Do you have too many manual processes, despite the legacy & modern landscape of core tech platforms, portals, Apps, BOTs, Micro-services...?
Have you ever consciously looked at your processes - be it as simple as responding to customer enquiries; receiving of information/documentation (inward); communication exchange between people/functions/technology to the so called complex financial reconciliations - from the context of time, effort & value?? Did you observe patterns of repetitiveness? Did you ever question "Why should we, humans - the most evolved species of all - spend a lot of time & effort, in mundane tasks?".
Wasn't it one of the questions that Henry Ford tried to address especially around "decreasing employee hours & reducing the time to build", in a different context, though??
May be, it's time to turn your attention to Robotic Process Automation!
It's a known fact that Insurance Industry is awash with processes - some of them dated, redundant & repetitive.... Most of us turn a blind eye, to these areas, for improvement - these are anyways getting accomplished ... There are so many important areas needing my attention plus those temptations & prejudices in & around...
Can we please tune in? For our own interest & benefit? To those areas where there is repetition, manual work, and high volume???
We know - it's a humongous task to look at the entire value chain, for these candidates. Precisely, for this reason, most of the companies turn a blind eye to these areas of improvement. However, to be ahead of the continuously evolving dynamics & pandemics, we do think, we no longer can afford to continue with Old Ways of Managing these repetitive, labor intensive and high-volume processes.
At the cost of repetition, we say, those processes that are repetitive, labor intensive and high volume (irrespective of where) are ideal candidates for Automation. We can call this as Non-Core & Non-Value Work, in human context, ready to be delegated to ROBOTS for interventional automation (don't get us wrong - ROBOTS & their contribution is universal and goes way beyond repetitive manual processes).
As always, our starting point is not to jump start with IT, but to prepare for pulling that IT in, by turning inward & planning for right readiness. And here is our proposed approach.
A process is the one that has a logical beginning and conclusion (Dictionary Definition: A series of actions or steps taken to achieve a particular purpose)
- Start with inventorying your processes (ideal start is to pick up one function E2E)
- Evaluate each of the processes, for the way they are done & conclude
- If standardized, of value & automated - Continue as is
- If not, re-engineer first
- If redundant - remove
- If not standardized & of value - standardize thru' re-engineering
- Categorize re-engineered candidates - High/Medium/Low across dimensions of repetition, labour-intense and high volume
- Determine the effort for automation vs. value for the re-engineered lot
- Prioritize based on value and then plan for implementation
- Establish criteria for measurement of value from process automation
Now you are ready for ROBOTIC PROCESS AUTOMATION - the one where you can pull Technology into the Process Design right!
Our approach, be it RPA or any other automation is always around(It always worked, and it always works - an empirical truth)
- Understand what and why of performance as a System
- Improve the design without touching IT (you can turn it off or you can treat it as a constraint)
- Pull IT into the New Design
What's the best way to go ahead with RPA Implementation? Should we go ahead with the Leading Vendors (Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism, UI Path etc....) in the market or go with lesser-known ones/newbies, or use open-source tools to develop internally etc.? Each option has its pros & cons. This is a topic by itself and for another day!
For now, it's all about internal tuning. Good idea to empower internal teams to focus on the way they work now & for better ways to do that same work & beyond. Transformations are easy with empowered teams.
Take time to do and get IT right - If you say you have limited time, you will also have limited value...
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