In any IT Project execution, we have seen that tackling human psychological issues are more challenging than technical issues. It is easier to implement the technology, it is the human co-operation, interactions and various personality conflicts makes more difficult to keep balance of project key parameters: Cost, Time and Project Deliverables.

 

Humans are self-programmed, and their attitude and personalities are unpredictable. Every human is different with very different character traits such as: Soft natured, Aggressive, Introvert, Extrovert. When various permutation and combination of these personalities come together to deliver a small or large, simple or complex project, the psychological factors creates a frictional force to make overall execution less efficient.

Some of the examples to consider: If SLA is deviated management want things to get escalated and need visibility. Most of the times, a human individual is assigned a task to collect the information, compile the findings and report to management. Also, if the information is not received from individuals then escalate to their management staff. With all good intentions, this poor individual get resistance from the peers and also due to psychological issues hesitate to escalate the issues due to fear of spoiling the personal relationships. Net results, management not getting what they were expected, individual responsible to deliver also gets frustrated and does not want to be a middle person for all this co-ordination. What to do?

 

RPA (Robotic Process Automation) which are becoming very popular in automating business processes in corporations are historically best suited to take mundane repetitive tasks from humans. For example, many Insurance companies are automating a long quote generation process which a human has to do manually by accessing multiple systems and taking multiple steps to provide the final quote to customer. RPA solves this challenge to automate the manual process and reduce the time for the quote generation. Similarly, the Account Payable functionalities where manually getting the information from PDF attachments in emails and processing through multiple systems to get the PO to final payments to vendors are undertaken by RPAs and many corporations are reaping benefits out of it.

 

 

 

 

So far companies are able to solve technical issues of business process by hiring Software Robots (RPAs) in their corporations. Yes “Hiring” is right word as most of the RPA vendors license the RPA software by number of Robots required to accomplish the Job. So, 5 licenses provide you 5 Robots which are brought in the corporation same way as if 5 employees are hired. Their on-boarding process like assigning user-id, setting up the Active directory account, username in Workday or SAP for example remains the same. Now you have 24x7 robot ready to work how you program it and more important he/she (what-ever you prefer) does not have psychological issues, at least not any we know of.  You can expect a predictable result from them when programmed and do exactly what they are supposed to do. If you ask a Robot to send a friendly reminder followed by nasty email when things are not done, they will do exactly the same. Software Robots can check the status more frequently than humans can do so all those efficiencies of time reductions are there. With no emotions attached, Robots will not fail to escalate, report and complain if things are not going as expected “Strategic Direction put forward by senior management”. There is no fear for spoiling the personal relationship as there is none. This phycological benefit is something which yet companies need to exploit and see the intangible benefits associated with this along with tangible benefits like reduction of cost and time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

For your next project of Business Process Automation be ready to explore these psychological benefits which Software Robots bring over Humans.

Leave a comment

  Notify me when someone replies to this comment.
  Join our Mailing List