• Mark Twomey, CEO at Xcession


• 02.08.2021 08:30 am
#IT #technology #Management

Only someone working in financial IT on a remote island can fail to have heard of RPA (robotic process automation). The technology is fast gaining traction in the financial sector where companies understand its potential to transform efficiency and achieve cost savings of up to 50 per cent.  It completes repetitive processes far more productively and accurately than humans and never complains about its salary. 

The range of use cases is already substantial and covers many of the laborious back-office admin processes of the financial sector. RPA helps drive improvements in customer service and transforms the efficiency of processes behind payments, mortgage application approvals, compliance and fraud detection. 

One of the key areas for automation that is often overlooked is IT service management (ITSM), where the technology transforms tasks ranging from standard service requests, password approval and report creation, to server provisioning, data migration and incident monitoring. This ability to automate standard processes that support IT efficiency frees up the time of qualified professionals so they can work on more significant tasks, such as improving integrations or other project-based work that has a more lasting impact. 

But there is a significant problem with the RPA market for ITSM. Not all solutions are alike, and it is relatively easy to fall into the trap of purchasing automation or bots that are unnecessarily expensive, or which do not fit the requirements of the business. Vendors can be very persuasive and with such a headwind of hype, financial services organisations can find themselves making decisions too hurriedly for fear of missing out. 

One of the talked-up advantages of RPA, for example, is its plug-in ease of implementation that does not require complex integrations or writing of new scripts. That may be true, but it does not mean organisations should reduce the rigour with which they assess potential solutions. There is no need to add to the shelves of under-utilised or badly implemented software many organisations already have. One of the problems, of course, is the proliferating number of vendors and solutions on the market – especially those addressing the financial sector. 

To emerge with the right solution from this maze requires unbiased expertise. While the right RPA implementation will transform efficiency, a misjudged solution will cause more problems across an organisation than it removes, imposing costs and disrupting workflows. 

Financial services companies may acquire a solution that enables them to automate using drag-and-drop functionality. But no two businesses are alike and it is a mistake to believe any implementation can proceed on a one-size-fits-all approach. The right solution and implementation recognises what is unique about an organisation and its workflows, and understands the pressures on people working within IT and how they serve the business. 

Why third-party implementation is necessary

This makes a strong case for third-party implementation, where the implementer is more likely to possess both a very broad knowledge of ITSM and RPA software and of the best practices in each, allied to experience of the real world of business. 

An implementer with a broad-based track record will know the capabilities of solutions and have objective knowledge of which is the best fit for its client. They are far more likely to understand IT, and to get a feeling for its personnel, its users and their respective sets of expectations. Incident management, for example, requires insight into the way users and IT staff interact, as well as knowing a great deal about workflows. Automation of service desk tasks benefits from having an expert eye first establish the pattern of queries and spot where the greatest gains will arise.

There are some common problems that organisations run into if they do not have the benefit of external expertise, such as difficulties with data management, or cultural hurdles they had not anticipated. An experienced implementer with organisational knowledge as well as technology know-how will flag up and resolve such problems before they develop. They can accelerate implementation, achieving straightforward automation in less than a month, adapting a use case to the company’s data sources.

Cost is a big issue too, with the differences between vendors extend to their charging mechanisms. Many cloud-based vendors have flexible pricing, rather than standard licences, which allows customers to match expenditure to changing requirements. Others offer pay-as-you-go models based on hours of automation used or transactions completed. Again, this is an area where having access to objective advice is invaluable.

Taking full advantage of intelligent RPA

It is important too, for financial organisations to be ready for the increasingly impressive advances in RPA that employ AI and machine learning. This growth in data-driven functionality extends the range of use cases to more complex tasks and goes beyond the mimicking of what an employee does on a screen. Intelligent RPA enables chatbots, for example, to handle a very wide range of IT service desk interactions, with results that provide excellent results for end-user and excellent return on investment for the business. It is an exciting area of technology that is certain to achieve take-up in ITSM. But again, it is a question of selecting the most suitable process and solution and ensuring implementation is totally effective.

There is a common thread here around the importance of third-party implementation and expertise. In the financial sector, where competition is intense and the landscape is populated with new fintech competitors all the time, no organisation can afford to ignore RPA, especially in ITSM. But equally, no financial services company can afford to mess it up. With access to solution and implementation expertise, however, companies can ensure they realise the significant efficiency gains and cost reductions of RPA quickly and with maximum effectiveness.