The Business Leader’s Handbook for Building an Automation Center of Excellence

T
here was a time when simply implementing auto- digital transformation. This means automation solutions that
mation technology in your enterprise put you a step integrate with any application, maximize the ROI of your
ahead of the competition. These days, business and IT existing business software, enable DevOps, keep your infor-
leaders everywhere understand the necessity of automating mation secure, provide dashboards and analytics, and more.
processes. Your competitive edge hinges not on whether you Even if you start small, your solution should be able to grow
automate, but how you do it. to meet these objectives. A center of excellence will help it
do so quickly and efficiently.
An automation center of excellence (COE) includes the
people, processes, and technology necessary to maximize An outcome of all this change is that the line between
the benefits of automation, including robotic process operations teams, IT departments, and business units have
automation (RPA). It is crucial to finding new automation all blurred. Everyone is now involved with the technology
opportunities, scaling your automation within the organiza- that runs your organization. In an organization without a
tion, and carrying out a long-term vision. solid strategy, this can be confusing and lead to governance
and security issues. In an organization with a center of
This handbook guides business leaders through the process of excellence, these different roles work together in a structured
designing and building a center of excellence for automation. way so each can contribute their unique skills to furthering
the objectives of the business.
Why All the Hype About COEs?
The discussion around automation centers of excellence Recognition is growing that automation centers of excellence
is relatively new, but forward-thinking organizations have are highly beneficial to the bottom line. A COE can accelerate
already used the COE model to transform the way they progress on projects that increase revenue, serve customers
operate. Banks with automation COEs have drastically more effectively, and save on costs.
reduced the cost of complicated processes like loan origina-
tion. Automating manual processes like HR onboarding and Who Needs a Center of Excellence?
offboarding has allowed other enterprises to grow without An automation center of excellence might sound like
adding FTEs. Businesses across a variety of industries are something that belongs in a large enterprise, but businesses
taking note of these success stories and thinking about of all sizes benefit from the framework. In a large company,
implementing their own centers of excellence. a common challenge is overcoming complex environments
and existing islands of automation. A center of excellence
The business world and the technology landscape have ties everything together, helps identify automation priorities
both changed dramatically in recent years. For one thing, and opportunities, and prevents you from reinventing the
business software can do a lot more than it used to. Every wheel every time you bring automation to a new part of
department in your organization is probably using a variety the company.
of applications to streamline their operations and help them
meet objectives. Some are small niche applications or even In a smaller business, you want to set yourself up for future
homegrown tools. You not only need an automation solution growth. A haphazard automation strategy may seem like it
that can interface with all these disparate systems and appli- works well when you only have a few critical workflows to
cations, you also need an overarching automation strategy automate, but delaying the implementation of best practices
that reaches every department and team. only creates more work down the road. Furthermore, limited
resources make it all the more important to maximize the
Automation software itself has also moved beyond what was ROI of your automation software investment. Regardless of
previously possible. A tool that can manage a few individual your size or industry, establishing a center of excellence now
tasks isn’t enough—leading companies are pushing for total will pay substantial dividends down the road.

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 The Business Leader’s Handbook for Building an Automation Center of Excellence

What is an Automation Center of Excellence? The Center of Excellence Framework

An automation center of excellence goes beyond seeing The automation center of excellence framework can be
automation as a tool or tactic for streamlining individual divided into two interrelated pillars: people and processes,
tasks and looks at the bigger picture. The COE treats and systems and infrastructure. In both parts of the frame-
enterprise automation as an ongoing project requiring work, it’s essential to lay a solid foundation for your ongoing
planning, testing, and regular evaluation. enterprise automation project. Getting your people, processes,
and technology in order in the beginning ensures that you will
COEs and the Automation Landscape make the most of your automation investment and be ready to
Modern automation technology offers a variety of options for efficiently implement automated processes in the future.
meeting your unique business requirements. An automation
center of excellence is not tied to any
PEOPLE SYSTEMS
one type of automation software—in
fact, anything you are using to auto-
Steering Case Studies Measure
mate processes should be under the MEASURE Committee ROI
& PROMOTE
umbrella of the COE. That includes
job scheduling (also known as work-
load automation, or WLA), robotic EMPOWER Functional Training & NOC
Teams Enabling
process automation (RPA), TEAMS

automation tools built into your

business applications, or custom tools. Evangelists Templates
Best
PROCESS
Practices
EXCELLENCE

A term often mentioned alongside

process automation is business User Permissions
Core Team HA/DR Capacity
process management (BPM). BPM INFRASTRUCTURE & Auditing

and centers of excellence are closely

linked. BPM is concerned with
optimizing business processes to improve operational agility People and Processes
and corporate performance. A center of excellence has You may be transitioning to a digital workforce, but your
similar goals, while also adding a focus on the technological human team is still the key to a successful transformation.
foundations of successful automation. The first pillar of the automation center of excellence frame-
work involves putting the right people together with the
Business process outsourcing (BPO) has been a popular way right processes.
to reap the benefits of automation without placing too much
of the burden on in-house IT. However, many businesses are The Automation COE Team
now looking to move automation back home. A center of Automation projects don’t have to be spearheaded by the IT
excellence allows your organization to take control of its own department, but IT should be involved from the start. For a
processes in a streamlined and efficient manner that doesn’t successful automation project, you’ll need a core group with
leave IT resources strained. Taking back process automation a variety of diverse skills.
also allows for greater agility—a software robot can be
configured or reconfigured in minutes without needing The core team identifies business pain points, documents
to work within a BPO contract. existing processes, gathers requirements, researches
automation solutions, and builds the initial workflows.

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 The Business Leader’s Handbook for Building an Automation Center of Excellence

This team should be made up of people who embrace change be equipped to solve most automation problems without
and champion process improvement. Often these people have escalating the issue to development. It will be helpful to the
already automated some of their own work and want to help operations team to have good documentation of processes and
others. People skills, organization, and a talent for research plans for notifications, escalation, and error handling.
are just as important as programming ability for this group.
Spreading Automation Throughout the Enterprise
We recommend making sure your core team includes the Whether it was the IT manager eager to save time on manual
following skillsets. In some cases, one person can cover processes, a business user who had already been automating
multiple roles. tasks on his own, or an executive with dreams of making
the enterprise more productive, your automation project
The Business Analyst probably started with people enthusiastic about the benefits
The business analyst has a talent for visualizing process of automation technology. But after finding an automation
improvements. A great business analyst will not only be able solution and quickly putting together a couple automated
to document processes as they are today, but also redesign workflows, many businesses struggle with next steps. Auto-
them to meet future requirements in enough detail that mation software with the power to transform whole enter-
developer can build the workflows easily. This person should prises is left to manage a handful of file transfers or report
be a respected individual who can lead good discussions generation tasks. The HR department wonders how they
with process stakeholders. could save time processing paperwork, but have no idea that
they could be using the solution that accounting has already
The Developer implemented. In some cases, there are even employees with
This job involves taking well-documented processes from unfounded negative ideas about automation.
the business analyst and converting them into automated
tasks and workflows. Depending on the needs of your To move from the initial implementation to an enterprise-
organization and the capabilities of your automation solution, wide center of excellence, you need to have a few more
the developer may not have to be an actual programmer—it people on board.
can be anyone with the ability to build effective workflows.
Some automation teams have multiple levels of developers. The Evangelist
Your evangelists, or automation champions, may have been
Recruit this role wisely. Often the best developers in your members of the original core team, or they could be part of
company will be accustomed to turning to custom coding to the management team from anywhere in the business. The
solve any problem. You COE developer should understand important thing is that they know about the power of auto-
the benefits of implementing a comprehensive automation mation and are gifted at explaining business benefits. They’ve
tool. They are still developing, just in a more efficient way. already experienced successful use cases with the automation
software and are ready to get the rest of the company excited
The Operations Specialist about it.
The operations team will be a key part of your automation
center of excellence once it gets off the ground, so they should The Role of Functional Teams
be represented on the core team from the start. These are the The core team and, eventually, the steering committee will
people who make sure everything is running on time and be responsible for identifying new automation opportunities
without errors. They will be aware of all automation in the in departments across the enterprise. Some functional teams
enterprise and will be the first ones called if anything goes will have been involved with the automation project from
wrong. Keeping operations in the loop ensures that they will the start, but others won’t learn about the new automation

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 The Business Leader’s Handbook for Building an Automation Center of Excellence

solution until it has already been implemented. In these teams, The team responsible for prioritization should discuss each
find a project manager to help with the documentation of automation candidate to ensure a common understanding
processes and implementation of automation for the team. of the process and its appropriate score for each factor. The
This should be someone extremely familiar with the current best practice is to let each team member score the process
processes who also values process improvement. privately before sharing their answers with the team. Use the
average or the score that represents the majority.
The Executive Sponsor
Getting executive sponsorship and visibility is key. An Approaches to Automation
executive sponsor could be a CIO, CTO, or CFO. They Robotic process automation at the user interface level is one
will be someone committed to maximizing ROI for your of the most popular and useful tools out there, but it's not
organization, and they will see how the long-term savings the only way to build automation. An effective automation
from automation fit into the big picture of the organization’s center of excellence team will understand the various auto-
finances. This person could end up sitting on the steering mation options at its disposal and know how to choose the
committee. best one for each workflow.

The Steering Committee

The steering committee will help your
automation project obtain the resources
it needs. It will hold regular meetings to
review recent automation case studies and
prioritize upcoming projects. The committee
will have a plan and process to measure
ROI for each automation candidate.

Prioritization and Best Practices

Your core team is assembled and your
automation solution is efficiently managing
at least one business process. Where do
you go from here?

The Weighted Matrix

There’s a potentially endless queue of
processes in your organization that could
be automated, and you need a quick and
accurate way to prioritize their importance
to the business. A weighted matrix, such as a Six Sigma cause Automating each step in the existing process using interface-
and effect (C&E) matrix, is an invaluable tool for the COE level RPA is perfect for a proof of concept or other low-volume
team. The matrix will include various criteria for evaluating tasks that aren’t critical to the business. It’s fast and easy and
processes, such as frequency, effort required to automate, doesn’t require much expertise. For processes automated
criticality to the business, potential time savings, and as-is, you should still take the time to do some research.
anything else that is significant to your organization. Each Fully document the process, including any alternate paths
factor is assigned a value based on its importance. Enter the in the workflow, before automating.
automation candidates into the matrix to determine priority.

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 The Business Leader’s Handbook for Building an Automation Center of Excellence

If you have a process that involves multiple people and is There will be a large number of employees who need access
fairly high-frequency, you should consider optimizing your to the automation tool. Make sure you have role-based
automated workflows with a combination of GUI and back- security in place so they each only have the access they
end automation. Go through the process steps that you have need—some may need to execute workflows but shouldn’t
documented and make note of where you can automate via be able to edit them, while view-only access will be adequate
the backend; for example, with APIs and web services. You’ll for others. Have detailed audit logs of everything created,
find that this method improves the stability of the process edited, or run. A high volume of automated processes also
and the speed of execution, and still doesn’t require program- requires robust error handling and notifications. All tasks
ming expertise if you are using the right automation tools. and workflows should be designed to report on failures.

Sometimes a process deserves not just the optimization of Automation Templates

certain steps, but a full revision of the workflow. Usually Create documentation on best practices for creating auto-
these processes are high-volume, mission-critical, or require mation. Many processes will have reusable elements, so don’t
especially rapid execution. To rework the process, you can waste time reinventing the steps for each workflow. Ensure
leverage an established process improvement methodology your automated processes are constructed for consistency,
such as Lean Management or Six Sigma, to review the process, efficiency, accuracy, and auditability.
identify areas of inefficiency, and map a new workflow. Out
of the three approaches to automation, this one takes the Training
longest to develop. But for a critical, high-frequency Anyone responsible for automation operations should have
process, it can also lead to the greatest gains in ROI. the skills to manage and maintain automated workflows.
Adequate training ensures that the operations team won’t be
repeatedly escalating issues back to development and that
Measuring your ROI is important for business users can interact with the software to the extent
that their role requires.
the continual improvement of
your COE processes and to For anyone who will be involved with the development
substantiate ongoing funding. process, training should also extend to the best practices
documents and workflow templates created by the center
of excellence team.
Systems and Infrastructure
Your center of excellence is only as good as its technological Measuring ROI
foundation. Making good choices about systems and infra- There are many ways to measure the value of your solution.
structure sets the stage for rapid growth and prevents issues Determine which are the most important to your unique
down the road. business objectives and identify a method of reporting. In
some cases, you might have an automatically generated
Enterprise-class Architecture report of tangible metrics. In other cases, you may need to
Follow the same DevOps best practices for your automation create a plan for functional teams to report to the steering
as you would for your other critical systems. Test everything, committee on successes and failures.
monitor usage and changes, and measure and evaluate results.
Measuring your ROI is important for the continual
If your automation solution will eventually be running key improvement of your COE processes and to substantiate
processes across the entire enterprise, it’s critical to protect it ongoing funding.
from downtime with high availability and disaster recovery.

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 The Business Leader’s Handbook for Building an Automation Center of Excellence

Centers of Excellence in the Real World COE Success Story 2: Human Resources
While many companies are still struggling to understand A leading human resources firm needed a new approach for
automation technology options and transition to a mature, their largest client. The client required a dedicated support
strategic way of handling automation, others have already team of 55 FTEs to process employee terminations at a rate
made drastic performance improvements using the center of of 3,000 per day. A long ramp cycle was expected to bring
excellence model. the whole team up to speed. The human capital management
company implemented an enterprise-class robotic process
Here are just two examples of businesses that were transformed automation solution and COE practices. The 11-person auto-
through an automation COE: mation center of excellence team included two developers, four
business analysts, and three operations analysts.
COE Success Story 1: Banking
A large U.S.-based bank was suffering from inconsistent man- Today, the company has over 100 software robots in produc-
ual handling of transactions, including processing inbound tion and are continually expanding their automation foot-
and outbound ACHs, file transfers, payments, partner data, print. Revenue increased by 15 percent, and their transfor-
and others. Besides causing a poor customer experience, the mation not only won them the original contract, it allowed
issue was creating an average of 20 percent overtime each them to build a template for future growth opportunities.
week. The error rate was high and employee morale was low.
Next Steps
The bank developed an automation center of excellence to Transforming your business through automation requires
tackle the problem. The core COE team was formed from changing mindsets within the organization. Some will see
operations and IT, which gave them the technical expertise the value of automation from the start, but you’ll still need
to move beyond GUI automation and build sustainable to plan and optimize your COE processes. Other employees
workflows. The team had input from each department, a won’t be sold on the new solution and processes until they
project manager, and an executive sponsor. see successful use cases springing up all around them. If your
COE is successful, eventually it will simply become the new
Following COE best practices, the team documented and normal for everyone in the organization.
analyzed all processes, reworking them to cut out the waste.
When the processes were fully optimized, they were auto- As a leader in your business, start by finding your fellow auto-
mated. The team also came up with the idea for a transaction mation enthusiasts. Seek out the people with the skills and know-
hub to process the transactions that had previously been so ledge to lead the core team and the ones who can help spread
time-consuming. an appreciation for automation to all teams and employees.

Thanks to these changes, employee morale went up and Whether you are just getting started building a COE or work-
turnover dropped by 10 percent. There was a 55 percent ing to perfect the processes you have in place, we have tools to
reduction in average handling time and a 75 percent reduction help you with prioritizing projects, calculating ROI, and more.
in process costs. 24/7 monitoring and processing is now in By spearheading the automation center of excellence project,
place, even on banking holidays. Best of all, NPS scores show you can lead the charge towards digital transformation.
a 40 percent increase in customer satisfaction.

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