Key to RPA Solution Designing

As we all know RPA takes the robot out of the human. In general terms, RPA is a type of software that mimics the activity of a human being in carrying out a task within a process and freeing them to do other tasks requiring human strengths. RPA projects follow Robotics development life cycle (RDLC), very similar to software development life cycle (SDLC), like any IT project.

After the process prioritization and requirement gathering stages, the most important phase of RPA development is solution designing. We should give a sufficient amount of time to solution design before any implementation/coding happens because the success & failure of the deployment heavily depends on it. Also let’s make sure that each identified automated process should have a solution design document.

While designing the solution we should always keep note of these few points…

  • Trigger Point: Before any real coding or development happens, think about how the BOT will be triggered in the future. It is important to understand the BOTs organizational structure when doing solution design to avoid performance issues. For example, if an organization decided that it will only trigger the BOTs once every day, then we have to design the BOT to process ALL files at one trigger rather than one file per trigger.
  • Process Streamlining: It is very appealing to automate the process just as how it is at the moment in an RPA project. While it looks very straightforward, it doesn’t help an organization improves. Process enhancement does not mean to automate the bad process. The RPA solution will only make the already bad processes uglier. That is why we should always think about how to streamline the process better before diving into automation. A rule of thumb is to let the BOT complete a transaction with minimal screen movements.
  • Data Flow & Validation: After streamlining the process, understand how the data flows between systems and how we would like to structure them in a presentable format. If the BOT is taking dynamic data from an Excel spreadsheet, think about how users should fill the template and how the BOT can extract data from the source without too much trouble. A standardized input template will help make the data validation part easier. Also, other than standardizing the data source, take some time to understand the validation rules in each system. This will prevent error messages/pop-ups from showing up, which may cause the BOT to go haywire.
  • Scalability: One of the reasons BOT are so popular is its ability to scale quickly. If an RPA solution is dedicated to automating a lot of processes in one application, then why build the same function every time we automate a new process? When doing the solution design, let’s keep the idea in mind that a particular step should be usable with minimal work for the next process. Most of the automated processes would share a similar structure, including data extraction, login, navigation, write output etc. Scalability means less hard codes and more dynamic variables in development.
  • Audit Logs: Allocating tasks to the BOTs free up people’s time for meaningful work. Having that additional resource is great, but how can we make sure that BOT is doing the right thing? The four-eyes principle is a controlling mechanism that a decision/transaction has approvals from at least two parties. In an RPA project, the BOT would be the maker while the user should be the checker who ensures that all the automated work is done accordingly. Therefore, each BOT must have a built-in step/function that generates a report/audit log for each transaction they do. This component will help to increase transparency and gain trust from people who are not familiar with RPA.
  • Exception Handling: Let’s accept this fact also that RPA BOTs are not AI (Artificial Intelligence) powered BOTs who can learn and become smarter over time. If an RPA BOT is not designed to handle an exception, it will not move beyond the screen and most likely be stuck indefinitely. With this inherited nature, exception handling becomes an essential part of the solution design. Therefore, listing out as many exceptions as we can help to prevent the BOT from going “out of control”. These exceptions will most likely happen when the BOT is automating the process, so the earlier we know about the hiccup, the easier it is to design the BOT.

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