20 Feb, 2020 | Blogs
If you want to implement robotic process automation (RPA) in your organization but don’t know where to start, then you are not alone. Many companies struggle to take the first step towards their RPA journey despite knowing the countless benefits of automation, including lower operating costs, improve quality and timeliness of services, and streamline data transfer. That’s because of analysis paralysis in selecting the right RPA vendor. Among various things, selecting the right RPA vendor is as important as identifying the process to automate or doing a proof of concept. As easy as it may sound, evaluating RPA vendors can be challenging with so many players in the market.
While the selection of an RPA vendor will vary between organizations, there are several crucial elements that you need to consider before taking the leap of faith. Here are our top 10 things to consider when choosing the right RPA vendor for your company.
Company Background
A little due diligence can go a long way in deciding how your RPA journey will be. When selecting an RPA vendor, look for the company’s history, its clientele, the support its offers and its methodology. All these are critical drivers in creating an implementation process that operates smoothly without disrupting the existing workflows.
Technology Innovation
Any popular RPA vendor will be committed to constantly evolve and advance its existing RPA offerings. See how often the company provides product releases, with major product releases happening at least once a year. You can ask your potential vendor to share its product roadmap to see the level of commitment towards technological innovation.
Customer Support
Your RPA success will hugely depend upon the technical support and around-the-clock implementation. This means that your potential RPA vendor should provide you with at least a proof of concept as well as be available throughout the RPA deployment. The RPA partner should be able to meet your evolving requirements over time.
User Experience
Your potential RPA partner should empower your developers and decision-makers to scale business-user automation to a much higher value and functionality. In other words, the ideal partner should provide an easy RPA platform that makes business users comfortable and confident about the technology they will be using in the future.
Training Material
While selecting an RPA vendor, look for tools and training materials provided by them since these resources will not only help in successful RPA implementation, but also guide you throughout your RPA journey. Your RPA vendor should offer onsite training, release notes, tutorials, videos or remote training and unlimited access to training libraries.
The RPA Platform
Your potential RPA vendor must also provide RPA software products since it will decide the tangible outcome of your automation. The platform they provide should be aligned with your company’s existing architecture and legacy systems.
Speed of Implementation
Your RPA vendor should be a facilitator in helping you achieve your automation goals. The speed and ease of implementation of the RPA platform that they use should seamlessly integrate with your systems to avoid disruption of existing processes. The vendor with a flexible and extensible RPA platform and methodology can be the key to your success since they can accommodate all your needs from piloting to scaling.
Optimized Scalability
You should also consider vendors who provide scalable RPA platform. This will help you in optimally utilizing the bots across processes regardless of fluctuations in process volumes. With that said, the RPA vendor should also be able to scale the automation permanently so that they can align with your company’s long-term growth.
Advanced Reporting
RPA implementation is important, but it is equally important to report on its performance. The RPA vendor should have a platform that can gather, organize and analyze RPA operational data, including the time taken for order processing, processes that required human intervention and the number of outstanding transactions. Their software should provide insights into operational bottlenecks and identify processes for enhancements among other things.
Data Security
A vendor who has improved process oversight is all you need to comply with evolving regulations. Therefore, choose an RPA vendor that can help you comply with the law by saving the information of automated workflows into an activity log. These logs can then be used at the time of an internal or external audit.
Conclusion
Selecting the right RPA vendor is not as easy as it seems, particularly because of the overload of information provided on the internet. We hope that these 10 tips will act as a starting point for selecting the right partner who can set your organization up for success. With these tips and carefully carved out strategy and goals, you’ll be able to determine what works best for your company. The right RPA partner will eventually help your organization conduct business in a more lean, efficient and cost-effective manner.
Let us know what you think is the most important thing to look out while selecting an RPA vendor in the comments section below. If you’d like us to help you start your RPA journey, then contact us today!