Business process automation (BPA) has gained momentum, especially as pilots result in positive outcomes such as improved customer experience, efficiencies, and cost savings. Stakeholders want to invest more in BPA solutions and scale initial successes across different business and IT functions.
But it’s critical to get it right and not fall into the hype so that the costs don’t outweigh the benefits.
Ultimately, all BPA initiatives should align with a common vision.
Build the right BPA strategy – smarter, not faster
Organizations should adopt a methodical approach to growing their BPA, taking cost, talent availability, and goals into account.
- Recognize the true value of automation. Successful BPA improves more than cost savings and revenue generation. Employee satisfaction, organizational reputation, brand, and better-performing products and services are other sought-after benefits.
- Consider all relevant factors as you build a strategy. Take into account the impact BPA initiatives will have on users, risk and change appetites, customer satisfaction, and business priorities.
- Mature your practice as you scale your BPA technologies. Develop skills, resources, and governance practices as you scale your automation tools. Deploy BPA with quality in mind, then continuously monitor, review, and maintain the automation for success.
- Learn from your initial automations. Maximize what you learn from your minimum viable automations (MVA) and use that knowledge to build and scale your automation implementation across the organization.
Workshop: Develop Your Value-First Business Process Automation Strategy
Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.
Module 1: Understand the Context
The Purpose
Understand the business priorities and your stakeholders' needs that are driving your business process automation initiatives while abiding by the risk and change appetite of your organization.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Translate business priorities to the context of business process automation.
- Arrive at a common definition of business value.
- Come to an understanding of the needs, concerns, and problems of BPA stakeholders.
- Discover organizational risk and change tolerance and appetite.
Activities
Outputs
Set the Business Context
- Business problem, priorities, and business value definition
Understand Your Stakeholder Needs
- Customer and end-user assessment (e.g. personas, customer journey)
Build Your Risk & Change Profile
- Risk and change profile
Module 2: Define Your BPA Objectives and Opportunities
The Purpose
Set reasonable and achievable expectations for your BPA initiatives and practices, and select the right BPA opportunities to meet these expectations.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Align BPA objectives and metrics to your business priorities.
- Create guiding principles that support your organization’s and team’s culture.
- Define a vision of your target-state BPA practice
- Create a list of BPA opportunities that will help build your practice and meet business priorities.
Activities
Outputs
Define Your BPA Expectations
- BPA problem statement, objectives, and metrics
List Your Guiding Principles
- BPA guiding principles
Envision Your BPA Target State
- Desired scaled BPA target state
Build Your Opportunity Backlog
- Prioritized BPA opportunities
Module 3: Assess Your BPA Maturity
The Purpose
Evaluate the current state of your BPA practice and its readiness to support scaled and complex BPA solutions.
Key Benefits Achieved
- List key capabilities to implement and optimize to meet the target state of your BPA practice.
- Brainstorm solutions to address the gaps in your BPA capabilities.
Activities
Outputs
Assess Your BPA Maturity
- BPA maturity assessment
Module 4: Roadmap Your BPA Initiatives
The Purpose
Identify high-priority key initiatives to support your BPA objectives and goals, and establish the starting point of your BPA strategy.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Create an achievable roadmap of BPA initiatives designed to deliver good practices and valuable automations.
- Perform a risk assessment of your BPA initiatives and create mitigations for high-priority risks.
- Find the starting point in the development of your BPA strategy.
Activities
Outputs
Roadmap Your BPA Initiatives
- List of BPA initiatives and roadmap
Assess and Mitigate Your Risks
- BPA initiative risk assessment
Complete Your BPA Strategy
- Initial draft of your BPA strategy
Develop Your Value-First Business Process Automation Strategy
Scale your business automation by focusing on the people, processes, and value that matter.
Analyst Perspective
Automate to a common purpose and vision.
Aggressively scaling business process automation (BPA) with the latest concepts and leading-edge technologies is an attractive ambition for many organizations. However, the costs of automating many processes as quickly as possible often outweigh the benefits and may introduce risks and changes for which the stakeholders have no appetite. The lagging development of a good BPA practice can further hamper the future returns of today's investments.
Automate smarter, not faster by piloting BPA with the intent to scale. Pilots are safe starting points to establish your foundational governance and management practices and build the necessary relationships and collaborations for you to be successful. These factors will then allow you to explore more sophisticated, complicated, and innovative opportunities to drive new value to your team, department, and organization.
Andrew Kum-Seun
Research Director,
Application Delivery and Application Management
Info-Tech Research Group
Executive Summary
Your Challenge | Common Obstacles | Info-Tech's Approach |
| The shift from small-sized pilot automations to complex, scaled automations brings new challenges and barriers to your organization:
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Info-Tech Insight
Automate with a purpose, vision, and strategy by concentrating your investments on the core processes, capabilities, and systems that matter. Low-risk, task-oriented automations are good starting points, but they constrain broader organizational returns. Business value can only scale when thoughtful steps are taken to gradually introduce BPA while foundational practices are built in parallel. Don't automate for the sake of automating.
Start strong with a business process automation (BPA) playbook
A good pilot project is critical to understanding BPA and setting an initial foundation for your BPA practice. See Info-Tech's Build a Winning Business Process Automation Playbook blueprint to start your BPA journey. This blueprint builds upon your lessons learned from your BPA pilot projects.
Business Process Automation Playbook
Formalize your business process automation practice with a good toolkit and a repeatable set of tactics and techniques. Use this as a starting point for a process automation initiative.
Organizations want to mature and scale their initial BPA success
Notable initial benefits:
1 Time Saved – "In the first day of live operations, the robots were saving 51 hours each day or the equivalent of six people working an eight-hour shift." – Brendan MacDonald, Director of Customer Compliance Operations, Ladbrokes ("Automation for Every Industry," UiPath, n.d.)
2 Documentation & Knowledge Sharing – "If certain people left, knowledge of some processes would be lost, and we realized that we needed a reliable process management system in place." – Peta Kinnane, Acting Audit and Risk Coordinator, Liverpool City Council ("Liverpool City Council," Nintex, n.d.)
3 Improved Service Delivery – "Thanks to this automation, our percentage of triaged and assigned tickets is now 100%. Nothing falls through the cracks. It has also improved the time to assignment. We assign tickets 2x faster than before." – Sebastian Goodwin, head of cybersecurity, Nutanix (Workato)
Can we gain more from automation?
As industries evolve and adopt more tools and technologies, their business operating models become more complex. Task- and desktop-based automation are often not enough. More sophisticated and scaled automations are needed to simplify and streamline complex operations from end to end and align them with organizational goals.
Stakeholders see scaling automation as an opportunity to scale the business
The value of scaling BPA is dependent on the organization's ability to scale with it. Stakeholders should see an increase in business value without a substantial increase in resources and operational costs (e.g. there should be little difference if sending out 10 emails versus 1000).
How business can be scaled with automation:
- Processes triggered by incoming documents or email: in these processes, an incoming document or email (that has semi-structured or unstructured data) is collected by a script or an RPA bot. This document is then processed with a machine learning model that validates it either by rules or ML models. The validated and enriched machine-readable data is then passed onto the next system of record.
- The accounts payable process: this process includes receiving, processing, and paying out invoices from suppliers that provided goods or services to the company. While manual processing can be expensive, take too much time, and lead to errors, businesses can automate this process with machine learning and document extraction technologies like optical characters recognition (OCR), which converts texts containing images into characters that can be readable by computers to edit, compute, and analyze.
- Order management: these processes include retrieving email and relevant attachments, extracting information that tells the business what its customers want, updating internal systems with newly placed orders or modifications, or taking necessary actions related to customer queries.
- Enhance customer experience: [BPA tools] can help teams develop and distribute customer loyalty offers faster while also optimizing these offers with customer insights. Now, enterprises can more easily guarantee they are delivering the relevant solutions their clients are demanding.
Source: Stefanini Group
BPA is positioned to support key business priorities
Business-Managed Automations
Today's BPA tools and technologies hold significant promise for automating a greater amount of manual work without traditional technical barriers to entry. Self-service, low- and no-code designers, full stack solutions, and out-of-the-box connectors made BPA key enablers for scaling beyond IT and enabling business-managed automations.
Recent trends are motivating the democratization of automation technologies:
- Scarcity of technical talent and specialized roles
- Technology and digitally savvy and motivated workers
- User-friendly tools and technologies
- Strained IT capacity and limited IT budget
See our Embrace Business-Managed Applications blueprint for more information
Transition to Digital
62% of respondents indicated between 1% to 20% of their manual processes shifted to digital.
Source: Tech Trends and Priorities 2023; N=500
"Going digital" reshapes how the business operates and drives value by optimizing how digital and traditional technologies and tactics work together and support the desired digital experience. This shift often presents significant risks to business processes, enterprise data, applications, and systems that stakeholders and teams are not aware of or prepared to accommodate.
See our Applications Priorities 2023 report for more information on digital experience.
However, justifying further investments in scaling and maturing BPA is not easy
1 No Clear Definition of Business Value
- Value can be intangible, ambiguous, and can cause all sorts of confusion given the multiple and often conflicting priorities any organization is sure to have.
- Your stakeholders may struggle to come to a unified understanding of value or an agreement on whether one thing is more valuable than something else.
2 Low Tolerance of Risk and Change
- The crux of successful BPA is the strategic, well-informed, and onboarded adoption of changes and the good mitigation and acceptance of business and IT risks.
- However, end users and stakeholders may be hesitant, resistant or fearful to accept and incorporate proposed process and system changes or address the risks.
3 Perceived Lack of Opportunities
- BPA pilots often involve the processes that are easy and valuable to optimize and automate. However, these low-hanging fruit will run out.
- Discovering new BPA opportunities can be challenging for a variety of reasons, such as lack of documentation and knowledge, low user participation or drive to change, and BPA technology limitations and constraints.
4 Inadequate Metrics and KPIs
- BPA requires constant monitoring of metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) to quickly address optimization opportunities and demonstrate returns. However,
Many scaling challenges have yet to be addressed
Lack of Organizational Change Leaders
BPA success hinges on the organization's ability to effectively adopt business process- and system-related changes. People are generally resistant to change, especially large, transformational changes that will impact the day-to-day way of doing things or that involve changing personal values, social norms, and other deep-seated assumptions. Good change leaders are those who are motivated, incentivized, and empowered to drive these changes across the organization, but they are often difficult to acquire or properly equip.
Overinvesting in Specific Technologies (Lock-In)
BPA is not a cheap investment. A single RPA bot, for example, can cost between $5,000 to $15,000. This cost does not include the added cost for training, renewal fees, infrastructure setup and other variable and reoccurring costs that often come with RPA delivery and support (Blueprint Software Systems). This reality can motivate BPA owners to favor existing technologies over other cheaper and more effective alternatives in an attempt to boost their return on investment.
Ill-Equipped Support Teams
Good technical skills and tools are critical to ensure BPA capabilities are deployed effectively. Low-code and no-code (LCNC) can help bridge capability gaps, but success isn't guaranteed. Sixty percent of respondents claim a lack of experience with low-code platforms as the biggest obstacle in low-code adoption (Creatio). The learning curve has led some organizations to hire contractors to onboard BPA teams, hire new employees, or dedicate significant funding and resources to upskill internal resources.
Develop a BPA strategy centered on excellence
Build a process excellence foundation to achieve operational excellence
What is process excellence?
Process excellence is adapting business processes to maximize productivity and efficiency. This is achieved by assessing, altering, and testing processes until they meet the desired outcome. Achieving process excellence depends on many quality standards being continuously measured, such as:
- Efficiency
- Productivity
- Accuracy
- Security and compliance
- Consistency and repeatability (little or no variance)
- User, customer, employee, and digital experience
- Alignment with business strategy
- Ability to meet targets and achieve goals
What is operational excellence?
Operational excellence aims to improve all aspects of business operations. These initiatives address core issues with the company's way of working and technologies and then build on top of those changes. This discipline extends process excellence and typically involves:
- Building the mechanisms to deliver change.
- Creating the discipline and structure to execute processes consistently.
- Prioritizing business value and customer experience.
- Focusing on effectiveness and business agility.
- Enabling collaboration across silos and systems.
- Maximizing system functionality and performance.
What Is a BPA Strategy?
- Looks for ways to transform the business and how it delivers value by identifying what technologies to embrace, what processes to optimize and automate, and what products and services to enhance.
- Unifies innovation and productivity possibilities with your desired end user, employee, and customer and brand experiences.
- Accountability lies with the executive leadership that involves consultation from IT and business subject matter experts.
- Must involve cross-functional participation from senior management from the different areas of the organization, including IT management and business representatives to gather strategic input.
Take methodical steps in your BPA implementation
BPA is a journey, not a sprint. New risks and complications will arise as you introduce new BPA capabilities at the individual level and across business units. Focus on small-scale, low-risk automations first to build strong foundations and then use your lessons learned for more complex implementations.
1. How can I improve myself? | 2. How can we improve my team? | 3. How can we improve my organization? | |
Objectives | Improve worker productivity | Increase the team's throughput, commitment and load | Drive more value in existing pipelines and introduce new value streams |
Improve the repeatability and predictability of the process | Apply more focus on cognitive and complex tasks | Deliver consistent digital experiences involving different technologies | |
Deliver outputs of consistent quality and cadence | Reduce the time to complete error-prone, manual, and routine collaborations | Automatically tailor a customer's experience to individual preferences | |
Increase process, tool, and technology confidence | Deliver insightful, personalized, and valuable outputs | Forecast and rapidly respond to customer issues and market trends | |
Goals | Learn the fit of BPA and set the foundations | Improve practices and tools and optimize performance | Scale BPA capabilities throughout the organization |
Keep risk and change top of mind
Risk and change management are necessities for ensuring consistent, repeatable and stable delivery of value. However, they are often overshadowed by industry hype and vendor promises. Do not underestimate the long-term business, technical, and end-user impact if risks and changes are not fully understood, controlled, and embedded in BPA decision making and strategy design.
Business | Technical | End User | |||
Risk | The future probability of unplanned, negative outcomes involving the failure or misuse of business capabilities and technologies. |
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Change | The actions to alter components of the organization, such as its culture, underlying technologies or infrastructure, or its internal processes and policies. |
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Mature your BPA practice to scale it
Assess, build, and strengthen your BPA foundations by focusing on the capabilities that support your vision.
While all capabilities are important for the target state of your BPA practice, Info-Tech suggests the capabilities with an asterisk (*) should be the initial focus.
Tailor your maturity assessment for each automation tool and unique implementation
Core Capabilities to Support Maturity and Scaling of BPA
Risk & Change Management*
Continuous process to analyze, evaluate, control, and address the probably negative impacts of risks and changes.
Vision & Objectives*
Clear direction and goals of the business process automation practice.
Business Process Management & Optimization*
The tactics to document, analyze, optimize, and monitor business processes.
Governance
Defined BPA roles and responsibilities, processes, and technology controls.
Business Process Automation Platform Management
The capabilities to manage a BPA platform and ensure it supports the growing needs of the business.
Business Process Automation Delivery
The tactics to review the fit of automation solutions and deliver and support according to end users' needs and preferences.
Balance individual needs with your organizational motivators
Success hinges on your team's ability to deliver business value. Well-optimized and automated processes instill stakeholder confidence in ongoing business value delivery and ensure stakeholder buy-in, provided that proper expectations are set and met. However, business value is not interpreted or prioritized the same across the organization. Come to a common business value definition to drive change in the right direction.
Business value cannot always be represented by revenue or reduced expenses. Dissecting value by the benefit type and the value source's orientation allows you to see the many ways in which a product or service brings value to the organization.
Financial benefits versus intrinsic needs
- Financial Benefits refers to the degree to which the value source can be measured through monetary metrics, such as revenue generation and cost savings.
- Intrinsic Needs refers to how a product, service, or business capability meets core functional, user experience, and existential needs.
Inward versus outward orientation
- Inward refers to value sources that have an internal impact and improve your employees' and teams' effectiveness in performing their responsibilities.
- Outward refers to value sources that come from your interaction with external stakeholders and customers.
See our Build a Value Measurement Framework blueprint for more information about business value definition.
Select the BPA opportunities that align to your strategic business objectives
Start with...
Scope
What are the priorities of the business and drivers of business value?
Business problem and objectives
Business strategy and value drivers
Risk and change tolerance
Customer and end user needs and personas
Possibilities
What are the possible candidates for good BPA adoption?
Documented processes
Canned and templated processes (vendor and community provided)
Process discovery and mining tactics
Application and end user surveys, feedback and reports
Then, evaluate their...
Desirability & Return
What can be gained from the BPA opportunity and how does it support my future vision?
Expected benefits and costs
Business prioritization
Success measures
End-user and customer demand
Viability & Achievability
What can jeopardize the successful delivery of the opportunity?
Business and IT risks
Delivery and support capacity
Organizational change
Technology compatibility
...to shortlist your...
High-Priority Opportunities
Strategic BPA opportunities that are designed to:
- Maximize learning.
- Evaluate the value and acceptance of BPA capabilities.
- Inform the development, maturity and scaling of your BPA practice.
Build and maintain your BPA toolbox
Understand the fit of today's BPA technologies to your functional needs.
Backend Integration
Enables the ability to bring together data from multiple sources to be analyzed, sorted, transformed, and used.
AI/ML
AI is a technology that mimics the thinking and decision-making capabilities of humans. ML learns and improves AI algorithms through experience.
Configuration
Altering the parameters and properties of the system to change its behavior at runtime.
Native Workflow
Designing and tailoring process workflows within an application system to improve its usability and practicality.
App Builder
Platform to develop, test, deploy, and maintain custom, cross-platform applications.
iPaaS
Cloud platform enabling the development, management, and governance of integration flows across on-premises and cloud services and technologies.
Chatbots
Program that simulates and processes human conversations whether they are spoken or written.
iBPMS & Rules Engines
iBPMS is the combination of BPM tools with AI and other intelligence capabilities. Rules engines manage business rules and decisions using predefined logic.
Robotic & Intelligence Automation
RPA leverages an app's UI rather than programmatic access. Automate rules-based, repetitive tasks performed by human workers with AI/ML.
Point Solutions
Solutions that specialize in a specific industry, business domain, and/or business or IT capability.
Measure success with the right metrics
Establishing and monitoring metrics are powerful ways to drive behavior and strategic changes in your organization. Determine the right measures that demonstrate the value of your BPA efforts by aligning them with your business objectives, business value drivers, BPA goals, and non-functional requirements.
Select metrics with different views
01 BPA Practice Effectiveness
The ability of your practice to deliver, support, and operate BPA.
Examples: Solution quality and throughput, delivery and operational costs, number of defects and issues, and system quality.
02 Automation Value
The outcome of your optimized processes and BPA solutions.
Examples: Time and money saved, usage of products and services, speed of process execution, number of errors, and compliance with standards.
BPA Journey Goals and Milestones
Your organization's position in your BPA journey.
Examples: Maturity score, scope of BPA adoption, comfort and confidence with BPA capabilities, and complexity of automated processes.
Leverage Info-Tech's Diagnostics
End User Feedback
- Value of automation platform and scope of adoption
- Value of the apps enabled or modernized with automation
- Improvement in end-user support
CIO Business Vision
- Improvements to IT satisfaction and value
- Changes to the value and importance of IT core services with BPA
- The state of business and IT relationships
- Capability to deliver and support BPA effectively
Blueprint deliverables
Each step of this blueprint is accompanied by supporting deliverables to help you accomplish your goals:
Business Process Automation Maturity Assessment Tool
Assess the maturity of core capabilities in your BPA practice to determine your readiness and ableness to support scaled and complex BPA solutions.
Key deliverable:
Business Process Automation Strategy Template
Document your business process automation strategy in the language your stakeholders understand. Tailor this document to fit your BPA objectives and initiatives.
Info-Tech's methodology for value-first BPA strategy
1. Understand the Context | 2. Define Your BPA Objectives & Opportunities | 3. Assess Your BPA Maturity | 4. Roadmap Your BPA Initiatives | |
Phase Steps | Step 1.1: Set the Business Context | Step 2.1: Define Your BPA Expectations | Step 3.1: Assess Your BPA Maturity | Step 4.1: Roadmap Your BPA Initiatives |
Phase Outcomes |
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Blueprint Insight Summary
Overarching Info-Tech Insight
Automate with a purpose, a vision, and a strategy by concentrating your investments on the core processes, capabilities, and systems that matter. Low-risk, task-oriented automations are good starting points but constrain broader organizational returns. Business value can only scale when thoughtful steps are taken to gradually introduce BPA while foundational practices are built in parallel. Don't automate for the sake of automating.
Phase 1 | Recognize the intrinsic value of automation as an influential motivator for adoption. Successful BPA delivers more than just cost savings. It improves the lives of employees by allowing them to concentrate on the work they want to do, and it can improve the organizational brand with better-performing, more insightful, and more satisfying products and services. |
Phase 2 | Treat automation like any other enterprise technology. Optimizing and automating business processes involves more than understanding how it impacts the user. It relies on how these improvements meet risk and change appetites and tolerances, and on how the outputs drive customer satisfaction and business priorities. |
Phase 3 | Mature your practice as you scale your BPA technologies. Good skills, resources, and governance and management practices are critical for the successful scaling of BPA tools and technologies. BPA is not a set-it-and-forget-it asset; it needs to be delivered with quality in mind and be continuously monitored, reviewed, and maintained. |
Phase 4 | Maximize the learning of your minimum viable automations (MVA). Mature the foundations of your BPA with the knowledge and experiences you gained in your MVA as you build and refine your case to scale your BPA implementation across the organization. |
Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs
DIY Toolkit | Guided Implementation | Workshop | Consulting |
"Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful." | "Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track." | "We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place." | "Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project." |
Diagnostics and consistent frameworks are used throughout all four options.
Guided Implementation
What does a typical GI on this topic look like?
Phase 1 | Phase 2 | Phase 3 | Phase 4 |
Call #1: Learn Info-Tech's perspective and methodology on BPA strategy. | Call #4: State the target vision, guiding principles, and BPA expectations. | Call #6: Review your maturity assessment and brainstorm solutions. | Call #7: Review your BPA roadmap. |
Call #2: Understand the business context and define business value. | Call #5: Review and prioritize BPA opportunities. | Call #8: Review your BPA strategy. | |
Call #3: Review your risk and change profile. |
A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.
A typical GI is 8 calls over the course of 4 months.
Workshop Overview
Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | |
Activities | Understand the Context | Define Your BPA Objectives & Opportunities | Assess Your BPA Maturity | Roadmap Your BPA Initiatives | Next Steps and Wrap-Up (offsite) |
1.1: Set the Business Context | 2.1: Define Your BPA Expectations | 3.1: Assess Your BPA Maturity | 4.1: Roadmap Your BPA Initiatives | 5.1 Complete in-progress deliverables from previous four days. | |
Deliverables |
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Contact your account representative for more information.
workshops@infotech.com 1-888-670-8889
Phase 1
Understand the Context
This phase will walk you through the following activities:
- Step 1.1: Set the business context
- Step 1.2: Understand your stakeholder needs
- Step 1.3: Build your risk & change profile
This phase involves the following participants:
- IT and business leadership
- Business process and unit owners
- Application and product owners
- IT delivery and operational teams
Develop Your Value-First Business Process Automation Strategy
Phase 1 Insight Summary
Phase Info-Tech Insight
Recognize the intrinsic value of automation as an influential motivator for adoption. Successful BPA delivers more than just cost savings. It improves the lives of employees by allowing them to concentrate on the work they want to do, and it can improve the organizational brand with better-performing, more insightful, and more satisfying products and services.
Step 1.1 | Understand business value is more than dollars and cents. The crux of any role, process, or technology change is its full acceptance, adoption, and use by the workers, teams, and departments who are affected. This can only be achieved if their core needs are met in the design, implementation, and support of BPA, such as the removal of stress, impediments, or restrictions challenging worker productivity. |
Step 1.2 | Put the user front and center. We want to better understand the end user and their operational environment. Use a variety of tactics, such as personas and journey maps, to visualize the human-computer interactions from an end-user perspective and initiate a discussion of how technology and process improvements can be better positioned to help your end users. |
Step 1.3 | Position BPA as an organizational change and risk management initiative. Any time you start a BPA initiative that depends on users to significantly modify their old way of doing things, the changes will force people to become novices again and introduce risks that were not previously relevant. Good organizational change and risk management practices and leadership can help keep these issues limited to the initial implementation. |
Step 1.1
Set the business context
Activities
1.1.1 Elicit and document the business problem and strategy
1.1.2 Define and prioritize your business value drivers
This step involves the following participants:
- IT and business leadership
- Business process and unit owners
- Application and product owners
- IT delivery and operational teams
Outcomes of this step
- Business problem and priorities
- Business value definition
Understanding the business context is a must for your BPA strategy
CIOs must execute strategic initiatives to add value to the business. Most CIOs fail because of low support from the business. IT brings new business expansion opportunities to the table by identifying proven and emerging technologies, including BPA.
As a strategic partner, IT needs to work with the business despite this not having traditionally been the case. IT may not know what information it needs from the business to execute on its initiatives.
An effective CIO understands how to support the business' strategic initiatives with BPA and how BPA can significantly improve enterprise productivity and value. To understand the business context, the CIO needs to ask pointed questions to uncover business imperatives.
What makes a good BPA strategy?
- Incremental Value Delivery – You can generate and share measurable results throughout the BPA journey. Value is not just created for the organization, but for individuals too.
- Adaptable – You can review progress and revise priorities as conditions and needs change.
- Achievable – Your BPA team can execute the strategy and gain the expected outcomes.
- Communication – You can communicate progress and achievements that reflect individual and team needs, not just for the company and its financials.
Learn how BPA became a priority
Business Priorities Driving BPA
Market Reach & Expansion
Extending the visibility and awareness of the organization in new marketplaces and expanding presence and engagement with the existing customer base.
Cost Optimization
Maximizing business value in processes and technologies through disciplined and strategic cost and spending reduction practices.
Competitive Differentiation
Developing and optimizing your organization's distinct and innovative products and services quickly.
Digital Transformation
Transitioning processes, data, and systems to a digital environment and operating model.
Operational Efficiency
Improving software delivery and business process throughput by removing wasteful activities, improving quality output, and injecting value-added activities.
Other Business Priorities
New corporate products and services, business model changes, application rationalization, and other priorities may require modernization, innovation, and a different way of working.
Engage your stakeholders to elicit the business context
Stakeholder Engagement
A prerequisite to all strategic planning should be to elicit the business context from your business stakeholders. At a basic level, understand what questions to ask to understand the general business context. At a more advanced level, discern which questions must be answered for each key BPA initiative and what those answers need to look like to be sufficient for execution.
ENGAGEMENTS MUST UNCOVER
1 Your organization's top three business goals & strategies
2 Your organization's top 10 business initiatives
3 Your organization's mission & vision
Note: This is a prerequisite to building your BPA strategy.
Visit Info-Tech's business context blueprint to download the full methodology.
Identify the group of stakeholders and end users who should be engaged
Gauge the scope and breadth of the people, business capabilities, and products and services that would be involved in BPA.
Tactics to discover impacted people, capabilities, and technologies:
Stakeholder Discussions
Discussions through one-on-one interviews or small focus groups of interested individuals offer insights on background and context of impacted roles, how to navigate obstacles before they arise, and what should be accommodated in the solution design to gain the most value.
See Document Business Goals and Capabilities for Your IT Strategy blueprint for more information.
IT Tools
IT has or can have access to various tools to glean the scope involved in BPA, such as:
- Process discovery and mining tools
- IT service management and help desk tools
- Access management
- Configuration management
See SoftwareReviews for more information on IT tools.
Value Chains and Streams
Value streams and value chains connect business goals to the organization's value realization activities. They enable an organization to create and capture value by engaging in a set of interconnected activities and to better understand how BPA can influence those activities.
See Map Your Business Architecture to Define Your Strategy for more information.
Application Capability Maps
Application capability maps give you a sense of how technology supports the business and the scope of its adoption. This alignment enables you to better understand how BPA adds value and impacts technologies with a large organizational footprint.
See Application Portfolio Management Foundations for more information.
1.1.1 Elicit and document the business problem and strategy
1-2 hours
- Gather and review the various documents containing the business context. This includes business strategy documents, interview notes from executive stakeholders, and other sources for uncovering the business strategy. See the following slide for examples.
- If available, state the organization's vision and mission.
- Begin to formulate how BPA can support the business by answering the following questions with stakeholders:
SWOT analysis, PESTLE analysis, and Porter's 5 forces are some tactics you can use drive this discussion. Refer to Define Your Digital Business Strategy for more information.
- Highlight the strategic themes that emerged from your discussions with stakeholders.
- State the strategic goals using these themes and the KPIs to indicate when you will be successful.
- Document your findings in the Business Process Automation Strategy Template.
Output |
|
Participants |
|
Download the Business Process Automation Strategy Template
1.1.1 cont'd
Example of documents to review to glean business context
Inputs | Documents/Method | Outputs |
Key stakeholders | Strategy Document |
|
Vision and mission of the organization | Website |
|
Business drivers | CEO Interview |
|
Key targets | CEO Interview |
|
Strategic investment goals | CFO Interview |
|
Top three value-generating lines of business | Financial Document |
|
Goals of the organization over the next 12 months | Strategy Document |
|
Top business initiatives over the next 12 months | Strategy Document |
|
Business model | Strategy Document |
|
Competitive landscape | Internal Research Analysis |
|
1.1.1 cont'd
Example of strategic themes from stakeholder consultation: Municipal government
Executive Council
- Improve access to services online
- Seamless interaction with citizens
- Better ways for citizens to engage
City Management Leaders
- Mobile, mobile, mobile
- Single digital ID
- Greater self-service options
- Attract top talent
Business Representatives
- Make it easier to do business with city
- Timely processing of permits, licenses, etc.
- More online interaction with city
Parks and Recreation
- Lower carbon footprint
- Revitalization of low-income space
Infrastructure and Transit
- Smarter transit
- Open Wi-Fi/open data
- Reliable network and infrastructure
Arts and Culture
- Greater digital marketing for cultural events
- Better insights into what communities want
1.1.1 cont'd
Example: Municipal government
Vision
City X: A great place to make a living; a great place to make a life.
Mission
Making life better every day.
Our Strategic Goals
- Smart city of the future
- Social equity and social resilience
- Workforce of the future
- Build world-class transit system and infrastructure
- Environmental resilience and sustainability
- Create a globally connected and economically prosperous city
We'll be successful when...
100% of our core services are available online.
Capture and treat 90% of City X's annual rainfall for green rainwater use.
Increase access to public housing by 40% by 2025.
Increase the number of public meetings or input opportunities by 25% by 2025.
Reach a common definition and means to apply value
Value is subjective. It is defined through past achievements and future objectives.
- There must be a consensus view of what is valuable within the organization, and these values need to be shared across the enterprise.
- Instead of maintaining siloed views and fighting for priorities, all departments must have the same value and purpose in mind.
- These factors – purpose and mission, past achievement and current state, vision and future state, and culture and leadership – impact what is valuable to the organization.
- Being able to understand the value context will allow IT to articulate where IT spend supports business value and how it enables business goal achievement with BPA.
Business value is more than dollars and cents.
The crux of any role, process or technology change is its full acceptance, adoption, and utilization by the workers, teams and departments affected. This can only be achieved if their core needs are met in the design, implementation, and support of BPA, such as:
- BPA removes the stress, impediments, or restrictions challenging worker productivity.
- Safe and nurturing environment to learn and adopt process changes.
- No fear of losing one's job or of inability to shift to a new way of working or new responsibilities and accountabilities.
- Ability to focus on work that is motivating and fulfilling to the worker.
- Solutions are aligned with the personal ethics and morality of the workers.
Explore the value of scaled BPA
According to Automated Dreams' Business Automation Strategy Playbook, 5 key benefits of scaled BPA are:
1 | Increased Efficiency and Productivity |
2 | Improved Customer Service |
3 | Cost Savings |
4 | Improved Accuracy and Consistency |
5 | Better Compliance and Security |
Source: Automated Dreams.
1.1.2 Define and prioritize your business value drivers
1-3 hours
- Review the themes and strategic goals defined in the previous exercise.
- Gather the various stakeholders, end users, and supporting roles (e.g. IT delivery and operations) who are tied to these strategic goals.
- Review the business value framework on the following slide:
- Using the different perspectives, identify and prioritize your business value drivers.
- Document your findings in the Business Process Automation Strategy Template.
Output |
|
Participants |
|
1.1.2 cont'd
Example: Municipal government
Step 1.2
Understand your stakeholder needs
Activities
1.2.1 Understand your stakeholder needs
This step involves the following participants:
- IT and business leadership
- Business process and unit owners
- Application and product owners
- IT delivery and operational teams
Outcomes of this step
- Customer and end user assessment (e.g., personas, customer journey)
Give your BPA stakeholders the experience they expect
Automate to support digital experience (DX)
Digital experience refers to the interaction between a user and an organization through digital products and services. Digital products and services are tools, systems, devices, and resources that gather, store, and process data; are continuously modernized; and embody eight key attributes that are described on the following slide. DX is broken down into four distinct perspectives*:
- Customer Experience – The immediate perceptions of transactions and interactions experienced through a customer's journey in the use of the organization's digital products and services.
- End-User Experience – Users' emotions, beliefs, and physical and psychological responses that occur before, during, or after interacting with a digital product or service.
- Brand Experience – The broader perceptions, emotions, thoughts, feelings and actions the public associate with the organization's brand and reputation or its products and services. Brand experience evolves over time as customers continuously engage with the brand.
- Employee Experience – The satisfaction and experience of an employee through their journey with the organization, from recruitment and hiring to their departure. How an employee embodies and promotes the organization brand and culture can affect their performance, trust, respect, and drive to innovate and optimize.
*Influenced by Accelerate in Experience, 2020.
See Info-Tech's Applications Priorities 2023 report for more information on DX.
Describe the experience you want to build with personas
Increase the acceptance of BPA by addressing the pains, frustrations, and needs of your stakeholders.
You need to understand who you are helping to determine the best solution for the problem. Personas give you holistic insights into the end user by revealing who they are, what they need, and what their pains and gains are.
One of the best ways to flesh out your end-user persona is to engage with the end users directly or to gather the input of those who may engage with them within the organization.
For example, if you want to understand how a student interacts with the school's technologies, you might want to gather the input of students or of teaching faculty that have firsthand experience with different student types and can define a common student type.
See our Apply Design Thinking to Build Empathy With the Business blueprint for more information on personas
Info-Tech Insight
Employ gemba in your solution design. Gemba motivates decision makers to go to "the place where value is created" to learn about and understand the end users and customers so that BPA efforts reflect their needs. Capture the end user using personas and customer journeys.
1.2.1 Understand your stakeholder needs
0.5-1 hour
- Brainstorm the various stakeholders of your high-priority value drivers.
- Construct personas of each stakeholder using the following slide as a guide.
- Document your findings in the Business Process Automation Strategy Template.
Output |
|
Participants |
|
1.2.1 cont'd
Example:
Stakeholder demographics
Name: Anne
Age: 35
Occupation: Engineering Faculty
Location: Toronto, Canada
Pains
What are their frustrations, fears, and anxieties?
- Time restraints
- Using new digital tools
- Managing a class while incorporating individual learning
- Varying levels within the same class
- Unmotivated students
What do they need to do?
What do they want to get done? How will they know they are successful?
- Design curricula in a hybrid mode without loss of quality of experience of in-classroom learning.
Gains
What are their wants, needs, hopes, and dreams?
- Interactive content for students
- Curriculum alignment
- Ability to run a classroom lab (in hybrid format)
- Self-paced and self-directed learning opportunities for students
Adapted from Osterwalder, et al., 2014
Leverage journey mapping to extend your stakeholders' learning
Conduct a journey mapping exercise to identify opportunities for innovation or automation.
A journey-based approach helps an organization understand how a stakeholder moves through a process and interacts with the organization in the form of touch points, channels, and supporting characters. By identifying pain points in the journey and the activity types, we can identify opportunities for innovation and automation along the journey.
Embrace design thinking methodologies to elevate the stakeholder journey and to build a competitive advantage for your organization.
See our Apply Design Thinking to Build Empathy With the Business blueprint for more information on customer journeys
Example of stakeholder journey output: Higher Education
Stakeholder: A faculty member
Journey: As an engineering faculty member, I want to design my curricula in a hybrid mode of delivery so that I can simulate in-classroom experiences
Journey Activity | Understand the needs of students | Understand the needs of students | Deliver course material | Conduct assessments | Upload grades into system |
Touch Points |
Teaching and learning center |
|
|
|
|
Nature of Activity | Non-routine cognitive | Non-routine cognitive | Non-routine cognitive | Routine cognitive | Routine manual |
Metrics |
|
|
|
| |
Key Moments & Pain Points |
|
|
|
| No existing critical pain points; process already automated |
Opportunities |
|
|
|
|
Step 1.3
Build your risk and change profiles
Activities
1.3.1 Build your BPA change profile
1.3.2 Build your BPA risk profile
This step involves the following participants:
- IT and business leadership
- Business process and unit owners
- Application and product owners
- IT delivery and operational teams
Outcomes of this step
- Risk and change profile
BPA is an organizational change management initiative
What is organizational change management (OCM)?
OCM is a framework for managing the introduction of new business and IT processes and technologies to ensure stakeholder and team adoption.
OCM involves tools, templates, and processes that are intended to help change leaders analyze the impacts of a change during the planning phase, engage stakeholders and teams throughout the change delivery, and train and transition users toward the new technologies and processes being implemented.
When is OCM needed in BPA?
Any time you start a BPA initiative that depends on users to significantly modify their old way of doing things, the changes will force people to become novices again and introduce risks that were not previously relevant. Good organizational change and risk management practices and leadership can help keep these issues limited to the initial implementation.
OCM should be built into your BPA initiatives, including structuring a framework to teach and coach people to adopt new tools and procedures, comply with new and modified policies, and learn new skills and behaviors to better support optimized and automated processes.
See our Master Organizational Change Management Practices blueprint for more information.
1.3.1 Build your BPA change profile
1-2 hours
- Select one application or business process that is the focus of your BPA initiative. Identify the readiness and ability of your business to change as shown in the example on the next slides. Add other change factors that should be included in this assessment.
- Identify the readiness and ability of your organization to change as shown in the example on the next slides. Add other change factors that should be included.
- Document your findings in the Business Process Automation Strategy Template.
Output |
|
Participants |
|
Download the Business Process Automation Strategy Template
1.3.1 cont'd
Example
Change Factor – Application Stack | Description | Readiness to Change | Ability to Change | Owner |
Value stream | The value stream can be streamlined and modified to take advantage of BPA to maximize value generation. | Yes | Yes | Julia Ng |
Business capability | The business capabilities supporting your value stream can be streamlined and modified to take advantage of BPA to maximize value generation. | Yes | No | Julia Ng |
Business process | The business processes supporting your business capabilities can be streamlined and modified to take advantage of BPA to maximize value generation. | No | No | Julia Ng |
Application UI and UX | The application's user interface and user experience can be modified to best suit the user's functional and personal needs, which include device accessibility, the format of information delivery, and visual and audio designs. | Yes | Yes | Mark Lee |
Application logic/code | The application's business logic and code can be modified with modern languages, frameworks, and architectures to meet their accessibility, scalability, maintainability, and other quality needs. | Yes | No | Mark Lee |
Integration | The application, data, and infrastructure integration strategy and technology can be modified to address new system dependencies and implement the desired architecture. | No | No | Bill White |
Data architecture | The rules, policies, standards, and models that govern and define the type of data collected and how it is used, stored, managed, and integrated within the organization and its database systems. These can be modified when needed. | Yes | No | Bill White |
Master data management | Your organization established and has control over master data values to enable consistent, shared, contextual use across systems, and it can be modified when needed. | No | No | Bill White |
Infrastructure | The infrastructure and its architecture can be modified when needed. | Yes | No | Amy Brown |
Security | The security rules, policies, standards, and models that govern and define how an application should be managed, accessed, consumed, and protected. | No | Yes | Lily Sanchez |
1.3.1 cont'd
Example
Change Factor – IT Delivery and Support | Description | Readiness to Change | Ability to Change | Owner |
IT resource capacity | The availability and ability to shift IT resources to complete BPA considering their knowledge, their skills and expertise, the tools at their disposal, and their other priorities and commitments. | No | No | Bob Zane |
Team structure | The team can be restructured, and roles can be redefined to best suit the delivery, support, and management of BPA. | Yes | No | Bob Zane |
Intake, analysis, and backlog management practice | The project and work intake, analysis, and backlog management practice can be modified to best leverage and support the value and benefit opportunities of BPA. | No | No | Julia Ng |
Design and architecture practice | The design and architecture practice can be modified to best leverage and support the value and benefit opportunities of BPA. | Yes | Yes | Andrew Miles |
Development and configuration practice | The development practice can be modified to best leverage and support the value and benefit opportunities of BPA. | Yes | Yes | Andrew Miles |
Testing practice | The testing practice can be modified to best leverage and support the value and benefit opportunities of BPA. | Yes | No | Andrew Miles |
Deployment and implementation practice | The deployment and implementation practice can be modified to best leverage and support the value and benefit opportunities of BPA. | No | No | Andrew Miles |
Application support, maintenance, and management practice | The application support and maintenance practice can be modified to best leverage and support the value and benefit opportunities of BPA. | No | No | Amy Brown |
Application and system monitoring | Application and system performance monitoring, dashboards, and instrumentation can be reconfigured to gauge the success of BPA. | No | Yes | Amy Brown |
1.3.1 cont'd
Example
Change Factor – Business Stakeholders | Description | Readiness to Change | Ability to Change | Owner |
Modified way of working | An end user's ability to adopt new and modified workflows involving modernized or removed technologies. | Yes | Yes | Julia Ng |
User experience | An end user's mental, behavioral, and psychological capacity to accept and adopt changes given available training, onboarding, coaching, and communication. | Yes | Yes | Mark Lee |
Shift in business model | The business' ability to shift their primary source of business value and realign their business model to fit this new value stream. | Yes | Yes | Julia Ng |
Organizational reputation and image | The perception, morality, and image of the organization amid changes to the business and operational model. | Yes | No | Julia Ng |
Process, application and product ownership | The ownership structure of the technical stack of the application or product and the role's/team's ability to drive growth and maturity of the process, application or product. | No | No | Julia Ng |
Application system control | The degree of control and accessibility to the application stack and the organization's ability to make fine-tuned configurations and customizations. | No | No | Amy Brown |
Business strategy | The ability to shift the focus, approach, and objectives of the business strategy to lessons learned from this BPA effort. | No | Yes | Julia Ng |
Industry compliance | The organization's ability to pivot or budge on meeting or being guided by regulations (e.g. HIPAA, SOX) and industry standards and frameworks (e.g. ITIL, COBIT). | No | No | Amy Brown |
The aggressiveness of your BPA initiatives hinges on your risk appetite
Risk Tolerant | Moderate | Risk Averse |
|
|
|
See our Build an IT Risk Taxonomy blueprint for more information.
1.3.2 Build your BPA risk profile
1-2 hours
- Review the various risks your organization is exposed to that are relevant to your BPA strategy. See the following slides for examples of risks. Clarify the "Risk," "Detail," and "Risk Event" columns so that they are reflective of your business and IT stakeholders.
- Document the mechanisms that are available to manage and monitor your risks in the "Control" column.
- Indicate who is the owner of each risk.
- Identify the appetite for each risk: high, moderate, low.
- Document your findings in the Business Process Automation Strategy Template.
Output |
|
Participants |
|
Download the Business Process Automation Strategy Template
1.3.2 cont'd
Mainstream risks
Risk | Detail | Control | Owner | Appetite |
Financial | The ability to obtain sufficient and timely funding capacity. | Project management office | Steve Moore | Low |
Non-Financial | Non-financial risks are risks that are not considered to be traditional financial risks. Non-financial risk includes operational risk, technology risk, culture. and conduct. | Architecture review board | Steve Moore | Low |
Reputational | Potential negative publicity regarding business practices regardless of validity. | IT steering committee | Julia Ng | Moderate |
Strategic | Risk of unsuccessful business performance due to internal or external uncertainties, whether driven by events or trends. Actions or events that adversely impact an organization's strategies and/or implementation of its strategies. | IT steering committee | Julia Ng | Moderate |
Sustainability (ESG) | This risk of any negative financial or reputational impact on an organization stemming from current or prospective impacts of ESG factors on its counterparties or invested assets. | Legal and compliance review | Nick Green | Moderate |
Talent and Risk Culture | The widespread behaviors and mindsets that can threaten sound decision making, prudent risk taking, and effective risk management and can weaken an institution's financial and operational resilience. | Organizational leadership steering committee | Julia Ng | Moderate |
1.3.2 cont'd
Technology risk
Risk | Detail | Risk Event | Control | Owner | Appetite |
Change (Transformation) | IT integration (e.g. merger and acquisition) | Data breach when replacing or integrating IT system | IT disposition process | Bob Zane | Low |
Security risk assessment | Bob Zane | Low | |||
Enterprise or material change program (e.g. implementing ERP) | Software failure/bug | Testing and release management | Bob Zane | Moderate | |
Performance | Process failure | Execution error by employee | Process diagrams | Bob Zane | Moderate |
Validation checks | Bob Zane | Moderate | |||
Technology failure | Outage on outdated systems | Manage technical debt | Bob Zane | Moderate | |
Server failure | Live system failover | Bob Zane | Low | ||
External relationship | Cloud provider causes performance issue | Contract provisions | Bob Zane | Low | |
Ongoing performance monitoring | Bob Zane | Moderate | |||
Availability/ Continuity | IT continuity and disaster recovery | Configuration differences in primary and secondary data center | Failure mode and effects analysis | Bob Zane | Moderate |
Disruptive cyberattacks | Cyber threats (denial of service, malware, etc.) | Air-gapped backups | Bob Zane | Low | |
Regularly patch firewalls | Bob Zane | Low | |||
Solutions to protect critical internet activities or services | Bob Zane | Low | |||
Data poisoning (malicious data fed into AI models) | Penetration testing of AI models | Bob Zane | Low |
1.3.2 cont'd
Technology risk cont'd
Risk | Detail | Risk Event | Control | Owner | Appetite |
Asset Management | Operation & optimization of assets | Denial of service | Control access | Bob Zane | Low |
Corruption of data | Boundary defense | Bob Zane | Low | ||
Noncompliance because IT was not aware of business system (shadow IT) | Develop and maintain asset register | Bob Zane | Moderate | ||
Software/subscription license expires | Maintain asset register | Bob Zane | Moderate | ||
Unapproved cloud software as a service (SaaS) used for proof of concept, impacting product delivery | Easy access to approved software catalogue | Bob Zane | Moderate | ||
Asset maintenance | Unauthorized installation of software (e.g. SaaS) | Role-based access and desktop management | Bob Zane | Moderate | |
Information theft of legacy system | Offboarding policy and decommission process | Bob Zane | Low | ||
Management of risks associated with ownership | Employee/contractor abuse of authorization | Control access (privileged user) | Bob Zane | Low | |
Employee steals payment information | Monitoring and role-based access | Bob Zane | Moderate | ||
Critical equipment damaged in hurricane | Business continuity planning | Bob Zane | Moderate | ||
Employee exits or changes their role in organization | Identity access management | Bob Zane | Low |
1.3.2 cont'd
Technology risk cont'd
Risk | Detail | Risk Event | Control | Owner | Appetite |
Asset Management | Management of risks associated with use | Misuse of information systems | Activity monitoring and role-based access | Bob Zane | Low |
Employee loses device | Training | Bob Zane | Low | ||
Employee loses USB devices | Encryption | Bob Zane | Low | ||
Delivery (Execution Risk) | External | Consultant delays | Contract provisions (e.g. late penalties) | Bob Zane | Moderate |
Internal | Unplanned work that must be accommodated in a certain timeframe | Escalation to IT governance committee | Bob Zane | Moderate | |
Business case becomes obsolete | No way to mitigate (monitor for early warning signs and escalate to governance committee) | Bob Zane | Low | ||
Disruptive Innovation | Artificial intelligence | Employee puts model into use that results in customer complaint | AI ethics committee | Bob Zane | Low |
1.3.2 cont'd
Talent and culture risk
Risk | Detail | Risk Event | Control | Owner | Appetite |
Capacity | Labor market changes | High percentage of employees are nearing retirement. | Establish an ongoing recruitment process to ensure consistent pipeline of potential employees | Jane Olson | Low |
Succession planning | Jane Olson | Low | |||
Hire-to-train program for new employees without skills, knowledge, or ability to be provided roles | Jane Olson | Moderate | |||
Lack of IT leaders | Employees unable or unwilling to reduce gaps in their leadership capabilities. | Provide all employees with leadership training whether they chose a technical or people career path | Jane Olson | Moderate | |
Remote work | Lose staff to organizations that offer flexible working locations and arrangements. | Mobility policies | Jane Olson | Moderate | |
Capability | Critical person risk | Key person who has critical skill leaves organization. | Formalized knowledge-sharing program | Jane Olson | Moderate |
A single employee knows how to troubleshoot a problem and is unavailable one day when the problem arises. | Formalized knowledge-sharing program | Jane Olson | Low | ||
Competency changes | On-premises skills are no longer needed as the organization embraces full cloud adoption. | Reskilling program for new or changed roles | Jane Olson | Low | |
An innovative technology (e.g. AI) enters the market and disrupts workforce skill requirements. | Formalized training program for employees | Jane Olson | Moderate | ||
Cost | Salaries for critical skill employees | Innovative technology organizations can offer higher salaries. | Formalize the employee value proposition to include elements beyond salary | Jane Olson | Moderate |
Employees dedicate focus to side gigs to make additional income. | Provide employees opportunities to work overtime hours | Jane Olson | Low | ||
Operational budget reductions | A recession forces the organization to reduce headcount across IT. | Have a ready-to-leverage skills matrix for employees | Jane Olson | Low | |
Monitor market | Jane Olson | Low |
1.3.2 cont'd
Talent and culture risk cont'd
Risk | Detail | Risk Event | Control | Owner | Appetite |
Culture | Not enabling a culture of innovation | Lose staff to employers that support an innovative culture. | Provide employees with opportunities to work on innovative initiatives | Jane Olson | Low |
Leadership by example | The desired behaviors for employees are not demonstrated by members of the leadership team. | Conduct regular assessments such as an IT value survey, cultural assessment, and employee exit survey | Jane Olson | High | |
Employees are not encouraged to collaborate even though the operating model depends on good collaboration. | Create forums and cross-functional working groups for collaboration between IT and specific departments | Jane Olson | High | ||
Tallest poppy syndrome | A high-performing employee quits after facing criticism and resentment from their team members after being publicly recognized for hard work several times. | Provide equitable praise of employees | Jane Olson | High | |
Compliance | Labor laws | Organization fails to provide accessibility accommodations for a prospective employee during the interview process. | Include information in all job postings on how accessibility accommodations can be accessed. | Jane Olson | Low |
Employee policy acknowledgement | An IT employee faces discrimination when applying for a manager role. | Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policy training | Jane Olson | Low | |
Misconduct | A junior employee faces harassment from a senior member of the leadership team. | Harassment training/whistle blowing program/escalation process | Jane Olson | Low |
1.3.2 cont'd
Data risk
Risk | Detail | Risk Event | Controls | Owner | Appetite | |
Data Quality | Data accuracy | Misreporting to regulator or enforcement action due to inaccurate data | Data profiling to determine and monitor data quality:
Data quality remediation action plans:
Data issues and incident management processes | Bill White | Low | |
Data completeness | Loss of customers due to a missing data attribute that would help the customer compare and choose | Low | ||||
Data consistency | Customer compliant due to incorrect data on customer record leading to mistrust or wrong service provision | Low | ||||
Data availability | Unreliable analysis due to data lineage fault or failed data delivery | Low | ||||
Validity | Third-party contractual issues: Invalid data fields leads to data transfer protocol issues when providing data to third parties | Low | ||||
Timeliness | Misreporting due to data lineage fault or late delivery of data | Low | ||||
Data Architecture | Data classification | Reputational damage through misuse of data an employee or entity should not have access to | Data classification standards and procedures | Bill White | Low | |
Data access | Reputational damage through misuse of data an employee or entity should not have access to | Role-based data access controls (row, column, and cell level) | Bill White | Low | ||
Data standardization | Misreporting to regulator or enforcement action due to misinterpretation of data | Data design standards | Bill White | Low | ||
Metadata management | Ineffective business processes or reporting due to data load parameter errors in data messaging service | Data design standards | Bill White | Low |
1.3.2 cont'd
Data risk cont'd
Risk | Detail | Risk Event | Control | Owner | Appetite |
Data Culture | Data governance | Misreporting to regulator or enforcement action due to undetected control failure | Data governance program, data stewardship | Bill White | Low |
Data literacy | Employees use incorrect or wrong data or share confidential information | Data literacy program and training, role-based data training | Bill White | Low | |
Data Privacy | Sensitive data (PII) | Breach of legal obligations through misuse or improper sharing of PII data | Policies and procedures | Bill White | Low |
1.3.2 cont'd
Strategic risk
Risk | Detail | Risk Event | Control | Owner | Appetite |
IT-Business Alignment | Planning | New business is acquired without an IT assessment – integration costs more money than estimated | CIO and CEO work in partnership on acquisitions | Bob Zane | Moderate |
Business department acquires new software that is not supported by IT | Well-defined policy on exceptions and approvals | Bob Zane | Moderate | ||
Unplanned risk surface during implementation | IT conducts risk assessment prior to starting initiative | Bob Zane | Moderate | ||
IT strategy | IT enhancement project gets sidelined because resources are needed for unplanned (unallocated) business initiative | IT strategy and resource planning is in place | Bob Zane | Moderate | |
CIO is fired because they are perceived as not providing value | CIO is part of executive committee | Bob Zane | Moderate | ||
IT Capabilities and Performance | Internal control framework | Shadow IT is pervasive or is increasing risk and costs | IT Steering Committee (governance) | Bob Zane | Moderate |
Increased number of incidents and control failures | IT policies and up to date and regularly reviewed | Bob Zane | Moderate |
1.3.2 cont'd
Third-party risk
Risk | Detail | Risk Event | Control | Owner | Appetite |
Legal and Compliance | Regulatory penalties and fines | Third party is not in compliance with rules and regulations. | Ongoing monitoring | Amy Brown | Moderate |
Legal (criminal acts, arbitration and disputes) | Arbitration is required due to delays in delivery. | Contractual provisions | Amy Brown | Low | |
Publicity/IP use without consent. | Contractual provisions | Amy Brown | Low | ||
Social media monitoring | Amy Brown | Moderate | |||
Performance | Internal process | Third-party management control failure, e.g. SaaS drops. | Business continuity planning | Amy Brown | Moderate |
Technology | Failure due to poor technology integration. | Contractual provisions | Amy Brown | Moderate | |
Enforcing change control | Amy Brown | Moderate | |||
Configuration process | Amy Brown | Low | |||
External relationship | Third party outsources to an external party and the external party fails to deliver. | Due diligence at time of contract | Amy Brown | Low | |
Supply Chain Management | Subcontractor risks | Data breach. | Contractual provisions (accountability – all protections) | Amy Brown | Moderate |
Concentration risk | Cloud provider Infrastructure down. | Cloud exit strategies | Amy Brown | Moderate | |
Contingency plans | Amy Brown | Low | |||
Financial | Limited resources or skills | Key person leaves third-party supplier. | Due diligence at time of contract | Amy Brown | Low |
Insolvency/bankruptcy | Third party is insolvent. | Contractual provision (do not include exclusivity clause) | Amy Brown | Low | |
Strategic | M&A | Third party is restructured, and unfavorable terms and conditions are introduced. | Mutual assignment clause | Amy Brown | Low |
Market changes or change in customer preferences | Third party product or service becomes obsolete. | Flexibility in strategy | Amy Brown | Moderate |
1.3.2 cont'd
Third-party risk cont'd
Risk | Detail | Risk Event | Control | Owner | Appetite |
Security (exception: may go under IT Security for smaller organizations or be managed holistically) | Cyber | Botnet attack. | Security audit | Amy Brown | Moderate |
Physical | Third party asset is damaged. | Security audit | Amy Brown | Moderate | |
Administrative controls | Generic access is given to a third-party admin and disgruntled party leaves. | Security audit (review of policies and procedures) | Amy Brown | Moderate | |
Technology | Assets | End-of-life asset is accessed. | Security audit (ensure frequent patching and establish refresh cycle) | Amy Brown | Low |
Data | Data breach by third party. | Security audit | Amy Brown | Low | |
Contractual provisions | Amy Brown | Moderate | |||
People | Lack of education creates incident. | Security audit (including training) | Amy Brown | Moderate | |
Process | Poor configuration. | Security audit (including change and configuration controls) | Amy Brown | Low | |
Data transfer error. | Data validation | Amy Brown | Low |
1.3.2 cont'd
Security risk
Risk | Detail | Risk Event | Control | Owner | Appetite |
Information | Cyber | Ransomware attack on organization's ERP system | Deploy and test offsite backups | Lily Sanchez | Low |
Air-gapped backups | Lily Sanchez | Low | |||
Next-gen anti-exploit endpoint agents | Lily Sanchez | Moderate | |||
Wiper malware attack to critical system | Regular vulnerability scanning | Lily Sanchez | Moderate | ||
Security operations center | Lily Sanchez | Moderate | |||
Regular updates and software patches | Lily Sanchez | Moderate | |||
Phishing attack on employee | Email security and spam protection | Lily Sanchez | Low | ||
Business email compromise (BEC) | Security awareness training | Lily Sanchez | Low | ||
Employee uses external website and downloads malicious script | Endpoint protection | Lily Sanchez | Moderate | ||
Organization or threat group gains unauthorized access to network and remains undiscovered | Implementation of security information and event management (SIEM) or security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) capabilities | Lily Sanchez | Moderate | ||
Intrusion detection systems (IDS) | Lily Sanchez | Low | |||
Intrusion prevention systems (IPS) | Lily Sanchez | Low | |||
Botnet attack | Network monitoring and mitigation (ISP protection) | Lily Sanchez | Low | ||
Compromise as a service attack | Define network perimeter and apply network controls | Lily Sanchez | Low | ||
Governance | Enforcement action related to failures in cybersecurity policies and procedures | Trigger risk assessment/enhance governance practices | Lily Sanchez | Moderate |
1.3.2 cont'd
Security risk cont'd
Risk | Detail | Risk Event | Control | Owner | Appetite |
Physical | Facilities | Servers or equipment stolen during a break-in | Surveillance/CTV | Lily Sanchez | Low |
Permission to access | Lily Sanchez | Low | |||
Overheating of assets | Fire suppression | Lily Sanchez | Low | ||
Damage to critical assets (e.g. manufacturing equipment, water treatment plant) | Biometric security, key management | Lily Sanchez | Moderate | ||
Climate | Data center flooded | Efficient sealing solutions, flood walls | Lily Sanchez | Low | |
Operational Technology | Servers and systems | Malfunction of sensor | Monitoring of sensors | Lily Sanchez | Low |
Backup sensors | Lily Sanchez | Low | |||
Power outage | Backup generators | Lily Sanchez | Low | ||
Humans | Software configuration error | System configuration management policy | Lily Sanchez | Low | |
Industrial control systems (ICS) | Programmable logic controllers (PLC) failure | Remote monitoring | Lily Sanchez | Moderate | |
Exploitation of Internet of Things (IoT) and internet-connected systems | Continuous logging and analysis of network traffic | Lily Sanchez | Low | ||
ICS network | Fieldbus network failure | Fully redundant environment | Lily Sanchez | Low | |
IoT attack on facility or plant | Zero trust practices (network segmentation, remote access control jump box system ) | Lily Sanchez | Moderate | ||
Personnel Controls | Access privileges | Software is set up with generic access and employee gives password information to another employee | Access control policy | Lily Sanchez | Low |
Human behavior | Information solen via USB | Security policy | Lily Sanchez | Low | |
Employee leaves laptop in cab | Device usage policy | Lily Sanchez | Low |
Focus your initial efforts on the areas of least resistance and risk
The success of your BPA effort is dependent on end users', stakeholders', and IT's change and risk tolerance, whether from a people, process, or technology perspective. While an application or a line of business may benefit the most from BPA, the potential user resistance to change or the complexity of legacy applications can quickly derail your initiative. Review your assessment to identify where BPA can be the most valuable considering the organization's flexibility and tolerance of change and risk. With the right foundation using lessons learned, more complex BPA initiatives can be undertaken.
Change & risk factors
Application system
The capability of the entire or part of the application stack (from business capabilities down to the infrastructure) to change considering business operations complexities, vendor lock-ins, and existing legacy technologies.
End users and stakeholders
The flexibility of an end user to adopt a different way of working. Business strategies, product roadmaps, and governance models can readily adjust to lessons learned and evolving priorities. Ideally, BPA impediments can be mitigated and removed, or a workaround can be easily deployed.
IT delivery and operations
IT can modify their own practices to best deliver and operate BPA and modified systems, and provide satisfactory end-user support to ensure the technology meets their needs.
Phase 2
Define your BPA objectives & opportunities
This phase will walk you through the following activities:
- Step 2.1: Define your BPA expectations
- Step 2.2: List your guiding principles
- Step 2.3: Envision your BPA target state
- Step 2.4: Build your opportunity backlog
This phase involves the following participants:
- IT and business leadership
- Business process and unit owners
- Application and product owners
- IT delivery and operational teams
Develop Your Value-First Business Process Automation Strategy
Phase 2 Insight Summary
Phase Info-Tech Insight
Treat automation like any other enterprise technology. Optimizing and automating business processes involves more than understanding how it impacts the user. It relies on how these improvements meet risk and change appetites and tolerances and how the outputs drive customer satisfaction and business priorities.
Step 2.1 | Implement BPA with clear objectives to maximize learning and establish a scalable foundation. A key to successful BPA is thoughtfully introducing automation capabilities into existing technologies with the ultimate goals of transforming inefficient processes, building a good practice and strengthening technology support. |
Step 2.2 | Embrace ethics in your process optimization. The removal of humans in key process decisions can be unsettling for certain stakeholders. Automation leads must not only think of how a solution operates at a technical level or what goals it is trying to achieve, but why it is worth doing and how the outcomes of the automated tasks will impact the broader internal and external audiences' reputation, morality, and perception. |
Step 2.3 | Create your recipe for scaled BPA success. AI/ML is not the only direction to a successful BPA target state. Your scaling BPA recipe (approach) can involve multiple different flavors (e.g. business managed automation, AI/ML) of various quantities to fit the needs and constraints of your organization and workers. |
Step 2.4 | Focus BPA on the least resistant but impactful processes. The crux of successful BPA is the strategic, well-informed, and onboarded adoption of relevant changes in key business areas, capabilities, and processes while being conscious of the risks they introduce. |
Step 2.1
Define your BPA expectations
Activities
2.1.1 Create your BPA value canvas
This step involves the following participants:
- IT and business leadership
- Business process and unit owners
- Application and product owners
- IT delivery and operational teams
Outcomes of this step
- BPA problem statement, objectives, and metrics
Focus on the problem, not the solution
People are naturally solution focused. The onus isn't on them to express their needs in the form of a problem statement!
When refining your problem statement, attempt to answer the following four questions:
- Who is impacted?
- What is the (user or organizational) challenge that needs to be addressed?
- Where does it happen?
- Why does it matter?
There are many ways of writing problem statements. A clear approach follows this format:
- "Our [who] has the problem that [what] when [where]. Our solution should [why]."
- Example: "Our system analysts have the problem that new tickets take too long to update when working on user requests. Our approach should enable the analyst to focus on working with customers and not on administration."
Adapted from "Design Problem Statements – What and How to Frame Them," Toptal
Derive your BPA mission and vision statements
Begin the process by identifying and deciphering the business strategic goals, stakeholder expectations and risk and change profiles.
Strategic Business Goals & Value
Risk & Change Profiles
Stakeholder Expectations
Write your statements and ensure alignment between the business and IT.
Note: Mission statements may remain the same unless the BPA mandate is changing.
A mission statement:
- Focuses on today and what the BPA practice does to achieve it.
- Drives the BPA practice.
- Answers: What do we do? Whom do we serve? How do we service them?
A mission statement focuses on the purpose of the brand; the vision statement looks to the fulfillment of that purpose.
A vision statement:
- Focuses on tomorrow and what an organization ultimately wants to become.
- Gives the company direction.
- Answers: What problems are we solving? Who and what are we changing?
A vision statement provides a concrete way for stakeholders, especially employees, to understand the meaning and purpose of your business. However, unlike a mission statement – which describes the who, what, and why of your business – a vision statement describes the desired long-term results of your company's efforts.
Source: Business News Daily, 2020
Set realistic BPA goals
Automation is more than a tool. It brings a cultural and operational shift that many organizations struggle to adopt.
Stakeholders recognize the importance and want to innovate, be differentiators, and find new ways to deliver more value. The slow IT response and low barrier to entry for many traditional technologies motivated stakeholders to invest in process automation technologies to achieve advertised benefits without the traditional IT headaches. But they may be oversold.
In the case for RPA (a popular enabler of process automation), 90% of organizations believe that RPA has met or exceeded their expectations1 on improved productivity, improved compliance, and cost to implement. However, these organizations likely have built a practice around their automation tools that goes beyond the technology, which heavily contributed to their success.
In fact, only 25% of the mistakes or problems experienced have to do with the RPA technology. Of those, 75% are more to do with management of the technology.2
Bottom Line: The entire organization must change how it works and operates in order to see the full benefits of business process automation.
1 Deloitte, 2018.
2 Robotic & Cognitive Automation, 2019.
Benefits are not equally felt across the industry. In the case of RPA:
22% of organizations did not see their expectations of timeliness/ ability to work 24/7 met.
20% of organizations did not see their cost reduction expectations met.
19% of organizations did not see their expectation of flexibility to scale capacity met.
Source: Deloitte, 2018.
Measure success with the right metrics
Establishing and monitoring metrics are powerful ways to drive behavior and strategic changes in your organization. Determine the right measures that demonstrate the value of your BPA efforts by aligning them with your business objectives, business value drivers, BPA goals, and non-functional requirements.
Select metrics with different views
01 BPA Practice Effectiveness
The ability of your practice to deliver, support, and operate BPA.
Examples: Solution quality and throughput, delivery and operational costs, number of defects and issues and system quality.
02 Automation Value
The outcome of your optimized processes and BPA solutions.
Examples: Time and money saved, use of products and services, speed of process execution, number of errors, and compliance with standards.
03 BPA Journey Goals and Milestones
Your organization's position in your BPA journey.
Examples: Maturity score, scope of BPA adoption, comfort and confidence with BPA capabilities, and complexity of automated processes.
Leverage Info-Tech's Diagnostics
End-User Feedback
- Value of automation platform and scope of adoption
- Value of the apps enabled or modernized with automation
- Improvement in end user support
CIO Business Vision
- Improvements to IT satisfaction and value
- Changes to the value and importance of IT core services with BPA
- The state of business and IT relationships
- Capability to deliver and support BPA effectively
2.1.1 Create your BPA value canvas
1-2 hours
- Complete the following fields to build your scaled business process automation canvas using the outcomes of the previous exercises:
- Document your findings in the Business Process Automation Strategy Template.
Output |
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Participants |
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Download the Business Process Automation Strategy Template
2.1.1 cont'd
Scaled BPA value canvas template:
Problem Statement
The problem or need scaling BPA is addressing
List of Stakeholders
List of key resources, stakeholders, and teams needed to support the process, systems, and services.
Business Processes / Applications / Functions in Scope
List of business capabilities, processes, and application systems related to this initiative.
Vision
Vision, unique value proposition, elevator pitch, or positioning statement
Business and IT Objectives and Metrics
List of business and IT objectives or goals for the scaling BPA initiative.
Constraints / Roadblocks / Challenges
List of constraints, roadblocks and challenges that may restrict or block your success.
Step 2.2
List your guiding principles
Activities
2.2.1 Define your guiding principles
This step involves the following participants:
- IT and business leadership
- Business process and unit owners
- Application and product owners
- IT delivery and operational teams
Outcomes of this step
- BPA guiding principles
Collaboration is key to BPA success
Collaboration
IT, business, and end users work together to design, deliver, and support BPA. The goal is to ensure that the right process and automation design and technologies are selected and that the system is configured correctly to support them.
Clarity
Clearly understand the BPA goals and their alignment to the broader business strategy. This transparency sets reasonable expectations, motivates stakeholder participation, and strengthens business process and automation ownership.
Integration
Explore methods to integrate the workflows, toolsets, and data among those using, delivering, and supporting BPA. The goal is to gain a broader picture of process adoption, application usage, truly understand end users, and commit to value-driven work.
"Collaboration is the best way to deploy automation. Each business is an expert in its own field, in its own needs and processes – but not necessarily in automating those processes."
– Guy Kirkwood (Fujitsu)
Process automation requires quality-first thinking
Meet your quality standards without overly investing effort.
Quality assurance does not simply mean that you are building the right things, but that you are building things right. Business process automation is no exception. See the Build a Software Quality Assurance Program blueprint for more information on quality definitions and quality assurance practices.
Create a glossary to achieve a common understanding of the units, techniques, and terminology used in your process automation practice and the standards that make automation delivery and management high quality.
Use this glossary to build working agreements with the roles involved in process automation and to optimize the productivity of delivery and management practices by reinforcing key QA techniques:
- A team designs, plans, delivers, and maintains automation with the business.
- The benefits of the whole outweigh the gains of the individual.
- Discuss significant business and technical roadblocks for automation delivery (e.g. missing requirement, hidden complexity).
- Focus on the entire application stack, not just on the process.
- Monitor and manage the value of automation with system dashboards and regular consultations with end users.
Develop automation solutions that align with your quality standards
- Testability – Solutions can be verified and validated for all processes they automate.
- Reusability – Components and practices of automation delivery are suitable for use in other business processes and lines of business (LoBs).
- Modifiability – Capability to address the risks and costs of change, considering what can be changed and its likelihood, when and who makes the change, and the costs for change.
- Supportability – Ability to provide insights for identifying and resolving issues when automation delivery and operations fail.
- Compliance – Adjust automation programming to meet changes in industry standards, regulations, ethics, and company policies.
Take an ethical stance
The lack of industry-wide accepted ethical standards motivates organizations to develop their own.
Automation leads must not only think of how a solution operates at a technical level or what goals it is trying to achieve, but why it is worth doing and how the outcomes of the automated tasks will impact the broader internal and external audiences' reputation, morality, and perception. As you begin to determine what you should automate or not automate, ask these key questions:
- What operating environment are you building for the end user, line of business, and organization? What capabilities are you enabling or removing from human workers?
- What type of person, department, and organization are you becoming with automation?
- What are the norms and identities automation is establishing? Will automation uphold the existing duties and responsibilities defined and implied in the organization?
- What are the consequences of process automation? Do they improve the common good or the individual worker?
See our Mitigate Machine Bias blueprint for more information.
"I think you're going to see a lot of corporations thinking about the corporate responsibility of [organizational change from automation], because studies show that consumers want and will only do business with socially responsible companies."
– Todd Lohr
Source: Appian, 2018.
Automate with the user at heart
BPA value is only delivered when the end user and stakeholders are happy and satisfied with the change.
User experience (UX) is critical for BPA success. It includes a user's emotions, beliefs, and the physical and psychological responses that occur before, during, or after interacting with a service or product. Good UX produces, builds, and strengthens the business-IT relationship because of the end user's trust that IT has their needs at heart. Designing for a high-quality, fulfilling user experience requires more than just focusing on the UX. It also requires merging multiple business, technical, and social disciplines, which can be foreign to some business and IT decision makers and delivery teams.
Instill Gemba
Many process and technical assumptions are made by decision makers who are disconnected from users, risking value delivery. Gemba motivates decision makers to go to "the place where value is created" to learn about and understand their end users so that modernization efforts reflect their needs.
Democratize Technology
New technologies and intuitive UX enable and empower non-IT roles to access and use BPA capabilities and other corporate services and products in sophisticated and meaningful ways without being burdened by IT constraints and processes. However, IT still maintains the guardrails and steps in when technical issues get out of hand.
Empathize with Frustration
End-user frustrations go beyond functional completeness or system stability. Emotional friction can be created by a negative response to the UI or because the technology is mentally overwhelming to use. IT must be ready to work with end users to make necessary changes to bolster the technology's adoption and value.
For more information, see our Use Experience Design to Drive Empathy With the Business blueprints.
Embrace a common BPA mindset with guiding principles
Teams may have their own perspectives on and practices for how they can deliver value. These attributes can motivate you to adopt guiding principles that will lay out your core values to cement a consistent organizational perspective on how to improve your business processes. Guiding principles can help you achieve the following:
- Embrace different perspectives in process analysis by fostering collaboration within business teams and functional roles.
- Accommodate the social, ethical, and personal needs of end users and stakeholders in process optimization.
- Ensure all teams are driven toward the same business and technical goals even if teams are operating differently.
- Build operational consistency and maximize the value of enterprise applications and cross-department processes.
Info-Tech Insight
Following methodologies by the book can be detrimental if they do not fit with your organization's needs, constraints, and culture. The goal of all teams is to deliver value. Any practices or activities that drive teams away from this goal should be removed or modified.
2.2.1 Define your guiding principles
0.5-1 hour
- Discuss how you, your teams, and your stakeholders want to view yourselves when it comes to process optimization and automation.
- Mark the words, phrases, and themes that dominated the discussions. Also indicate the topics that your teams found highly important.
- Discuss your business process automation guiding principles. Your guiding principles should consider key organizational priorities, team and personal objectives, good practices, and team and organizational culture as they pertain to process optimization and automation.
- Document your findings in the Business Process Automation Strategy Template.
Download the Business Process Automation Strategy Template
Output |
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Participants |
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2.2.1 cont'd
Example:
- Low-risk, high-volume, repeatable, streamlined, and technically sound business processes should be prioritized for automation. Sensitive and complex processes should come later, as directed by stakeholders. Start small and simple. Consider additional monitoring controls for mission-critical processes. A strong intake process will identify automation opportunities.
- Automation practitioners should have a "what can go wrong?" mindset and plan for countermeasures. Consider sunny- and rainy-day scenarios, extreme cases, and edge cases as part of design, development, and implementation, and address the necessary risks and impacts.
- Automation solutions need to undergo robust risk-based design, functional testing, and user acceptance testing (UAT). Build in quality assurance and risk-based thinking early in the delivery lifecycle. Business and IT stakeholders define the risk factors they care about that must be included in the automation's design, development, testing, and deployment. Decision makers are accountable for signing off on deployment, and the necessary workflows and plans are in place to address surfaced or escaped issues.
- Watertight processes around security and compliance are critical. Some automation solutions (e.g. robotic process automation [RPA], AI) have usernames and passwords. Prevent misuse and unauthorized access by encrypting these usernames and passwords and controlling access based on employees' assigned privileges. Have steps in place to ensure compliance with regulations and industry standards.
- Strong change-control processes are critical. Make automation teams aware of system interface changes so they can make timely updates. As automation efforts expand, risk management is a critical line of defense in the governance of these programs.
- Communication is paramount. Everyone is aware of and understands the impacts of the process, application, data, integration, and other strategic and tactical changes to automation technologies.
Adapted from EY, 2019
Step 2.3
Envision your BPA target state
Activities
2.3.1 Envision your BPA target state
This step involves the following participants:
- IT and business leadership
- Business process and unit owners
- Application and product owners
- IT delivery and operational teams
Outcomes of this step
- Desired scaled BPA target state
Create your recipe for BPA success
Your recipe (approach) for scaling BPA can involve multiple different flavors of various quantities to fit the needs and constraints of your organization and workers.
Which ingredients you need and how much is dependent on three key questions:
- How can we ease BPA implementation?
- How can we broaden the BPA scope?
- How can we loosen constraints?
Your desired scale state will influence which capabilities you want to establish and mature first.
Align your target state to your BPA expectations and risk and change profiles
Extend BPA across business units (horizontal)
Integrate BPA across your application architecture (vertical)
Embed AI/ML into your automation technologies
Empower users with business-managed automations
Combine multiple technologies for end-to-end automation
Increase the volume and velocity of automation
Automate cognitive processes and making variable decisions
Describe your BPA target state by answering these questions
Seeing the full value of your scaling approach is dependent on your ability to support BPA adoption across the organization
How can we ease BPA implementation?
- Good governance practices (e.g. role definitions, delivery and management processes, technology standards)
- Support for innovation and experimentation
- Interoperable and plug-and-play architecture
- Dedicated technology management and support, including resources, documents, templates and shells
- Accessible and easy-to-understand knowledge and document repository
How can we broaden BPA scope?
- A unified experience across processes, fragmented technologies, and siloed business functions
- Improve cognitively intensive activities, challenging decision making, and complex processes with more valuable insights and information using BPA
- Proactively react to business and technology environment and operational changes and interact with customers with unattended automation
- Infusing BPA technologies into your product and service to expand their functions, output quality, and reliability
How can we loosen constraints?
- Processes are automated without the need for structured data, optimized processes, and having to work around or avoid legacy applications
- Workers are empowered to develop and maintain their own automations
- Coaching, mentoring, training, and onboarding capabilities
- Accessibility and adoption of underused applications are improved with BPA
- BPA is used to overcome the limitations or the inefficiencies of other BPA technologies
2.3.1 Envision your BPA target state
0.5-1 hour
- Discuss what you want to gain from scaling BPA using your BPA value canvas, guiding principles, and risk and change profiles.
- Discuss the different "flavors" of scaled BPA and how each flavor can meet your BPA goals while adhering to your guiding principles and risk and change profiles. Ask yourself these key questions:
- Discuss what this target state may look like.
- Document your findings in the Business Process Automation Strategy Template.
Download the Business Process Automation Strategy Template
Output |
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Participants |
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Continuously review and realign expectations
Optimizing your scaled BPA practices and applying continuous improvements starts with monitoring the practice after implementation.
Purpose of monitoring
- Diligent monitoring confirms your scaled BPA practice and implementations are performing as desired and meeting initial expectations.
- Holding reviews of your BPA practice and implementations helps assess the impact of marketplace and business operations changes and allows the organization to stay on top of trends and risks.
Metrics
Metrics are an important aspect of monitoring and sustaining the scaled practice. The metrics will help determine success and find areas where adjustments may be needed.
Hold retrospectives to identify any practice issues to be resolved or opportunities to undertake
The retrospective gives your organization the opportunity to review themselves and brainstorm solutions and a plan for improvements to be actioned. This session recurs, typically after key milestones. While it is important to allow all participants the opportunity to voice their opinions, feelings, and experiences, retrospectives must be positive, productive, and time boxed.
Step 2.4
Build your opportunity backlog
Activities
2.4.1 Capture and backlog your opportunities
This step involves the following participants:
- IT and business leadership
- Business process and unit owners
- Application and product owners
- IT delivery and operational teams
Outcomes of this step
- Prioritized BPA opportunities
Build your BPA opportunity backlog
Your backlog gives you a holistic understanding of demand for business process optimization and automation.
A minimum viable automation (MVA) focuses on a single and small process use case, involves minimal possible effort to improve, and is designed to satisfy a specific user group. Its purpose is to maximize learning and value and inform the development of a full-fledged process automation practice.
See our Build a Winning Business Process Automation Playbook blueprint for more information.
Explore industry examples for insights and inspirations
Industry Research and Standards
Business Process Automation and Mapping Vendors
Industry Examples
Build your opportunity assessment framework
Refine and shortlist your backlog of business process automation opportunities by first reviewing their risks and organization changes:
- Risk Assessment – What are the business and IT risks of each opportunity? What is the probability and impact of it occurring?
- Organizational Change Assessment – What is the readiness and ability of the people, processes, and technology to change?
Then, weigh the degree of delivery effort against the expected benefits of each opportunity.
Realize not all opportunities will be suited for business process optimization and automation:
- Optimize & Automate – Focus on the opportunities with the least resistance and tolerable risks.
- Decompose – Break down these opportunities into smaller items that are lower risk and involve more acceptable changes.
- Reassess – Remove the low-value, inefficient, and low-impact opportunities from consideration and combine with another opportunity to strengthen its case.
- Backlog – Work with stakeholders to reposition the scope of changes so that they are easier to accommodate.
Narrow your automation focus by prioritizing your opportunities
You will see an endless supply of automation and optimization opportunities from various stakeholders, but you will not be able to address them all. You need to prioritize these ideas to identify which ones you should tackle first – or at all. Support your prioritization through these three lenses:
- Feasibility – Do you currently have the capabilities to deliver on this opportunity? Do you have the right partners, resources, or technology?
- Desirability – Is this opportunity a change the stakeholder needs? Does it solve a known pain point?
- Viability – Does this initiative have an impact on the business value drivers of the organization? Is it a profitable and productive opportunity that will support the business model? Will this opportunity require a complex cost structure?
Opportunities | Feasibility | Desirability | Viability |
Centralized repository for research knowledge | H | H | H |
Streamlined course-creation toolkit | H | H | H |
Connectivity self-assessment/ checklist | H | M | H |
Forums for students | M | H | H |
Exam preparation (e.g. education or practice exams) | H | H | H |
Pitfalls in selecting BPA opportunities
Ignoring synergies and reusability between automated processes Some processes use the same applications or same logic. Therefore, parts developed for the first process can be used in the second process, effectively easing and shortening its development. So, there may be 4 processes, each not worth automating, but all are using the same application and similar logic, so developing them together reduces the costs by 40% and now the business case is valid.
Automating processes for the sake of automation, ignoring business case calculation Sometimes automations are developed because a stakeholder has to achieve a KPI 'automate 10 processes in the following year,' even though the automated processes do not bring enough business value compared to costs of development and upkeep. Following this path will effectively hurt BPA-related KPIs and will create a negative perception of the automation.
Starting with a high value, high complexity process
Innovative BPA technology is released, and attractive promises are announced. Due to lack of experience in process engineering or architectural insights, the process is even more complex than expected, some solution functionalities can't be added, and the project takes twice as much time as planned. Where there's a possibility always start with a more straightforward process.
Source: Flobotics, 2021.
2.4.1 Capture and backlog your opportunities
1-3 hours
- Brainstorm the various BPA opportunities with your stakeholders, IT teams, and business executives. See Info-Tech's Build a Winning Business Process Automation Playbook for more tactics to identify BPA opportunities.
- Review your business value drivers, stakeholder assessments (e.g. personas, journey maps), risk profile, organizational change profile, and your desired target state.
- Modify the risk and change scoring criteria to emphasize the factors that have greater influences in your opportunity selection. Info-Tech suggests having each factor equally weighted.
- List the top five business value drivers, top stakeholder needs/concerns, and desired BPA target state in the scoring criteria. Info-Tech suggests business value driver and stakeholder needs equally weighted.
- Assess each opportunity against your risk, change, and expected benefit (high, medium, low) scoring criteria and average them.
- Estimate the degree of effort and cost to deliver each opportunity.
- Plot each opportunity on the framework using risk and change scores as the axis position, using the expected benefits score for plot color (low = red, medium = yellow, high = green), and using delivery effort estimation plot size (small effort = small size, medium effort = medium size, large effort = large size).
- Prioritize your opportunities to determine which ones should be delivered first.
- Document your findings in the Business Process Automation Strategy Template.
Output |
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Participants |
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2.4.1 cont'd
Mainstream Risk
Risk | Definition | Assessment Score |
Financial | The ability to obtain sufficient and timely funding capacity. | 1 (Low) – 2 – 3 (Moderate) – 4 – 5 (High) |
Non-Financial | Non-financial risks are risks that are not considered traditional financial risks such as operational risk, technology risk, culture and conduct. | 1 (Low) – 2 – 3 (Moderate) – 4 – 5 (High) |
Reputational | Potential negative publicity regarding business practices regardless of validity. | 1 (Low) – 2 – 3 (Moderate) – 4 – 5 (High) |
Strategic | Risk of unsuccessful business performance due to internal or external uncertainties, whether driven by events or trends. Actions or events that adversely impact an organization's strategies and/or implementation of its strategies. | 1 (Low) – 2 – 3 (Moderate) – 4 – 5 (High) |
Sustainability (ESG) | This risk of any negative financial or reputational impact on an organizations stemming from current or prospective impacts of ESG factors on its counterparties or invested assets. | 1 (Low) – 2 – 3 (Moderate) – 4 – 5 (High) |
Talent and Risk Culture | The widespread behaviors and mindsets that can threaten sound decision making, prudent risk taking, and effective risk management, and can weaken an institution's financial and operational resilience. | 1 (Low) – 2 – 3 (Moderate) – 4 – 5 (High) |
Talent and Culture Risk
Risk | Definition | Assessment Score |
Capacity | Insufficient and diverse workforce or depth of talent stifling growth. | 1 (Low) – 2 – 3 (Moderate) – 4 – 5 (High) |
Capability | The lack of depth of internal talent due to difficulties retaining key people, failure to develop skills, lack of sufficient pipeline of future leaders, or lack of clarity on roles needed to deliver business value. | 1 (Low) – 2 – 3 (Moderate) – 4 – 5 (High) |
Cost | The risk of insufficient budget to develop existing or obtain new talent. | 1 (Low) – 2 – 3 (Moderate) – 4 – 5 (High) |
Culture | An organization's lack of willingness to change workforce expectations or lack of agility due to legacy talent practices or failure to innovate and learn (mobility policies). | 1 (Low) – 2 – 3 (Moderate) – 4 – 5 (High) |
Compliance | The risk of not being compliant with regulations (employee relations, DEI, workforce safety, employee conduct, accessibility). | 1 (Low) – 2 – 3 (Moderate) – 4 – 5 (High) |
2.4.1 cont'd
Technology Risk
Risk | Definition | Assessment Score |
Change (Transformation) | Risk arising from the inability of an institution to manage IT system change in a timely and controlled manner in a particularly large and complex change programs. | 1 (Low) – 2 – 3 (Moderate) – 4 – 5 (High) |
Performance | The risk that IT infrastructure will not perform at required levels due to inferior internal processes, technology, or external relationships that may threaten demand. | 1 (Low) – 2 – 3 (Moderate) – 4 – 5 (High) |
Availability/Continuity | The risk that performance and availability of ICT systems and data are adversely impacted, including the inability to timely recover the institution's services, due to a failure of ICT hardware or software components; weaknesses in ICT system management; or any other event. | 1 (Low) – 2 – 3 (Moderate) – 4 – 5 (High) |
Delivery (Execution Risk) | Risks associated with the execution/completion and operation of a specific project. It is the degree of exposure to negative events and their probable consequences. | 1 (Low) – 2 – 3 (Moderate) – 4 – 5 (High) |
Disruptive Innovation | It is an innovation that completely changes the way people do something (for instance, e-commerce versus physical in-store shopping). It describes innovations that improve products or services in unexpected ways. This innovation changes both the way things are done and the market. The smartphone is an example of a disruptive innovation. It completely changes the way in which users connect to the computer services and each other. | 1 (Low) – 2 – 3 (Moderate) – 4 – 5 (High) |
Asset Management | The risk to a tangible technology asset (e.g. hardware, infrastructure) or intangible asset (e.g. software, data, information) that needs protection and supports the provision of technology services. | 1 (Low) – 2 – 3 (Moderate) – 4 – 5 (High) |
2.4.1 cont'd
Data Risk
Risk | Definition | Assessment Score |
Data Quality | The risk that data is not in a condition to be used as inputs for qualitative or quantitative decision making leading to mistrust or lack of confidence in the data. | 1 (Low) – 2 – 3 (Moderate) – 4 – 5 (High) |
Data Culture | Negative impact on decision making due to insufficient organizational wide practices and collective behaviors and beliefs that support the value of data. | 1 (Low) – 2 – 3 (Moderate) – 4 – 5 (High) |
Data Architecture | The risk that data cannot support business needs due to poorly designed models, assets and policies and standards. | 1 (Low) – 2 – 3 (Moderate) – 4 – 5 (High) |
Data Privacy | Operational risks associated with data processing that results in direct or indirect loss to individuals. GDPR definition of data processing is the set of operations including but not limited to the collection, storage adaption or alteration, disclosure by transmission and dissemination of data. | 1 (Low) – 2 – 3 (Moderate) – 4 – 5 (High) |
Security Risk
Risk | Definition | Assessment Score |
Information | The risk of loss from failure to protect information assets by addressing threats to information processed, stored, and transported by internetworked information systems. | 1 (Low) – 2 – 3 (Moderate) – 4 – 5 (High) |
Physical | The risk of loss from failure to protect systems buildings and supporting infrastructure against threats associated with the physical environment. | 1 (Low) – 2 – 3 (Moderate) – 4 – 5 (High) |
Operational Technology | The risk of loss from failure of programmable digital systems or devices that interact with the physical environment or manage devices that interact with the physical environment. | 1 (Low) – 2 – 3 (Moderate) – 4 – 5 (High) |
Personnel Controls | The risk of loss due to human risk from lack of adherence to rules, procedures and practices dealing with operational effectiveness, efficiency and adherence to regulations and management policies. | 1 (Low) – 2 – 3 (Moderate) – 4 – 5 (High) |
2.4.1 cont'd
Third-Party Risk
Risk | Definition | Assessment Score |
Legal and Compliance | The risk of legal or regulatory sanctions, material financial loss, or loss of reputation an entity may suffer as a result of a third-party supplier's failure to comply with laws, regulation, rules, related self-regulatory organizations standards and codes of conduct applicable to the business. | 1 (Low) – 2 – 3 (Moderate) – 4 – 5 (High) |
Performance | The risk that the third party does not meet required performance levels or agreed upon services or delivered goods due to inferior internal processes, technology or external relationships that may threaten demand. | 1 (Low) – 2 – 3 (Moderate) – 4 – 5 (High) |
Supply Chain Management | The risks related to subcontracting arrangements entered by third parties, including the impact on concentration risk. | 1 (Low) – 2 – 3 (Moderate) – 4 – 5 (High) |
Financial | Risks from financial instability, insolvency, or poor market performance of a third party. | 1 (Low) – 2 – 3 (Moderate) – 4 – 5 (High) |
Strategic | Risks posed by a third party resulting from a change in business model, practice, or value alignment that impacts the strategic relationship. | 1 (Low) – 2 – 3 (Moderate) – 4 – 5 (High) |
Security | The risk that the third party is exposed to a data or security issue. The risk of unauthorized access to IT systems and data from within or outside the institution (e.g. cyber-attacks). An incident is viewed as a series of events that adversely affects the information assets of an organization. The overall narrative of this type of risk event is captured as "who did what to what (or whom) with what result?" | 1 (Low) – 2 – 3 (Moderate) – 4 – 5 (High) |
Technology | Risk arising from the use of information technology (assets, data, people, processes) that could result in negative impacts and/or loss to the organization. | 1 (Low) – 2 – 3 (Moderate) – 4 – 5 (High) |
Strategic Risk
Risk | Definition | Assessment Score |
IT-Business Alignment | IT and business work together on reciprocal involvement in strategic planning. | 1 (Low) – 2 – 3 (Moderate) – 4 – 5 (High) |
IT Capabilities and Performance | IT capabilities and performance are baselined and continually assessed. | 1 (Low) – 2 – 3 (Moderate) – 4 – 5 (High) |
2.4.1 cont'd
Example
Change Factor – Application Stack | Description | Assessment Score |
Value Stream | The value stream can be streamlined and modified to take advantage of BPA to maximize value generation. | 1 (Not Ready or Able) – 2 – 3 (Ready to Change) – 4 – 5 (Able to Change) |
Business Capability | The business capabilities supporting your value stream can be streamlined and modified to take advantage of BPA to maximize value generation. | 1 (Not Ready or Able) – 2 – 3 (Ready to Change) – 4 – 5 (Able to Change) |
Business Process | The business processes supporting your business capabilities can be streamlined and modified to take advantage of BPA to maximize value generation. | 1 (Not Ready or Able) – 2 – 3 (Ready to Change) – 4 – 5 (Able to Change) |
Application UI and UX | The application's user interface and user experience can be modified to best suit the user's functional and personal needs, which include device accessibility, the format of information delivery, and visual and audio designs. | 1 (Not Ready or Able) – 2 – 3 (Ready to Change) – 4 – 5 (Able to Change) |
Application Logic/Code | The application's business logic and code can be modified with modern language, frameworks, and architectures to meet their accessibility, scalability, maintainability, and other quality needs. | 1 (Not Ready or Able) – 2 – 3 (Ready to Change) – 4 – 5 (Able to Change) |
Integration | The application, data, and infrastructure integration strategy and technology can be modified to address new system dependencies and implement the desired architecture. | 1 (Not Ready or Able) – 2 – 3 (Ready to Change) – 4 – 5 (Able to Change) |
Data Architecture | The rules, policies, standards, and models that govern and define the type of data collected and how it is used, stored, managed, and integrated within the organization and its database systems. These can be modified when needed. | 1 (Not Ready or Able) – 2 – 3 (Ready to Change) – 4 – 5 (Able to Change) |
Master Data Management | Your organization established and has control over master data values to enable consistent, shared, contextual use across systems, and it can be modified when needed. | 1 (Not Ready or Able) – 2 – 3 (Ready to Change) – 4 – 5 (Able to Change) |
Infrastructure | The infrastructure and its architecture can be modified when needed. | 1 (Not Ready or Able) – 2 – 3 (Ready to Change) – 4 – 5 (Able to Change) |
Security | The security rules, policies, standards, and models that govern and define how an application should be managed, accessed, consumed, and protected. | 1 (Not Ready or Able) – 2 – 3 (Ready to Change) – 4 – 5 (Able to Change) |
2.4.1 cont'd
Example
Change Factor – IT Delivery and Support | Description | Assessment Score |
IT Resource Capacity | The availability and ability to shift IT resources to complete BPA considering their knowledge, their skills and expertise, the tools at their disposal, and their other priorities and commitments. | 1 (Not Ready or Able) – 2 – 3 (Ready to Change) – 4 – 5 (Able to Change) |
Team Structure | The team can be restructured, and roles can be redefined to best suit the delivery, support, and management of BPA. | 1 (Not Ready or Able) – 2 – 3 (Ready to Change) – 4 – 5 (Able to Change) |
Intake, Analysis, and Backlog Management Practice | The project and work intake, analysis, and backlog management practice can be modified to best leverage and support the value and benefit opportunities of BPA. | 1 (Not Ready or Able) – 2 – 3 (Ready to Change) – 4 – 5 (Able to Change) |
Design and Architecture Practice | The design and architecture practice can be modified to best leverage and support the value and benefit opportunities of BPA. | 1 (Not Ready or Able) – 2 – 3 (Ready to Change) – 4 – 5 (Able to Change) |
Development and Configuration Practice | The development practice can be modified to best leverage and support the value and benefit opportunities of BPA. | 1 (Not Ready or Able) – 2 – 3 (Ready to Change) – 4 – 5 (Able to Change) |
Testing Practice | The testing practice can be modified to best leverage and support the value and benefit opportunities of BPA. | 1 (Not Ready or Able) – 2 – 3 (Ready to Change) – 4 – 5 (Able to Change) |
Deployment and Implementation Practice | The deployment and implementation practice can be modified to best leverage and support the value and benefit opportunities of BPA. | 1 (Not Ready or Able) – 2 – 3 (Ready to Change) – 4 – 5 (Able to Change) |
Application Support, Maintenance, and Management Practice | The application support and maintenance practice can be modified to best leverage and support the value and benefit opportunities of BPA. | 1 (Not Ready or Able) – 2 – 3 (Ready to Change) – 4 – 5 (Able to Change) |
Application and System Monitoring | Application and system performance monitoring, dashboards, and instrumentations can be reconfigured to gauge the success of BPA. | 1 (Not Ready or Able) – 2 – 3 (Ready to Change) – 4 – 5 (Able to Change) |
2.4.1 cont'd
Example
Change Factor – Business Stakeholders | Description | Assessment Score |
Modified Way of Working | An end user's ability to adopt new and modified workflows involving modernized or removed technologies. | 1 (Not Ready or Able) – 2 – 3 (Ready to Change) – 4 – 5 (Able to Change) |
User Experience | An end user's mental, behavioral, and psychological capacity to accept and adopt changes given available training, onboarding, coaching, and communication. | 1 (Not Ready or Able) – 2 – 3 (Ready to Change) – 4 – 5 (Able to Change) |
Shift in Business Model | The business' ability to shift their primary source of business value and realign their business model to fit this new value stream. | 1 (Not Ready or Able) – 2 – 3 (Ready to Change) – 4 – 5 (Able to Change) |
Organizational Reputation and Image | The perception, morality, and image of the organization amid changes to the business and operational model. | 1 (Not Ready or Able) – 2 – 3 (Ready to Change) – 4 – 5 (Able to Change) |
Process, Application, and Product Ownership | The ownership structure of the technical stack of the application or product and the role's/team's ability to drive growth and maturity of the process, application, or product. | 1 (Not Ready or Able) – 2 – 3 (Ready to Change) – 4 – 5 (Able to Change) |
Application System Control | The degree of control and accessibility to the application stack and the organization's ability to make fine-tuned configurations and customizations. | 1 (Not Ready or Able) – 2 – 3 (Ready to Change) – 4 – 5 (Able to Change) |
Business Strategy | The ability to shift the focus, approach, and objectives of the business strategy to lessons learned from this BPA effort. | 1 (Not Ready or Able) – 2 – 3 (Ready to Change) – 4 – 5 (Able to Change) |
Industry Compliance | The organization's ability to pivot or budge on meeting or being guided by regulations (e.g. HIPAA, SOX) and industry standards and frameworks (e.g. ITIL, COBIT). | 1 (Not Ready or Able) – 2 – 3 (Ready to Change) – 4 – 5 (Able to Change) |
2.4.1 cont'd
Expected Benefits and User Fit
Business Value Sources | Stakeholder Needs Assessment | Support Target State BPA | |||||||||
Opportunity | Increase market reach | Minimize operational costs | Improve brand recognition | Align to ESG standards | Increase worker satisfaction | Access by mobile device | Enable French and English language | Use existing UI design standards | Have preference for images, diagrams and videos | Enable for user-defined modification of BPA | Business-managed automations |
Help Desk Intake | Low | High | Low | Medium | High | Medium | High | Medium | Medium | Low | High |
Email Marketing Campaign | High | Medium | High | Medium | Medium | High | High | Medium | High | Medium | Medium |
HR Recruiting | Medium | High | Low | Low | High | Medium | High | Low | Low | Low | Low |
2.4.1 cont'd
Example
Score Factors (Average) | Opportunity 1: Help Desk Intake | Opportunity 2: Email Marketing Campaign | Opportunity 3: HR Recruiting |
Organizational Change Assessment Score
| 4.5 | 1.5 | 3.5 |
Risk Assessment Score
| 2 | 4.5 | 2.5 |
Estimated Delivery Effort | Low | High | Medium |
Expected Benefits | High | Medium | Low |
Manage your automation backlog
Your backlog stores and organizes your BPA opportunities at various stages of readiness. It must be continuously refined to address new requests, maintenance, and changing priorities.
Adapted from Essential Scrum, Kenneth Rubin
A well-formed backlog can be thought of as a DEEP backlog.
Detailed Appropriately: Opportunities are broken down and refined as necessary.
Emergent: The backlog grows and evolves over time as opportunities are added and removed.
Estimated: The effort an opportunity requires is estimated at each tier.
Prioritized: The opportunity's value and priority are determined at each tier.
(Perforce)
See our Deliver on Your Digital Product Vision for more information on backlog practices.
Phase 3
Assess your BPA maturity
This phase will walk you through the following activities:
- Step 3.1: Assess your BPA maturity
This phase involves the following participants:
- IT and business leadership
- Business process and unit owners
- Application and product owners
- IT delivery and operational teams
Develop Your Value-First Business Process Automation Strategy
Phase 3 Insight Summary
Phase Info-Tech Insight
Mature your practice as you scale your BPA technologies. Good skills, resources, and governance and management practices are critical for the successful scaling of BPA tools and technologies. BPA is not a set-it-and-forget-it asset; it needs to be delivered with quality mind and be continuously monitored, reviewed, and maintained.
Step 3.1 | Build for the future. BPA motivates the implementation, modernization, and enhancement of key tools and technologies to maximize the return on those investments. The resulting technology governance and management practices act as building blocks in your organization. We must expect that more BPA and other enabling technologies will be done using these earlier investments. |
Step 3.1
Assess your BPA maturity
Activities
3.1.1 Assess your BPA maturity
This step involves the following participants:
- IT and business leadership
- Business process and unit owners
- Application and product owners
- IT delivery and operational teams
Outcomes of this step
- BPA maturity assessment
- Brainstormed solutions to address BPA gaps
Mature your BPA practice to scale it
The scale and complexity of the BPA solutions you want to adopt are dependent on the maturity of key capabilities in your BPA practice.
While all capabilities are important for the target state of your BPA practice, Info-Tech suggests the capabilities with an asterisk (*) should be the initial focus.
Tailor your maturity assessment for each automation tool and unique implementation
Core Capabilities to Support Maturity and Scaling of BPA
Risk & Change Management*
Continuous process to analyze, evaluate, control, and address the probably negative impacts of risks and changes.
Vision & Objectives*
Clear direction and goals of the business process automation practice.
Business Process Management & Optimization*
The tactics to document, analyze, optimize, and monitor business processes.
Governance
Defined BPA roles and responsibilities, processes, and technology controls.
Business Process Automation Platform Management
The capabilities to manage a BPA platform and ensure it supports the growing needs of the business.
Business Process Automation Delivery
The tactics to review the fit of automation solutions and deliver and support according to end users' needs and preferences.
Learn the five states of BPA maturity
01 Consideration
Your business processes are mapped and optimized for business units that are motivated and supported to change. You have identified and are ready to pilot your automation opportunities.
02 Exploration
A single BPA tool has been or is in the process of being piloted. New processes are introduced to improve an individual's productivity with the goal to evaluate workers, system fit, and define support needs.
This is an acceptable state for only team-based BPA solutions
03 Incorporation
The BPA tool and dependent systems are configured and arranged to enable and execute complex processes within a single business unit. Resources are available to support the delivery and operations of the BPA tool. A case is made to justify further scaling in other areas of the organization, and more pilots are planned.
04 Proliferation
The BPA tool is strategically configured and orchestrated with other tools to improve cross-functional business processes from end to end. Resources are allocated to support organization-wide tool adoption, continuous improvement, and modernization.
05 Optimization
Products and services incorporate automation to deliver engaging, innovative, and insightful experiences. Leading-edge BPA use cases and tools are welcomed, experimented, and piloted. BPA delivery practices are optimized to realize the full benefits at the organization level.
3.1.1 Assess your BPA maturity
1-3 hours
- Select one BPA tool and roles overseeing its use, management, and governance. Review your desired BPA target state. This will be the scope of the maturity assessment.
- Complete the BPA Maturity Assessment tool on your organization's capabilities to support the selected BPA tool and roles and desired BPA target state.
- Review the maturity of each capability grouping and the overall practice on tab 3, "Assessment Summary."
- Brainstorm solutions to address gaps in your maturity.
- Repeat this assessment for other BPA tools and unique implementations.
- Document your findings in the Business Process Automation Strategy Template.
Download the Business Process Automation Strategy Template
Output |
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Participants |
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Reimagine the role of IT
Today's BPA tools enable greater empowerment for end users to create their automations, but they do not remove the need for IT. IT must now envision how they will best support the new environment.
See our Embrace Business-Managed Applications blueprint for more information.
Build and maintain your BPA toolbox
Understand the fit of today's BPA technologies to your functional needs.
Backend Integration
Enables the ability to bring together data from multiple sources to be analyzed, sorted, transformed, and used.
AI/ML
AI is a technology that mimics the thinking and decision-making capabilities of humans. ML learns and improves AI algorithms through experience.
Configuration
Altering the parameters and properties of the system to change its behavior at runtime.
Native Workflow
Designing and tailoring process workflows within an application system to improve its usability and practicality.
App Builder
Platform to develop, test, deploy, and maintain custom, cross-platform applications.
iPaaS
Cloud platform enabling the development, management, and governance of integration flows across on-premises and cloud services and technologies.
Chatbots
Program that simulates and processes human conversations whether they are spoken or written.
iBPMS & Rules Engines
iBPMS is the combination of BPM tools with AI and other intelligence capabilities. Rules engines manage business rules and decisions using predefined logic.
Robotic & Intelligence Automation
RPA leverages an app's UI rather than programmatic access. Automate rules-based, repetitive tasks performed by human workers with AI/ML.
Point Solutions
Solutions that specialize in a specific industry, business domain, and/or business or IT capability.
Use Info-Tech's research to learn more
Select your automation solution with Info-Tech's Rapid Application Selection Framework
Custom & Outsourced Development
Refer to this Info-Tech research:
Modernize Your SDLC
Select a Sourcing Partner for Your Development Team
Configuration & Native Workflow
Refer to this Info-Tech research:
Get the Most Out of Your HRMS
Get the Most Out of Your CRM
Get the Most Out of Your ERP
AI/ML & Chatbots
Refer to this Info-Tech research:
Create an Architecture for AI
Get Started with Artificial Intelligence
Build a Chatbot Proof of Concept
iBPMS, Rules Engines & RPA
Refer to this Info-Tech research:
SoftwareReviews: Business Process Management System
SoftwareReviews: Business Rules Management System
Build Your First RPA Bot
Data Integration & iPaaS
Refer to this Info-Tech research:
SoftwareReviews: Data Integration & iPaaS
Build a Data Integration Strategy
Low-/No-Code & Point Solutions
Refer to this Info-Tech research:
Satisfy Digital End Users With Low- and No-Code
SoftwareReviews: eForms, eDiscovery, Marketing Automation, Document Management, Data Center Automation, Contract Discovery and Analytics
Refer to Info-Tech's blueprints to mature your BPA practice
Build a Winning Business Process Automation Playbook
Automation is not the silver-bullet solution to your workforce productivity challenges. Optimization and automation must be used together to remove root-cause inefficiencies and best use the features and capabilities of your automation solutions.
Satisfy Digital End Users With Low- and No-Code
Low- and no-code promises enticing benefits, but they come with caveats. Without the right training, adoption plan, and governance structure for low- and no-code, IT will be quickly overwhelmed with product quality and management challenges and maintenance will become a nightmare.
Embrace Business-Managed Applications
The traditional model of managing applications does not address the demands of today's rapidly changing market and digitally minded business, putting stress on scarce IT resources. The business is fed up with slow IT responses and overbearing desktop and system controls. Business-managed applications offer an attractive approach to enable and empower the business within the comfort of the IT.
Checkpoint: Does your maturity challenge your BPA goals?
Delivering valuable automations should be done in parallel with strengthening your practice because:
- A disciplined and continuous improvement practice ensures the requirements, assumptions, and constraints of past automation solutions are correctly incorporated into today's priorities and designs.
- The return on BPA investments can be further enhanced by enforcing reusability, scalability and other quality standards in BPA delivery and by working with end users to ensure broader BPA adoption.
- IT is properly equipped and skilled to support the growing and evolving BPA needs of the business and meet the future state vision.
Phase 4
Roadmap your BPA initiatives
This phase will walk you through the following activities:
- Step 4.1: Roadmap your BPA initiatives
- Step 4.2: Assess & mitigate your risks
- Step 4.3: Complete your BPA strategy
This phase involves the following participants:
- IT and business leadership
- Business process and unit owners
- Application and product owners
- IT delivery and operational teams
Develop Your Value-First Business Process Automation Strategy
Phase 4 Insight Summary
Phase Info-Tech Insight
Maximize the learning of your minimum viable automations (MVA). Mature the foundations of your BPA with the knowledge and experience you gained in your MVA as you build and refine your case to scale your BPA implementation across the organization.
Step 4.1 | Start small to evaluate the fit and acceptance of new and modified roles, processes, and technologies. High implementation costs can jeopardize success in big-bang deployments. Nominal adoption with well-understood business capabilities and cooperative stakeholders helps end users focus on solution fit rather than fighting the status quo culture. |
Step 4.2 | Understand the risks of your proposed BPA solution. BPA is an enabling and abstracting capability to technically complex and/or IT-managed technologies. The proposed BPA solution must be compatible with the architecture, data, and policies of existing business systems, and IT must accept and be willing to enable access across traditionally restricted technology and data. |
Step 4.3 | Position your BPA strategy as a collectively owned and managed artifact focused on sharing, enabling, and teaching others. BPA requires various roles, capabilities, and technologies to harmoniously work together to gain the business outcomes our stakeholders expect to see. Everyone needs to participate in the strategic planning and decision making to ensure a proposed change or design from one area does not negatively impact or impede the others. |
Step 4.1
Roadmap your BPA initiatives
Activities
4.1.1 Roadmap your BPA initiatives
This step involves the following participants:
- IT and business leadership
- Business process and unit owners
- Application and product owners
- IT delivery and operational teams
Outcomes of this step
- List of BPA initiatives and roadmap
MVAs are the keys to your automation success
Info-Tech Insight
We recommend thoughtful introduction of minimum viable automations (MVAs) into existing processes and technology with the goal of transforming processes through gradual iterative and incremental people, process, and technology changes.
An MVA focuses on a single small process use case, involves minimal possible effort to improve and is designed to satisfy a specific user group. Its purpose is to:
- Maximize learning.
- Evaluate process change and automation acceptance.
- Inform the development of an automation practice.
The build-measure-learn loop suggests process optimizations should perpetually take an idea and develop, test, and validate it, and then expand on the MVA using the lessons learned and evolving ideas. In this sense, the MVA is just the first iteration in the loop.
Consider the following practices as you build and scale BPA
Break through the noise. Most companies have numerous, often competing business priorities. [...] CEOs need to convince their executives that automation is central to reinventing the business. And reinvention requires not only that business and functional leaders, supported by an automation CoE, identify and execute on automation ideas, but also that every employee contributes to achieving the automation goals. Business leaders will need to adjust the traditional view of automation as an initiative imposed on employees to an initiative alongside, or in collaboration with, employees.
Inspire employees. [...]Awareness is low. Just as a CEO must rally the senior management team to the cause, automation leaders need to inspire employees to take an interest in automation for their everyday work. Hackathons, big prizes for great ideas, and bonuses for people who come up with winning proposals are among the ways to inspire. Companies will also have to think through what they do with the savings derived from an automation project, and how to reward the employees who enable it. Just as companies get consumers excited about buying a product, they can use similar marketing techniques in service of selling automation internally.
Formalize the democratization. Success with automation entails coaching employees on how to spot use cases and how to navigate the transition to automated and optimized processes. [...] Employees should be able to share automation projects with other employees through power users. Having one enterprise-wide platform [...] makes it easy for anyone to develop an automation without going through the IT group. And the IT group or automation CoE can provide the right governance to avoid tool proliferation, assist business users in building their automations, and provide the right frameworks to scale up these automations.
Invest in culture change. Smart leaders recognize, and act quickly to address, employees' fear of losing their jobs to automation. They communicate early and often on the impacts that automation will have in their companies. Democratizing automation ultimately requires employees to adopt a digital or automation-first mindset. And to do so, employees need clarity on what is in it for them as individuals. It's important to highlight how automation empowers employees with better skills, allows them to focus on higher-value activities, and ultimately leads to greater advancement and rewards over their careers. And companies should celebrate the successes of employees who innovate the use of automation to add business value.
Source: UiPath and Bain & Company, 2021.
Roadmap your MVAs against your milestones and release dates
See our Deliver on Your Digital Product Vision blueprint for more information on roadmaps.
4.1.1 Roadmap your BPA initiatives
1-2 hours
- Review your list of BPA opportunities. Brainstorm the various supporting activities required to implement your opportunities.
- Prioritize your opportunities to identify the initial focus.
- Use your high-priority opportunities to define your MVAs using a release canvas, as shown on the following slide.
- Identify what the critical steps to deliver your MVA.
- Review your BPA Maturity Assessment, the gaps that were revealed, and the brainstormed solutions to fill those gaps.
- Group each critical step and solution by how soon you need to address it:
- Document your findings in the Business Process Automation Strategy Template.
Download the Business Process Automation Strategy Template
Output |
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Participants |
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4.1.1 cont'd
MVA Name
4.1.1 cont'd
Example:
Now
- As a prospective customer, I want to learn more about the organization through their website so that I can build my trust in them and give them my business.
- As a marketing specialist, I want to learn more about my customers so that I can tailor promotions and services to prospective and existing customers.
- As an end user, I want to have a seamless user experience across mobile and desktop devices so that I can find the resources I need and increase my productivity.
- As a security specialist, I want to strengthen security controls and practices so that my applications and data are secured from unauthorized access.
Next
- As IT, I want to easily maintain and scale the web infrastructure so that system operations and licensing costs can be minimized, and applications are stable and resilient.
- As an account representative, I want to automate my manual and error-prone tasks and workflows so that I can process more opportunities and focus on new value channels.
- As an end user, I want to chat with an account representative when I have a question or with my peers regarding their experiences so that I can have peace of mind on my concerns and readily adjust my account.
Later
- As IT, I want to migrate my applications to a cloud environment so that we can remove the legacy challenges that are inhibiting our ability to innovate.
- As a business end user, I want to access corporate information and services and receive notifications on a mobile application so that we can complete sales and transactions at customer sites and work from home.
Plan beyond the initial rollout
Validate your BPA adoption path during your phased rollout against three scenarios.
Nominal automation
Business processes, workers and business systems that are deemed fit for automation as-is; strategic lines of business participate in the delivery of BPA.
Minimum automation
Low business buy-in and little motivation to adopt organizational change to leverage and support BPA. Future efforts may need to be scaled down.
Maximum automation
All lines of business want to optimize and automation and to participate in BPA activities; the business is driven to fully incorporate BPA in its operations.
"The sheer volume of business and technological change presented to the CIO means that the technology estate must constantly evolve. It must now be designed for constant and scalable evolution. That's what enterprise-scale agility is, and it is essential for being digital."
– DXC Digital Directions
Continuously monitor your automations
Optimizing your automations and applying continuous improvements starts with monitoring the automation after implementation.
Purpose of monitoring and sustaining
- Diligent monitoring confirms the automation is performing as desired and meeting initial expectations.
- Holding process reviews helps assess the change in the market and in business operations and allows the organization to stay on top of trends and risks.
Metrics
Metrics are an important aspect of monitoring and sustaining the automation. The metrics will help determine success and find areas in the process where adjustments may be needed.
- Make sure the improvement target is regularly being tested against the implementation curve.
Step 4.2
Assess and mitigate your risks
Activities
4.2.1 Assess the risk of your BPA initiatives
This step involves the following participants:
- IT and business leadership
- Business process and unit owners
- Application and product owners
- IT delivery and operational teams
Outcomes of this step
- BPA initiative risk assessment
BPA without a plan is risky
Avoid the common pitfalls:
- Not considering BPA as a business and IT partnership, which requires continuous formal engagement of all participants.
- Not having a good pilot to demonstrate the value of BPA and justify the organizational transformation to support it.
- Not adequately accommodating feedback and changes after automations are deployed and employed.
- Not treating BPA as a motivator for potential future IT optimization efforts and incorporating BPA capabilities in strategic business planning.
- Not involving HR, management, and other leaders to facilitate the organizational change BPA brings.
Consider the various scenarios that risk the success of your BPA initiatives
Common Reasons for BPA Failure
1 The process is more dynamic than you think
2 The target interface changes, but your automation solution does not receive a reminder
3 You underestimate the political implications
4 You have unrealistic expectations
5 Lack of a coherent platform and the ability to scale modules and intelligence
6 Lack of consistency with stakeholders
7 Choosing the wrong process for automation
8 Too much complexity
9 Impossibility of scaling beyond the functional design of the automation solution
10 Lack of business-IT collaboration and visibility into automation deployment
Source: Karl Mielnicki, Flobotics, 2021.
Assess the risk of your BPA initiatives
Even if you received business and IT buy-in for BPA, you may find yourself encountering new people, process, and technology hurdles from within or outside your organization as you optimize and automation. Collaborate with various roles that are involved with or impacted by BPA to discuss the potential risks, including the risks of maintaining the status quo. This assessment is a critical component in your roadmap, as it will evaluate the robustness of your BPA approach against known risks and assure stakeholders that critical risks are mitigated or within tolerable ranges if accepted.
4.2.1 Assess the risk of your BPA initiatives
1-2 hours
- Review your BPA roadmap, initiatives and opportunities.
- Conduct a risk assessment of the upcoming and near-term items of your roadmap.
- Indicate whether a risk should be accepted or not. If not, brainstorm the mitigations that should be included in your BPA roadmap.
- Document your findings in the Business Process Automation Strategy Template.
Download the Business Process Automation Strategy Template
Output |
|
Participants |
|
4.2.1 cont'd
Example:
Business Risk Factor | Tolerance | Probability | Impact | Mitigation |
Organizational change management challenges | Low | High | High | Gradually deliver changes in a predictable and well-communicated manner. |
Business inefficiency and costs | Medium | Low | Medium | Continuously monitor the value gained from the changes. |
Business continuity risks | Low | Medium | High | Continuously monitor the system and proactively address business continuity risks. |
Strategic misalignment | Medium | Medium | Medium | Review the alignment of the BPA effort to the business strategy once it is adopted by end users. |
4.2.1 cont'd
Example:
Technical Risk Factor | Tolerance | Probability | Impact | Mitigation |
System instability and interoperability issues | Low | Medium | High | Continuously monitor the system and proactively address system instability risks. |
Application maintainability issues and technical debt | High | High | Low | Define and standardize coding standards and frameworks. |
System scalability challenges | Medium | Medium | Medium | Continuously monitor the system and proactively address system scalability risks. |
Security breaches and risks | Low | High | High | Continuously monitor the system and proactively address system security risks. |
4.2.1 cont'd
Example:
External Risk Factor | Tolerance | Probability | Impact | Mitigation |
Noncompliant with laws and regulations | Low | High | High | Be up to date with changes in laws and regulations. |
Vendor lock-in and solution relevance | Medium | High | Medium | Maintain vendor engagement on upcoming solution changes. |
External resources, skills, and knowledge unavailable | High | Low | High | Develop cross-functional teams by sharing knowledge. |
Industry standards misalignment | Low | Medium | High | Be up to date with changes in industry frameworks. |
4.2.1 cont'd
Example:
Delivery Risk Factor | Tolerance | Probability | Impact | Mitigation |
Stakeholders: Stakeholders are not identified, resulting in the project driving to the wrong requirements. | Low | Low | High | Identify stakeholders before project commitment. |
Similar projects: Similar BPA initiatives in the past have failed, increasing the difficulty of acquiring buy-in. | High | Low | High | Conduct a root cause analysis behind past project failures by consulting the project teams. |
Project scope: Application teams are incapable of managing scope changes and lack of stakeholder accountability for changes. | Low | High | High | Empower a product owner or business representative to manage scope creep in collaboration with business and IT. |
Resource availability: Critical resources are unavailable for the BPA project. | Medium | High | High | Consult team or functional leads for available resources before committing to BPA effort. |
Timeline certainty: Initiatives are not accurately estimated, and timelines are not realistic. | High | Low | High | Decompose BPA effort into minimum viable automations that can be delivered iteratively. |
Forecast certainty: Stakeholders are not comfortable with benefit and cost forecasts. | Medium | Low | High | Clarify the scope, unknowns, and risks in the estimates. |
Cost overruns: There is a high probability that costs may grow beyond the allocated budget. | Low | Low | High | Deliver changes in iterations, validate their successes in production, and confirm the continued allocation of budget to the next BPA milestone. |
Step 4.3
Complete your BPA strategy
Activities
4.3.1 Complete a cost/benefit analysis
This step involves the following participants:
- IT and business leadership
- Business process and unit owners
- Application and product owners
- IT delivery and operational teams
Outcomes of this step
- Completion of BPA strategy
Complete your BPA strategy
Document your BPA objectives, approach, and roadmap with Info-Tech's Business Process Automation Strategy Template:
- Level set your BPA goals and objectives.
- Define the high-priority opportunities for BPA.
- Communicate your desired scaled BPA target state
- Describe your framework to assess your BPA maturity.
- Lay out your BPA initiatives and roadmap.
Identify the different types of benefit your initiatives may achieve
Benefits are not one dimensional, particularly when it comes to BPA investments. There may be impacts in multiple areas – cost, agility, process efficiency, and even engagement.
Strategic
Strategic benefits typically examine positive outcomes that relate to meeting a corporate goal or objective. A strategic benefit gives insight into the strategic value gained from the proposed investment.
Example:
- Improving customer satisfaction
- Gaining competitive advantage
- Bolstering decision-making ability
Tactical
Tactical benefits are more visible enhancements associated with the implementation of the proposed changes. They are typically short term and are prerequisite steps to achieving strategic benefits.
Example:
- Enhanced technology capability
- Integrated application environment
- One source of data for reporting
Operational
Operational benefits highlight process efficiencies and the effect of the examined option on day-to-day activities. Operational improvements typically include quality improvements and workflow automation.
Example:
- Increased customer call intake
- Faster invoice processing
- Process improvement
Consider the costs you are likely to incur
Assessing the cost of your BPA initiatives is essential to making a sound case. Cost assessment will drive the cost-benefit evaluation and related capacity planning.
Licensing
Licensing represents the recurring operational cost of the BPA solution and tools. The number of users who will have access to the system will determine per-user license cost.
Implementation
The one-time cost of installation and configuration of the BPA solution and tools. Implementation is often divided into phases and includes both a configuration and a resourcing component.
Professional services
Customization work and additional services provided by vendors are billed as time and materials and can include expenses like travel and accommodation.
Maintenance and support
Recurring cost for vendor and internal support for the BPA solution and tools.
Project management
Costs related directly to administering and steering the BPA project, including coordination activities, status reports, and tracking.
Business readiness
Recognizing that different business units will need to be involved in the project, business readiness costs represent time and resources drawn from the business.
Training
Vendors and internally provided training as part of the implementation and change management process for use and support of new or amended capabilities, processes, and applications.
Infrastructure
Capital costs of infrastructure (including hardware) required to support the BPA solution, which can be depreciated over the life of the solution or expensed as operational costs.
Data transformation
Data transformation may involve costs associated with conversion, migration, and cleansing. Usually a one-time cost, but may become recurring if archiving is considered.
Integration
Integration costs related to connecting the BPA solution with current systems and third parties. One-time or recurring depending on customization.
Change management
Change costs include communication and internal marketing to increase adoption and buy-in, as well as training provided beyond vendor training.
Resourcing
The cost of internal permanent and temporary employees, as well as those required to backfill for individuals expected to be involved in the initiative.
4.3.1 Complete a cost-benefit analysis
0.5-1 hours
- Review your BPA roadmap, initiatives, and opportunities.
- Conduct a cost-benefit assessment of the upcoming and near-term items of your roadmap by using previous experiences and projects, public information, and case studies as insights.
- Document your findings in the Business Process Automation Strategy Template.
Download the Business Process Automation Strategy Template
Output |
|
Participants |
|
Manage the communication among all BPA roles and stakeholders
The way you design and structure your BPA practice and position your BPA initiatives affects how delivery roles, end users, and stakeholders complete BPA on their own and with each other. Where you invest in communication and reporting channels and the way you manage your relationships with the business and IT has a significant impact on what BPA tasks get done, when they get done, how they get done, and what the business and IT stakeholders think about it.
Strengthen the relationship and communication channels that exist among all of the roles that are directly or indirectly involved in BPA. Begin to think about how BPA will collaborate and report to each other and to stakeholders, who will be ultimately accountable for the success of BPA, and the degree of each role's involvement and dependency for all technologies and processes.
Enhanced Communication Channels Can Help Overcome the Following Costs:
- Wasted effort and opportunity when a change or delivery complication takes attention away from accomplishing committed BPA work or leads teams to make assumptions.
- Increased overhead expenses when a channel is too broad and complex, requiring additional effort to coordinate dependent BPA work, or when there is duplicated effort on a single BPA task.
- Confusion and delays due to the lack of clarity and transparency around responsibility and accountability for dependent BPA activities.
- Unmotivated teams when management does not provide sufficient support to remove BPA impediments (e.g. silos) and provide a suitably productive environment.
Leverage a flow diagram to understand the communication among stakeholders
Pitch your roadmap initiatives
There are multiple audiences for your pitch, and each audience requires a different level of detail when addressed. Depending on the outcomes expected from each audience, a suitable approach must be chosen. The format and information presented will vary significantly from group to group.
Audience | Key Contents | Outcome |
Benefit and cost owners |
| Sign off on cost and benefit projections |
Executives and decision makers |
| Revisions, edits, and approval |
IT teams |
| Clarity of vision and direction and readiness for delivery |
Business workers |
| Verification of proposed changes and feedback |
Summary of Accomplishment
Develop Your Value-First Business Process Automation Strategy
- Business strategy involving business process automation
- Business value definition
- Stakeholder needs assessment, e.g. persona and customer journey
- Risk and change profiles
- BPA value canvas, including problem statement, vision, objectives and metrics
- BPA guiding principles
- BPA target state vision
- Prioritized backlog of BPA opportunities
- BPA capability maturity and gaps
- BPA initiatives and roadmap
- Risk assessment and cost-benefit analysis
If you would like additional support, have our analysts guide you through an Info-Tech workshop or Guided Implementation.
Contact your account representative for more information.
workshops@infotech.com
1-888-670-8889
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Research Contributors and Experts
Gurpreet Dhaliwal, MBA
Managing Enterprise Architect
Region of Peel
An accomplished technology leader with 25+ years of extensive and diverse experience in building award-winning architecture and strategy teams. A collaborative leader responsible for the delivery of digital strategy, enterprise architecture program, IT governance, target state roadmaps, and IT operating models. Awarded the Top Chief/Head Architect 2019, Global Architecture Ratings & Awards.
Alex Bazin
Chief Technology Officer
Lewis Silkin LLP
Alex is chief technology officer at Lewis Silkin, responsible for leading their technology and information teams. His focus is on all aspects of how users experience technology, both within the firm and as clients. His teams work to maximize the benefits users get from existing systems and to accelerate the application of leading-edge technologies.
He has over 15 years of experience in technology management and strategy, including with leading global IT and Business Services companies. He has also led a software startup and innovation unit on behalf of an international logistics firm. He is passionate about developing high-performing, diverse teams and inclusive, agile company cultures. He is a Chartered Engineer and member of the Institution of Engineering and Technology.
Benjamin Palacio
Senior Information Technology Analyst
County of Placer
Benjamin Palacio has been working in the application development space since 2007 with a strong focus on system integrations. He has seamlessly integrated applications data across multiple states into a single reporting solution for management teams to evaluate, and he has codeveloped applications to manage billions in federal funding. He is also a CSAC-credentialed IT Executive (CA, USA).