A big challenge with the Blue Prism world is getting the people who will lose their jobs to map the processes Robotic processes will automate. Fiddly, tricky and easy to automate a vast number of errors. Only works once extensively tested and results verified.
Ignore analyst and sales hype at your peril.
- Never use an RPA tool that doesn't integrate with third-party SCM. If they tried to roll their own, that's a bad sign
- Never use an RPA tool that doesn't generate plaintext-serialized scripts. You're going to have a bad time if they're binary locked
- Never choose an RPA tool that's been around fewer than 3 years. It's probably just a shim on top of MS automation libs, and can't handle the really gnarly stuff
- Never promise anyone you'll automate 100% of their workload. Never try to automate 100% of their workload. Never hesitate to tell a VP you're not going to automate 100% of their workload. There's value in 50%+, get the easy win and move on. Only come back when you've gotten all the easy wins
- RPA is fundamentally about target selectors (or match rules, or whatever else your tool calls them). Their robustness is the only real feature of an RPA platform, and a smaller toolset is going to result in some fragile, quick-to-break stuff
Ultimately, RPA is about one thing: creating a more tactically malleable layer on top of your existing software. Development and change speed is the biggest advantage.
It shouldn't ever be a core system, but it should be where you prototype functionality.
Perfect. Also, set project start boundaries to ensure realistic goals and expectations. Under promise and possibly over deliver - all too often data and information discovery reveals unforeseen problems and opportunities
I've got a story about how we were spec'd at handling 50% of incoming workload, hit 60% on the first iteration, customer got so excited that we pushed, and project ended up being canned when we failed to hit the (then) final 95% target.
Taught me a big lesson about realistic messaging and never up-negotiating expectations.
Everyone listen to this - this is 100% accurate and SUPER applicable. Have reached out via email - thanks for the offer to chat in your other comment =)
(A) Selenium's UX isn't nearly where it needs to be to upskill an analyst to create their own automations.
(B) Selenium's Windows app compatibility is haphazard.
(C) Selenium doesn't have the kind of corporate support it would take to expand compatibility quickly enough to catch up with its competition.
The RPA space is the Linux desktop problem in a nutshell. Polish and niche compatibility are the final 10%.
Nobody on the open source side has the interest in making a VB6 app work. And nobody on the corporate side really wants to use it for more than what they're currently using it for.
I can't overstate the sheer number of bizarre situations a tool needs to be able to handle to be effective here.
Because being able to automate something 95% of the way to completion is usually a lot less valuable than 100% (note: talking about percentage of happy-path process, not of total incoming workload here).
