How Can You Tell if Your Organization Is Ready for Process Automation?

We've talked about the business case for automation and how our approach at Thoughtful reduces the risk to ensure an outsized ROI. Still, not all organizations know if they're ready. Having worked with many leadership teams to assess automation, we've identified a few telltale indicators that reveal you're ready to explore robotic process automation (RPA). See our list below:

Maintain Process Playbooks

Playbooks can come in different formats and mediums, if your team has processes that require dedicated documentation be created and maintained, this is a major indicator. Many times these playbooks are documents with screenshots of the different systems involved, sometimes they're video recordings, and other times they get communicated via meetings every time a new person starts. Any process that has a playbook is likely a great candidate for automation.

25% or More of a Full-Time Employee is Allocated to Data Entry

I'll say it, data entry is not good for the soul... it's also extremely costly for all organizations. If you have dedicated people for data entry, you have a strong use case for business automation.

We've helped companies automate tens to thousands of data entry-hours (monthly), and the results are magical, being major cost savings and improved data integrity.

You're Currently Hiring Data-Entry (see above) Roles or Process Owners

People don't scale very efficiently, software robots do! Before you bring on additional fixed cost you should talk with us about how a robotic worker can fill that job at a fraction of the cost and with unmatched efficacy. Those dollars will be much better spent hiring folks to drive the business forward vs. keeping up with back-office processes.

Data Quality Issues

Robotic workers don't fatigue, type the wrong letter, have mental lapse, or sleep 😴.  We've seen dramatic improvements in data integrity when processes go from human-powered to computer automated.

When a robotic worker is assigned a task, they do it as directed perfectly every single time.

We also learn that processes can be over-designed, introducing unnecessary risks to data security and privacy. Having worked with highly regulated industries like defense, legal, and healthcare, a secure yet highly efficient data entry strategy lends itself nicely for automation.

Maintaining Processes That Require Fast Turnaround

Whether it's for compliance purposes or other business SLA's, many teams are required to run processes with demanding timelines. Robotic Process Automation is infinitely scalable, extremely fast, and has unmatched precision. If you're finding your organization needs to meet tight process commitments, automation will be your best friend.

Execs Allocating Time to Repetitive Tasks

If you have leadership or executive assistant roles dedicating portions of their time to fulfilling recurring tasks, this is a great indicator that automation deserves consideration. McKinsey estimated ~21,000 Office and Administrative support roles have high automation potential.

Discovery Made Easy at Thoughtful

Do any of these indicators look familiar? We can help assess your use cases for value and complexity to ensure automation can deliver 150%+ ROI in your first year. Let's start a conversation.