A skilled Robotic Process Automation services company can help improve your efficiency by automating business processes. According to a study: ‘Nearly 60 percent of all occupations have at least 30 percent of constituent activities that could be automated’. (Source: McKinsey Report).

As a result, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), a specialized form of automation, has been gaining popularity. Owing to the many benefits of RPA (link this to blog 1), businesses are keen to adopt this technology.

The RPA Industry

The RPA industry is characterized by varying degrees of sophistication. On the one hand, RPA enterprises using Artificial Intelligence (AI), in addition to automation, to build highly advanced solutions with cognitive document automation.

On the other hand, simple yet efficient robotic process automation is widely used across sectors. For instance, the financial industry uses process automation for basic yet high-volume tasks like form-filling and data organization.

Essentially, the RPA industry has the capability to serve a variety of sectors with a wide range of complexities.

Finding the right RPA vendor

Before embracing this technology, organizations need to understand what to look for in RPA companies.

Here are the seven factors to consider while finding the best Robotic Process Automation Services:

1. Cost:

There are two factors to remember when discussing cost. One, don’t reject RPA enterprises purely on the grounds of cost. Maybe they have included many services you don’t need, or the project’s complexity doesn’t require. If that’s the case, have them prune it down to your exact requirements.

Two, often a vendor with a lower cost ultimately prove more expensive in the long run. Be sure to check the ability of the vendor to meet all your needs independently. RPA companies that offer solutions based on third-party integrations are a red flag.

2. Simple and swift

RPA is a unique software application in that it doesn’t have to make you wait for weeks for everything. For most RPA projects, you can design, check, and implement the automation in a matter of days.

Besides that, the vendor’s solution should be optimized for bots. For instance, the bot should carry the required data in memory while moving from one source to another. Otherwise, it will have to keep coming back to the earlier source.

Your RPA vendor should be able to deliver a solution that’s simple and yet quick to implement.

3. Reliable

Your RPA bot should produce consistently reliable results.

To be reliable, your RPA system needs to be self-monitoring. For instance, the system should be able to notify the administrator in case a bot fails, or a process is unable to produce the required outcomes.

Avoid RPA companies that build solutions that require you to “look over its shoulder”, monitoring every activity.

4. Independence

It may sound counter-intuitive, but an ideal RPA service provider should be able to make you independent by making themselves redundant.

In other words, you’ll want an environment where you can create bots on your own, with minimum to zero help from your vendor. To achieve this, the overall design must be one that requires practically no coding.

The other end of the spectrum has a different requirement. Let’s say your business expects to run new and complex processes in the future. Your robotic process automation should let your developers build advanced bots without being at the vendor’s mercy.

In that case, your RPA enterprise partner must be able to keep in mind your future requirements.

5. Alignment

Often RPA companies look all right during your evaluation. They check all the boxes: competency, experience, pricing, etc. And yet when they deliver, you find something is missing, and the outcome turns out clunky.

The likely reason is the RPA enterprise hasn’t been able to align with your organizational processes fully. For instance, the solution must also factor in variations that appear after only a certain number of iterations.

6. Support

The idea of support in the RPA market is different from the traditional software industry.

With robotic process automation, support is mostly about dealing with breakdowns and ‘de-freezing’ the bots. This is primarily about whether the vendor has been able to figure out the exceptions and how the bot will handle that.

So when you are looking around for vendors from the RPA market, be sure to check which vendor understands handling exceptions the most. The one who can take them into account will likely build you the robotic automation you’re looking for.

Remember, the best support is the one you seldom (or never) need.

7. Size of the vendor

You’ve heard this one earlier: Bigger isn’t always better.

The same is the case with RPA services. Don’t choose the largest vendor. Instead, choose the one whose skill set, deliverables, and client profile matches your requirements.

Choose RPA enterprises that are too big, and you may not get enough attention or support from them because you’re way too small for them. Choose someone too small, and they won’t yet have the capabilities you want for your project.

Misconceptions about Robotic Process Automation

While RPA can automate lots of processes, it’s incorrect to assume it can do everything and automate all processes.

The fact is, it can only be used for established processes since it can’t ‘learn’ on its own. Next, it is entirely process-centric, so the moment your processes change, you need to change the solution too.

Among the other misconceptions about RPA is that it takes away jobs. That’s not correct – it merely frees your human workers from dull, repetitive tasks so that you may deploy them on more productive, meaningful activities.

Besides that, there’s an incorrect belief that RPA is expensive. Because RPA is not a very high-end, extremely sophisticated software solution, you’ll find RPA solutions cost less than what you think.

Approaching RPA with a clear understanding of what it can do and what it can’t is the best way of getting the most out of it.

Summary

Needless to say, choosing the right partner from all the RPA companies you will meet is critical to the success of what you’re trying to achieve.

Among the factors that you’ll want to keep in mind while selecting the right service provider, cost, expertise, ease and speed of implementation, support available, and the vendor and solution’s reliability are the major factors.

We’d love to hear from you what other factors would you recommend keeping in mind!

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