RPA consulting

You may already be experimenting with ways to make your business work smarter, not harder. Automating every manual process — from copying and rekeying data to filling out forms and checking in with sales prospects — frees up your people and resources across the board. But, shifting the legwork to bots is rarely simple. If you want to leave the grind behind for more useful, rewarding tasks, there’s the question of how you’ll grow and maintain automation development. Stress? Downtime? They’re snapping at your heels as more bots come to life.

Over the last decade, we’ve dealt with many companies that have stalled or seen few benefits from badly planned automation. That’s why we’re here — to set off robotic process automation (RPA) on the right foot and keep it moving forward.

Often, it’s about optimizing processes before any automation has begun, but there’s much more to purposeful RPA that pays off. Let’s show you …

Why automation stalls or fails

Robotic process automation is a significant challenge to organizations that don’t know what they should modernize first, or why, with a limited team for development and launch.

Often, we find that developers are tempted (or pressured) to chase huge ROI targets with their pilot robot straight out of the gate. This is a trap: probably the biggest we see. Instead of a sustainable robotic process automation program, you have a scattered collection of individual projects that can’t feed efficiency in the long run. Think of it like building a car, rather than a car factory.

Furthermore, that pilot bot should be easy to build for very small tasks; you don’t want to get ahead of yourself. If there is a large ROI bot on the table — which isn’t ideal — then it must be broken down into the smallest possible sub-bots.

RPA can encounter several other problems ahead of development and plenty more when it’s up and running. For example:

It’s rarely clear which processes to automate first

There are likely dozens and dozens of potential candidates within your existing workflow. Which of them are ripe for pilot projects? Why? Furthermore, is there a business process that can be left out entirely during modernization? Anything that doesn’t provide tangible business value should be cut from the move. Documenting processes is a great initial step to finding the simplest, most achievable tasks for a pilot project and beyond.

You can’t see the next roadblock until you reach it

Sometimes, it may seem as if there’s an infinite amount of development roadblocks for each bot that don’t become apparent until they hit you in the face. Seamless development then becomes an increasingly distant goal. An RPA consulting partner is essential for unrolling the whole roadmap for what’s ahead, moving parallel with multiple lines of work.

A pure development mindset is dangerous

Throwing talented developers at your RPA project is the easy part — the true challenge is creating a systemic, process-driven world in which bots can be built for implementation in a matter of weeks, not months. With RPA specialists, quality analysts and someone to prepare your production environment before each robot is even conceived, you’ll avoid a linear, drawn-out transition.

Experiments are expensive

Moving toward one approach with automation can be costly if you’re unsure what the eventual goal is or how you can measure it. Plus, automation moves fast — good advice must be implemented quickly, too, or else you’ll harm your workflow and profitability. Every day counts for RPA that’s worth the overhaul and potential downtime.

Resources are too stretched to scale up implementation

Most businesses struggle to maintain their initial automations while crafting new ones. Bots must be designed, patched, stress tested for security risks and combed for bugs throughout the development cycle. We usually find that our clients have tried to automate several processes themselves and enjoyed some success, but can’t scale; they’re stuck monitoring and optimizing what they already have.

RPA bots should only be as complex as absolutely necessary, with concrete reasons to exist and improve the digital workforce. If they’re poorly strategized, maintained or updated, you may face significant trouble with automation. But, we can make change so much more manageable and fit for purpose.

Where can we take you with robotic process automation?

At Lanshore, we make RPA simple. Our consulting service takes your business and vision into a proven roadmap we’ve refined time and again for countless clients. Step by step, we’ll guide you through a review and implementation program that makes sense, filling talent gaps while assessing each process for value and viability.

Broadly, we focus on three areas for improvement:

From fine-tuning your revenue cycles and reimbursement requests to tracking mileage, completing data sheets or auditing facility inspections, there’s a vast amount of automations to explore together. And, whatever solution we land on, we’ll stay flexible. Tomorrow’s plan isn’t cast in iron. Rather, we shape it around the evolving demands of your business. Lanshore consultants stay with you as robotic process automation and artificial intelligence scales alongside your goals for any market or industry.

How our own consulting process works

Whether you need us to take over RPA development, support your teams or simply offer a roadmap, we’ll link up with any key stakeholders and provide rapid, in-depth insight on what to do next.

Here’s the template we like to lay down for robotic process automation consultancy:

Understand your wider business objectives

First, we endeavor to learn as much as we can about your growth, revenue and market opportunities. This includes discussing the automation or process issues you’ve encountered so far.

Hone in on desired outcomes

Are you looking to scale faster and better? Alleviate more pressures on a department? Draw your services closer to leading practices or benchmarks? Provide more considerate, tailored support to your customer base? We’ll define the outcomes you rely on for success, teeing up an intelligent automation solution. Given the complexity of strategic launch and development, you might struggle to pin these outcomes down on your own.

Lead a current and future state analysis

Lanshore specialists will determine what’s working with your current system and repetitive task lists, as well as any risks you’re facing — for example, the leap to a new third-party RPA vendor with a steep learning curve, or missing best practices for the software development life cycle (SDLC). An RPA consultant then takes your future into account i.e., how we’ll measure and maintain improved performance. Think of it as a thorough gap analysis solution with more scope for what’s to come. This is important because, if an RPA partner doesn’t have a forward-looking program roadmap from day one, they will encounter just as many uncertainties as you will.

Provide tech stack and RPA support

At this stage, we have information to bring the right platforms, vendors and technology to your attention. We use our experience to make implementation easy, taking over development ourselves if necessary. As an RPA developer, we test new bots and processes against the highest standards, while augmenting your team with business analysts and quality control experts.

Tap into our automation nerve center

Where an RPA program actually lives — desktops, email chains, charts, PowerPoints and other scattered sources of information and direction — tends to be another challenge Stakeholders have to fend for themselves if they want to determine what’s occurring or bound for fresh implementation. You also might be missing a roadmap to setup, which is meant to give development teams a good sense of any obstacles before they collide with them.

Our RPA center solves all of these concerns. Finally, you have a single, coherent place in which to strategize and stay updated on bot activity. This solution allows you to:

Test at the very beginning of the automation journey, qualifying applications for different scenarios.

Improve productivity for hands-on keyboard work. Your developers (and ours) have everything they need to build, launch and track automation performance in RPA software.

View a complete timeline of each RPA bot and its surrounding communications. Ownership, cost, development issues, growth opportunities and other factors are gathered together in one dashboard.

Lanshore’s robotic process automation consultants are waiting to help you leap over any hurdles to RPA and far beyond to the business model you’ve been waiting for. Eager to make automation an assurance, not a lingering question? Speak to an RPA expert today.

Services

Implementation

Get RPA off the ground and into the heart of your people, processes and priorities. Our specialists will discover everything that shapes your business before offering solutions and a technology stack that will enhance what you do.

Managed

Struggling to maintain existing automations? Aren’t sure what to integrate or develop next? We can take over any projects you have or are planning to push forward, measuring them against the highest industry standards while making them fit for team-wide collaboration.

Support

Strengthen your hold on RPA with Lanshore experts for any stage of the automation journey. Whether you’re deciding which processes to convert, how time and money might be best spent on the project’s components, or if you need help with testing further down the line, we’re here.

Transformation

Take your business to next-level accuracy and efficiency with our transformation services. Lanshore’s RPA specialists will assess your key goals, the processes they’ll impact, which tasks should transition out of a legacy system first, and how to scale incrementally with automation at your side.

Health check

What’s working for your RPA project so far — or where might it be holding you back? Our thorough, no-holds health check delves into HR and your back office tasks, assessing strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for robotic process automation.

Vendor assessment

The right system vendor can make or break an automation journey. Get Lanshore’s impartial viewpoint on the services and platforms that might represent your ideal automation partner. Once we know your organization inside out, we’ll gauge the best fit.