Lessons Learned and business case for a

GROW FOR TOMORROW rapid RPA

Lee Ward and Mohit Sharma

15th December 2016

 Speakers

Leanne (Lee) Ward is the EGM for Commercialization of Business Services for a leading
global Infrastructure and Facilities Management company . She is an evangelist of RPA in the
business as a way to reduce cost, increase productivity, eliminate rework and most
importantly improve employee engagement through removing mundane activities. Her vision
is not to just use this as an internal tool, but also as part of services delivered to external
clients. Lee is a technologist at heart and sees this as the start of the journey through
business process automation and artificial intelligence, much of which is yet to be developed.
Her interests include fitness, reading anything on new technology, investing in start-ups and
Leanne Ward meeting people who are hopefully at least as interesting as the bots!
EGM
Leading Infrastructure
Management Company

Mohit has over 20 years of experience working in Strategy, Corporate Finance, and Risk
Management Solutions for Deloitte, PwC, and EY. Mohit has authored and published one of
the first and most comprehensive research on Robotics and Process Automation. Mohit
provides advisory services to leading global financial and non-financial organization in US,
Australia, UK, and India on their journey for Automation and Artificial Intelligence. Mohit
loves cricket and food, in that order. Mindfields has done more than 9 RPA live projects in
Mohit Sharma Aus, and 2 in US
Managing Director
Mindfields

© 2016 Mindfields. All rights reserved. Webinar 15th December 2016

2
 People >>>> Process >>>> Technology

Agenda

© 2016 Mindfields. All rights reserved. Webinar 15th December 2016

3
 People >>>> Process >>>> Technology

Particulars Time

Webinar and Speakers Introduction 1 minutes

Session 1 : Leanne (Lee) Ward’s presentation (What, Why and How of Rapid RPA) 15 minutes

Session 2 : Business case 10 minutes

Session 3 : Lessons learnt 10 minutes

Session 4 : Questions 20 minutes

Closing Statements 2 minutes

Polls during the webinar 2 minutes

© 2016 Mindfields. All rights reserved. Webinar 15th December 2016

4
 Mindfields Business Mode (Click here to watch video)((link to video)

Machine Learning Robotic Process Automation Artificial Intelligence

Educate

Research

Consult

Execute

Webinar 15th December 2016

© 2016 Mindfields. All rights reserved.
5
 Our Value Proposition

Thought Leader in RPA Independent and Vendor

Domain agnostic

RPA software agnostic Success based pricing Advisory focussed

Webinar 15th December 2016 6

© 2016 Mindfields. All rights reserved.
 People >>>> Process >>>> Technology

What is Rapid RPA ?

© 2016 Mindfields. All rights reserved. Webinar 15th December 2016

7
 People >>>> Process >>>> Technology

Rapid RPA has following attributes?

Quick wins

Business case should stand up on its own

Implementation time frame with less than 4 months

No bureaucracy

Talk and walk straight (with focus)

No frill consultancy

Agile framework

Simple to Moderate process

Simple to use RPA tool

© 2016 Mindfields. All rights reserved. Webinar 15th December 2016

8
 People >>>> Process >>>> Technology

Why did you should choose Rapid RPA?

© 2016 Mindfields. All rights reserved. Webinar 15th December 2016

9
 People >>>> Process >>>> Technology

© 2016 Mindfields. All rights reserved. Webinar 15th December 2016

10
 Where it all began..

Firstly, our culture and my direct boss work the way. So we could….
• FFF – first fail fast
• LAD – learn, adapt and deliver

Business Services commercialisation – growth agenda, however:

• Cost structure not competitive
• Clients would not tolerate errors/rework
• Time duration for some processes was too long

RPA could be a differentiator for commercialisation – potentially

eliminating expensive integrations/APIs

Engaged with Mindfields for a high level study and business case
constrained to Business Services and to complete a Proof of Concept.

© 2016 Mindfields. All rights reserved. Webinar 15th December 2016

 People >>>> Process >>>> Technology

© 2016 Mindfields. All rights reserved. Webinar 15th December 2016

12
 People >>>> Process >>>> Technology

How did we execute Rapid RPA ?

© 2016 Mindfields. All rights reserved. Webinar 15th December 2016

13
 How we do it ?

Step 1: Spent Dec 15/Jan 16 doing extensive research

(holiday time in Australia)
• Read all the vendors websites/case studies/sale pitch
(about 40)
• Read vendors corporate material and googled for
whatever I could find as part of a “due diligence”
• Contacted vendors of interest
• The sales pitch felt too good to be true - low risk,
high speed, little investment. As the fairy dust settled
all around, decided we needed independent advice.

Step 2: Engaged with Mindfields for a high level study and

business case constrained to Business Services and to
complete a Proof of Concept.

© 2016 Mindfields. All rights reserved. Webinar 15th December 2016

 People >>>> Process >>>> Technology

© 2016 Mindfields. All rights reserved. Webinar 15th December 2016

15
 Break RPA project into small pieces

Step 3: Broken the program into phases – works

better with our culture to deliver “something”
sooner, a bit more 6 months later etc.
Our processes were important, but not so critical
that we would stop the company, affect the stock
price etc.
Settled on 5 processes for phase 1:
• Employee On boarding
• Vendor Reconciliation
• Support Resource Allocations
• External Debtors Aging
• JAMIX (front office catering-SAP app)

© 2016 Mindfields. All rights reserved. Webinar 15th December 2016

 First 30 days: Business case and Proof of concept (PoC)

Step 1: Mindfields did RPA Assessment and Roadmap

Mindfields assessed 30 processes – all back office business
services at this point – ranged from 20-250K savings pa
Outcome
We selected employee on boarding and vendor
reconciliations for 2 proof of concept.
Step 2: Selected 2 tools for PoC
Mindfields advised on the selection of RPA tools meeting
Our business and IT requirements
Outcome
Used UiPath and Automation Anywhere to do the pilots
• Both were successful but in hindsight not that helpful
• Issues were surfaced around the data input sources as
test data was used
• Some involved re-shoring of work from an existing
vendor….more on that later

© 2016 Mindfields. All rights reserved. Webinar 15th December 2016

The Art and Science of the detailed Business Case

Pre-project: Business case and POCs with Mindfields

Phase 0: set-up costs. We came up with a concept of
Minimal Viable Design (MVD) to get going. Mostly
capitalised over 5 years.
• MVD turned out not to be “viable” – a FFF.
Phase 1: 5 processes, 4 Months from selection to UAT.
• We came up with an iterative, collaborative
approach which falls under FFF.
• Breakeven to script/test.
• Annualised savings> Annual run cost
Phase 2: 12 processes (and growing by popular
demand) – will be done in sets of “5”.
• 80% time on BRD, testing data sources are
what we think they are
• 20% coding (T&M not gain sharing at this
stage)
Phase 3 (parking lot): latent demand

© 2016 Mindfields. All rights reserved. Webinar 15th December 2016

 People >>>> Process >>>> Technology

© 2016 Mindfields. All rights reserved. Webinar 15th December 2016

19
 People >>>> Process >>>> Technology

Lessons learnt

© 2016 Mindfields. All rights reserved. Webinar 15th December 2016

20
 Lessons learned

Working with Outsourcing Vendors

• We are heavily outsourced – all IT infrastructure

to one offshore vendor
• Some processes to another offshore vendor
• Little IT knowledge is retained – set standards
and monitor compliance
• Gaps – security and credential setup;
architectural design; BCP considerations
• RPA is a problem for offshore providers
• If you can retain RPA capability in-house until the
market matures
• Most of our delays post UAT are vendor related.
Skills are not there in enough quantity to support
customers at an acceptable level of risk. This will
change.

© 2016 Mindfields. All rights reserved. Webinar 15th December 2016

 Other scars (lessons)

• Take all the hype and halve it

• Spend time to inform and educate people on RPA –
simplify it – remove the “Robo-Language”.
• Process documentation will be lacking and
knowledge lost as people move on
• Business don’t necessarily understand data
structure that well – test what they tell you
• People will feel threatened – be open, honest and
supportive
• Environmental changes are difficult eg: moving to
SAP in the cloud in 60 days

© 2016 Mindfields. All rights reserved. Webinar 15th December 2016

 People >>>> Process >>>> Technology

Questions

© 2016 Mindfields. All rights reserved. Webinar 15th December 2016

23
 People >>>> Process >>>> Technology

Questions?

What processes are well suited for Rapid RPA and what are not?

How ‘rapid’ should a Rapid RPA be?

Please provide examples of processes you have ‘rapidly’ automated and Why?

What is your governance model for Rapid RPA ?

What did not you know when you started that you wish you would had?

What are tips for managing Internal dynamics?

What has been your vision for RPA in your organisation when you started the journey ?

What role would you see a consulting firm would play in Rapid RPA?

What has been your experience being ? Any tips for new starters and established players?

© 2016 Mindfields. All rights reserved. Webinar 15th December 2016

24
 People >>>> Process >>>> Technology

Questions?

How do you get offshore providers to do RPA?

How owns the benefits?

Should business case be process or organisation specific ?

What are your views on treatment of Setup and scripting costs for Rapid RPA in business case?

What is your views on different pricing model proposed by incumbent and non incumbent vendors?

What is your future vision of Rapid RPA in 6 months an 18 months?

© 2016 Mindfields. All rights reserved. Webinar 15th December 2016

25
 People >>>> Process >>>> Technology

© 2016 Mindfields. All rights reserved. Webinar 15th December 2016

26
 AUSTRALIA USA INDIA
Level 7, 276, 5th
Avenue 7, Barakhambha Road
GROW FOR TOMORROW 171 Clarence Street Suite 704, New York Connaught Place
Sydney NSW 2000 NY 10001 New Delhi 110006
Telephone: +61 (02) 8034 6304 Telephone: +1 212 203 7209 703-706, 7th Floor, Arcadia
Facsimile: +61 (02) 8677 8400 Facsimile: +1 917 472 1489 Plot No. 195, Nariman Point
Level 3, 480 Collins Street Mumbai 400021
Melbourne VIC 3000 research@mindfields.net.au
Telephone: +61 (02) 8610 6327 www.mindfields.net.au
Facsimile: +61 (02) 8610 6334

For more information please contact us at research@mindfields.net.au

© 2016 Mindfields. All rights reserved. Webinar 15th December 2016

27