The art of selecting the right RPA vendor

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has become the most sought-after tool in the last few years. While it started with the basic automation of daily mundane and repetitive manual tasks, the key benefits that made RPA attractive include reduced cost; speed, accuracy, and consistency; improved quality, and scalability. It also provides extra security, especially for industries with a high amount of sensitive data like financial services. RPA expanded with API integration into other enterprises, connectors into ITSM systems, terminal servers, and Intelligent automation leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Most enterprises across the world are on board their digital transformation journey and many are considering the options available to get started with theirs. Today, over 50 RPA technology providers are operating worldwide at different scales. Though many organizations have already chosen and adopted RPA tools suitable for their needs; the successful implementation of RPA depends on the type of vendor, their processes, pricing strategies, and capabilities. RPA vendors offer multiple options but here are some of the key factors enterprises need to consider before choosing their RPA tool:

Process Discovery

The basis of successful RPA implementation is based on the identification of the right process for automation and understanding the nuances for the processes, which is being carried out regularly in the organization. Typically, process identification is carried out manually, which has its challenges and biases. On the other hand, process discovery provides a platform to empirically analyze the data and identify the most suitable path variations for automation. Process discovery empowers organizations with deep process insights that not only accelerate the automation strategy but also identify the opportunities for process excellence and workforce efficiency.

Product Automation Capabilities

Enterprises generally have a staggered application landscape across different departments. This makes it crucial to validate the applications involved in the process chosen for RPA and are those applications supported by RPA Vendors. Though most vendors nowadays support RPA for all commonly used applications; it is still imperative to validate at the initial stage to avoid any bottlenecks in later stages of RPA implementation.

Efficiency and Reliability

The automation efficiency and reliability for RPA products depend on the ratio of the number of transactions executed successfully vs the total number of transactions. Higher the ratio; more efficient, the reliable product will be. One of the key point to consider here is how product tackles transactions which are failed; do they provide any automated retry kind of a mechanism or manual intervention is required to re-execute failed transactions.

Deployment options

RPA vendors offer different deployment options. However not all RPA vendors support all these options. Enterprises need to understand the advantages/disadvantages of each deployment model and identify the fitment based on their business requirement.

Scalability

Scalability is one of the most important factors to consider to leverage the ROI RPA offers. Below is a set of areas that encompasses the scalability aspect in RPA space.

User Experience

UX plays a very important role in the success of any product; be it a web application or desktop application. Here is a list of benefits that a good UX design can provide.

Product Technical Support

There’s no such thing as an ideal scenario. Therefore, it is important to know how a product supports its clients when something goes wrong. How quickly the product responds to the issues and fixes them is very important when operating in a scaled-up production environment. A strong and reliable support system thus becomes one of the important factors to consider while finalizing the RPA vendor.

Product Security

With the emergence of advanced technologies, cybercriminals have also found more ways to get into the system of many organizations. Since more and more businesses are now relying on software products for their crucial operations, the importance of software security assurance must be taken seriously – now more than ever. Here is the list of security features, which a good RPA tool must possess.

Governance

RPA has garnered a great deal of attention because of the benefits it brings to operational efficiency. However, as it is a relatively new approach for organizations, RPA typically starts with processes that lack the necessary detail to ensure that errors are mitigated, and risk is reduced during the development and operation of the automated “bots”. Without a structure to control it, automation becomes more responsive, more agile, and less administrative. However, that lack of clear governance increases the risk when automation is expanded and used more widely. The RPA tool should provide better visibility to people involved in the process, pending notifications, ROI dashboards, and various other monitoring and controlling mechanisms.

Pricing

This involves many things like license fees, implementation, maintenance, and many more. Here simplified licensing and pricing must be a key point to consider. Some vendors have complicated pricing like separate studio license, separate bot license, separate orchestrator license, etc. It is always advisable to go for simple license strategies as it adds more clarity and transparency to it. Choosing a vendor based on their pricing strategy can be a cost-effective decision.

Conclusion

RPA can help enterprises save time and money while enabling optimum use of resources. However, choosing the right RPA vendor plays an important role in the successful implementation of RPA and faster realization of ROI. Enterprises should carefully go through the above criteria before selecting any RPA vendors. Each tool has a specific purpose and one must evaluate the full potential of an RPA tool.

AssistEdge RPA, an award-winning and cohesive automation platform that offers new opportunities for scaling up and helps enterprises accelerate their journey towards complete digital transformation. From being an Innovator with the best market approach to a leader in Attended Automation, AssistEdge RPA combines the power of RPA and AI, thus empowering enterprises to be future-ready.