RPA Is Not A Hammer

Ever felt like you've been handed a hammer and suddenly everything looks like a nail? 🤔

I've seen it happen so many times in the world of automation. Companies rush to build an automation team, armed with their RPA (Robotic Process Automation) tool, thinking it's the silver bullet for all their problems. 

But let's get real for a moment.

RPA, or as some call it, "RPA bots," are NOT a magic wand. It's a tool, and like any tool, it needs to be used wisely. 

Sure, the marketing brochures make it sound like automation is all sunshine and rainbows, but there are some gritty truths they don't tell you. 

In our latest episode of The Never-Ending Climb to Stronger Supply Chain and Procurement For Companies Running SAP, Nidhideep Bhandari goes into more detail about what this looks like.

🔧 Choose the Right Tool for the Job 🔧

First things first, not everything is a nail when you're holding the RPA hammer. I mean, how many times have you heard someone say, "We've built an automation team, and I've got this hammer, and everything's a freaking nail"? It's painful, right?

Sure, RPA can automate tasks, generate value, and streamline processes, but is it the right tool for YOUR organization and YOUR business processes? That's the key question. The marketing brochures are great for showcasing features, but you need to be cautious about picking the right tool.

Nidhideep has seen cases where RPA bots were doing nothing more than screen scraping data from an Excel sheet and inputting it into a UI. What happens when the session times out or you have to deal with complex policies like changing passwords every 90 days? 

These are the tricky, real-world challenges that the brochures conveniently leave out.

📊 Measure and Monitor Your Bots 📊 

Now, let's talk about measuring and monitoring. Your bot isn't a one-trick pony. It might be pulling data from multiple platforms and systems. It's not enough to say, "Oh, it failed in Oracle" or "It failed in Salesforce." 

You need end-to-end monitoring, and not just application monitoring. What if your bot fails because of infrastructure issues, or it didn't handle a policy change properly?

Imagine your bot misses an important policy change, and it triggers a workflow that wasn't supposed to be triggered. What's the impact on your business? Automation is there to streamline processes, but it's crucial to understand that the processes need to be aligned with automation in mind.

🏗️ Building Enterprise-Grade Solutions 🏗️ 

Lastly, when you're dealing with enterprise-grade automation, you can't just rely on the promise of "build your bot in a day" or "go live in three weeks." 

The reality is, it takes careful planning and thoughtful design to fail gracefully and handle scenarios off the utopian happy path.

These fundamentals never go out of style.

Building an enterprise-grade bot means defining business rules, understanding the intricacies of your processes, and planning for exceptions. 

It's not just about the happy path; it's about handling the unexpected, and that's where the real value of automation shines.

The Bottom Line

Choose your automation tools wisely, measure and monitor your bots comprehensively, and remember that building enterprise-grade solutions requires a thoughtful, strategic approach.

Thanks for joining me on this journey to a stronger supply chain and procurement for SAP. If you found this valuable, click the link below to subscribe, and let's keep climbing together! 🚀💪