Automation is taking hold in businesses across a variety of industries. Slightly more than 90% of businesses are using automation on some level. But while 90% might seem impressive, it doesn’t mean these businesses are using automation to the extent to which they can or that they are tapping every automation opportunity. In fact, many businesses are facing automation debt.

What is automation debt?

Simply put, automation debt refers to a situation in which opportunities for automation exist but are not being realized. This includes individual tasks and processes that have been identified as candidates for automation but have not yet been automated and processes that have been put on the back burner because they are not expected to deliver a high return on investment (ROI).

It also includes complete processes that have not even been assessed for automation. This is particularly the case when it comes to processes that your competitors have already automated or scaled in order to become more competitive in the marketplace.

The impact of having automation debt

The reason automation debt has been named as such is because it is a form of debt in the sense that it puts your organization at a distinct competitive disadvantage. When you are experiencing automation debt, you won’t be able to scale as quickly or efficiently as other businesses that have adopted automation. In short, if you have not made automation a priority, you are limiting your organization’s growth and ability to reach its true potential.

However, there is another impact of automation debt that can significantly affect your business and it involves your employees. Employees are at the frontlines every single day and can often identify opportunities for automation that management cannot see. These are the people you want to be putting ideas forward, but they are not likely to do so if they know their ideas will be sitting in a backlog of other ideas.

Employees may see firsthand how automation solutions are based solely on financial considerations, rather than taking into consideration the value these solutions bring to the employee on a daily basis. On top of this, employees may hear about how automation is helping their peers at other companies. The result of this is a lack of engagement and a lack of enthusiasm for automation that can hinder future automation efforts.

How to eliminate automation debt

There are two key components to eliminating automation debt. The first of these is to bring employees on board right from the beginning. Ask them to offer up their suggestions of what processes would benefit the most from automation and take the time to assess these suggestions based on both value to the employee and to the organization as a whole.

Keep in mind that these employees may be very keen to learn new skills and have some of their repetitive daily tasks automated so they can find new ways to contribute to the success of your organization. When they are involved in automating key processes within your organization, everyone wins.

The second component that is required for a successful automation program is the ability to act quickly to bring automation into your organization. This will require you to have a solid understanding of your requirements and the best practices that will help you achieve your automation goals.

Having an automation partner who can work with you to create an automation plan is an important part of successful automation. They will help you identify the processes that are top candidates for automation, such as accounts payable, invoice processing, and employee onboarding. They will also be able to help you develop, deploy and maintain your automation solution so that you will be able to effectively scale it when needed.

Agents working in a call center are required to perform a wide range of tasks associated with customer care. Many of these tasks are repetitive and easily reproduced, making them ideal for automation. Robotic process automation (RPA), essentially a software “bot,” can tackle these tasks, freeing up employees to focus on customer engagement. In fact, The Harris Poll found that 46% of customer interactions are already automated, and they predict that number will be as high as 59% by 2023.

How RPA for Contact Centers Works

RPA in contact centers can perform both back-office and front-office tasks. When it comes to back-office tasks, the RPA bots are unattended, which means they can run without human intervention. These bots run continuously in the background, taking care of back-office tasks 24/7.

Bots that work on front-office tasks are attended bots. That means these bots are launched by a human agent and work alongside them to perform tasks that make the agent’s job faster and easier and allow them to put their focus on the customer.

Tasks RPA Can Perform for Contact Centers

RPA can be programmed to perform individual contact center tasks or groups of related tasks that ensure the end-to-end automation of entire processes. These can include:

The Difference RPA Makes in Contact Centers

With all these tasks and processes being performed by RPA bots, agents are able to spend significantly more time in direct engagement with the customer. In addition, these tasks and processes can be completed by RPA in a fraction of the time it takes a human to perform them, ensuring faster call resolution and decreasing call time. The result? A significant increase in customer satisfaction as they:

Use Cases for RPA in Contact Centers

With such a range of tasks that RPA can perform, there are many uses it can be put to. Here are some examples of use cases for RPA in a contact center.

Identify a customer in the system

When an agent gets a call from a customer, they must identify that customer in their system before they can do anything else. This requires the agent to navigate multiple systems that are siloed from one another to pull up the required information, from the customer profile to information related to their order, shipment or support ticket. This is a tedious process that takes time, leaving the customer waiting on hold while the agent does their work.

With RPA, the process of customer identification can be automated. The RPA bot can go into the required systems and pull up all the relevant information in just seconds by doing things like launching apps and making field entries. Meanwhile, the agent is able to stay on the line with the customer.

Update customer information

Once a call comes to its end and the customer issue is resolved, their order placed or relevant changes made, the customer’s information must be updated accordingly. This is another area where the customer has to wait for the agent to do these updates manually.

With RPA, the agent just has to enter these changes once. The RPA bot can ensure that information is integrated across every system that is relevant to the customer’s call. This is all done quickly and with minimal agent intervention.

Create summary scripts

These days, it is common for a summary script of a call session to be created and emailed to the customer for their records. For an agent to do this takes a significant amount of time during and after the call.

When RPA is given the task of creating the summary script of the call, the agent is freed up to really connect with the customer during the call. And since they don’t have to worry about finishing and sending the summary script after the call, they can move on to the next call more quickly, increasing their overall productivity.

How to Implement RPA in Your Call Center

RPA is a powerful tool in your toolbox when it comes to increasing customer satisfaction and your ROI. As such, you want to be sure you approach implementation the right way. This requires you to first identify your business and operational objectives and the tasks and processes that would make the most impact when it comes to reaching those objectives.

Once you have done this, you can then implement RPA and train the required bots to perform their tasks. This will involve bringing onboard an RPA partner who can help ensure you have the right bots that are programmed using a variety of tests cases to ensure they work as they should. These bots can then be brought online in a way that fits with your current systems and workflow.

We’re fast approaching the end of life for Automation Anywhere’s Enterprise V11 platform. That’s not a bad thing, however. The industry-leading RPA vendor is replacing the client-based, a legacy solution with something more agile and modern — Automation 360, formerly known as A2019.

You already know this, of course. That’s why you’re here. You don’t need us to convince you about the value of RPA — you need to convince the decision-makers in your business.

Fortunately, that won’t be difficult to do. As you’ll soon see, the numbers speak for themselves. First thing’s first, however, you’re going to need a plan.

What Is A2019/Automation 360?

The latest iteration of Automation Anywhere’s robotic process automation (RPA) solution, Automation 360 is completely web-based, rebuilt by the company from the ground up. It neither relies on specialized infrastructure nor requires an on-premises installation. This allows it to provide greater functionality, better scalability, and improved ease of use at a lower total cost of ownership than its legacy predecessor.

Automation Anywhere has made a few other changes with Automation 360 as well, including:

When Does Automation Anywhere V11 Reach EOL?

As of March 2021, Automation Anywhere stopped selling Enterprise V11. The product’s official end of life date is September 2022.

The Challenges of Migrating to A2019 from Enterprise V11

To leverage the advanced functionality of Automation 360 and support ongoing business continuity, you need to migrate to Automation 360 as soon as possible. Unfortunately, that’s easier said than done. Because the two versions are so fundamentally different from one another, there are multiple roadblocks to account for :

Planning Your Migration Strategy

Successfully migrating to Automation 360 begins with laying the proper groundwork. You’ll need to take a measured, deliberate approach, assessing and evaluating your progress and infrastructure at each phase. Here’s how that looks in practice:

Initial Assessment

Strategization

Delivery

Evaluation

Deployment

Ensure a Seamless Automation 360 Migration with Tangentia

The prospect of such a complex migration can be both daunting and discouraging. If you’re like most businesses, you likely cannot afford the extensive downtime that would be required. Especially now, you need your RPA platform performing at peak efficiency, with as few interruptions as possible.

Tangentia can help with that.

As a Gold Automation Anywhere Partner and a global leader in RPA, we employ more than 50 trained and certified developers, business analysts, architects, and project managers. Together, these experts have developed a migration process that gets you up and running on Automation 360 as quickly and painlessly as possible. Working with our highly experienced team, you’ll also be able to leverage our powerful, cloud-based Automation Anywhere Platform.

Working with Tangentia, you’ll be able to effortlessly move past any challenges that might prevent a successful migration:

Before you migrate to Automation 360, it is important to verify the migration readiness of your bots. You can scan your bots using Automation Anywheres Bot Scanner and analyze the generated report for information about their current state.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is arguably one of the most transformative technologies in the business world. It can be used to streamline a business across the board, from network security to payroll and order fulfillment. For anyone who’s been paying attention, the benefits are as clear as day.

You already know this, of course. That’s why you’re here. You don’t need us to convince you about the value of RPA — you need to convince the decision-makers in your business.

Fortunately, that won’t be difficult to do. As you’ll soon see, the numbers speak for themselves. First thing’s first, however, you’re going to need a plan.

It All Starts With Your Roadmap

In order to properly conceptualize and explain the specific ways that RPA can benefit your business, it’s imperative that you first know exactly how it will be used within your organization.

For instance, will you apply it to your reporting, eliminating hours of data entry? Will you use it to process invoices for your customers, enabling faster fulfillment times and eliminating potential invoicing errors? Or will you use RPA to streamline your onboarding process so that new employees can get to work that much faster?

The possibilities are, as they say, limitless.

You likely started exploring RPA with a specific problem or set of processes in mind. That’s good. Zero in on that for now, and answer the following questions:

Costs, Benefits, and Potential

Armed with the research you did in the previous step, it’s time to crunch some numbers. First, you want to do a cost-benefit analysis of your project. You want to be as comprehensive as possible here, quantifying every single potential expense and gain.

You’ll also want to calculate your return on investment. What, at the end of the day, does your business ultimately gain from this deployment? What tangible value will this project generate for the business?

Finally, take a brief moment to brainstorm what other areas of your organization might benefit from RPA. In a pinch, having this information on hand could help seal the deal and bring someone who’s still on the fence over to your side. Don’t just focus on broad departments, drill down to specific processes.

Your CBA and ROI are the two figures that really matter here.

The Pitch

Now that you’ve done your research and crunched some numbers, it’s time to think about how you’re going to make your case. Start with the challenge; your reason for proposing the deployment.

Focus on what the issue is costing your business — on what you lose if you leave the problem unaddressed. Again, concrete numbers are your friend here. You want to provide them with specifics.

How many hours of productivity do they lose? How much money is this problem costing them? How many more clients could they serve if they deployed RPA?

From there, you’ll want to explain in layman’s terms precisely how a well-executed RPA strategy can address this problem. Don’t bother going into detail about the features or functions of RPA. Focus on the results.

With any luck, you’ll have made a strong enough case to move forward with your deployment.

Closing Thoughts

So, in summary, to make your case in favor of RPA, you need:

We won’t lie and say it will be easy. But the end result is worth it. And if, after reading this piece, you still aren’t sure where to start or where to go, Tangentia can help.

We have nearly two decades of experience in the automation space and have worked with multiple customers and systems worldwide. We’re also partnered with multiple RPA vendors, meaning that no matter your use case or business model, we have the expertise and the connections you need.

Book a discovery call today, and we’ll help you make your case.