding future directions for the automation journey.

Consider, for instance, the effect of presenting successful demonstrations of proofs of concepts to the employees. In a nutshell, the CoE ensures contagious enthusiasm with respect to the development of digital transformation in your company.

2. Make automation the default, preferred solution for repetitive jobs

The essence of this recommended strategy is setting the objective to reach the “a robot for every person” stage of RPA utilization in your organisation. Once you know what you’re aiming for, you need to build an action plan for getting there. Education can be considered the main route towards goal attainment.

To begin with, you should train your employees to spot the marginal processes in their everyday work which are most susceptible to automation, and even to set up attended robots with no help required from the IT unit. Throughout the training process, you should keep your eyes open looking for those who seem more technologically inclined, and assign them the more complex tasks.

3. Develop an outcome-centered understanding of business success, as it is customary for ‘automation first’ businesses

An outcome-centered perspective from within a company implementing intelligent automation relieves employees from the burdensome question of how to fulfill their tasks, since they know that can rely on software robots to do this faster and more accurately. The plan towards your envisaged results is twofold.

Firstly, your actions should be governed by a slogan like ‘If it can be automated, it should be automated’. It amounts to diagnosing inefficiencies in the workflow, and automating those processes. At this stage, you might benefit from external partnerships whenever the inefficient processes are overly complex.

In the second phase, you can take for granted the fact that automation has become a default solution. The employees whom you have previously trained, can be trusted to identify automation-prone processes and initiate the automation procedures.