Automation, skills + money

on

  Automation 

   Automation is a huge trend now. Due to advanced technology it is really easy to automate some operations. Good example is a UIPath with its Studio. When you see one demo, try the Studio after it, and you will become an RPA Developer. Is it so easy? No, of course, not. Because you need different skills. But before looking into that, let's understand where the need for automation comes from. I could name several reasons:

  • bad and/or legacy software
  • bad processes
  • bad financial decisions


Bad and/or legacy software

   I'll bet you could make a list yourself: unfriendly design, inadequate documentation, performance issues, no integration capabilities (APIs) or very specific APIs, ill-considered ways of execution (think of a user journey inside the software). As a result, you need to spend so much efforts to do something with that software, that you start to hate it. Time is wasted.

Bad processes

   I assume that it's not that frequent as the 1st one, but still is valid.  You need to change your address, and your bank requires you to come personally to the central, but not the nearest, branch. Time is wasted.

Bad financial decisions

   Software selection is a good example. In many cases, the companies would prefer cheaper.  It's not bad, if you have calculated your ROI, and have taken into consideration such things as maintainability, security, integration needs, UX capabilities. If not, you end up with different software solutions, which could not work together. So you need to create tickets in one system, then track the changes in 2nd system, and create documentation in the 3d one. Time is wasted. 

In the end, wasted time equals wasted money.



   And now you have learned about RPA, which could do magic for you. In many cases it really could, in some cases it does not make sense to spend any money on RPA, but to hire additional people. But let's check the skills which are required for successful RPA project.

Skills


  • Project Management
  • Business Analysis
  • RPA developement


Project Management

You have processes to automate. You have to deal with different systems. And the most important, you have different stakeholders. At least, IT and Business. Someone needs to manage it.


Business Analysis

   From my perspective this is the key skill for the successful RPA project implementation. And it could easily take up to 80% of the total project time. The analyst needs to understand the processes, interaction points, and to document them in such a way, that RPA developers could work with it.

RPA development

  There is a process, inputs, outputs, and IT systems. Everything is described, so they would implement it using RPA tools. But don't think it's so easy. You need to have a background as a developer. You don't agree? Try to ask yourself if you know: for-each cycles, if-then constructs, try-catch blocks, JSON, RESTful API, and so on.


Money

  It's not difficult to implement 100 robots, but will it bring any added value? So the 1st KPI is the ROI.  It's a must to measure the time spend before and after automation. Only this way you could understand your ROI.

  So what about the costs? You need:

  1. Skilled team (certifications, salary)
  2. Licenses (CAPEX / OPEX)
  3. Hardware (CAPEX / OPEX)


  The last point sometimes is completely forgotten, but it could be quite painful. For example, for 500 robots only web application server would require 16 CPU cores and 8 Gb RAM.  In Cloud you would easily pay 1200-2000 $/month or $2,4 - $4 /User/Month. And it's just one component. Totally, it could be $7,2 - $12/User/Month.

  The license costs depend on your volumes, but after salaries, it is the most  sensitive part. From open sources (like here), the license part will add about $100 - $110/User/Month.

 So, license and hardware costs could be about $110 -$120/User/Month. Minimum. And this what you have to beat with the automation.

 All the costs are indicative and taken from the public sources.





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