Business Analyst (BA) plays a major role in the Robotics Process Automation (RPA) implementation journey in any organisation. While RPA technology is in the market for a while now, the awareness of the same among the Business Analyst community is something that can be further improved. BA’s are best placed to identify the challenges and pain points of their respective domain and identify improvement opportunities. Since they generally play an intermediary role between the major stakeholders of business operations, they can make valuable contributions to institutionalising RPA in an organisation. This article focuses on how BA can contribute at different stages of ServiceNow RPA implementation journey.
On a high level, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a technology that uses software robots to mimic human action on a computer like Mouse clicks and keyboard entries to automate different business processes. It interacts with user interface (front end) of business applications to automate different processes that otherwise need manual intervention. RPA technology can be ideally used in high-volume, rule-based, and repetitive processes.
ServiceNow provides a comprehensive RPA solution that caters to different automation requirements across industries and business processes. There are generally two types of robots, Attended and Unattended. While Attended robots are designed to run along with a human user, Unattended Robots are designed to run on their own, with no manual intervention required. RPA technology brings immense benefits to the organisation, directly and indirectly.
A high-level understanding of ServiceNow RPA solution will help BA’s to identify opportunities for improvement leveraging RPA technology.
From a ServiceNow perspective, RPA and Integration Hub (IH), under Automation Engine solutions, helps to connect to any systems and to automate business processes of third-party applications.
The major difference between these two technologies is that automation using IH Spokes is achieved through APIs while RPA uses the front-end/ user interface. Selection of either of these technologies depends on several factors like availability of APIs, the complexity of the process involved, requirement of manual intervention etc.
The role of a Business Analyst is significant as they are best placed to understand the overall business landscape. In their role, they interact with all key stakeholders like the end users, technology team, compliance team, process excellence team, risk team etc.
We will see the different roles and responsibilities of a BA in each of the different phases of the implementation lifecycle. While the methodology or lifecycle of RPA implementation may vary from organisation to organisation, on a high level, the major phases of an implementation lifecycle are:
- Phase 1: Identification of an RPA opportunity
- Phase 2: Technical feasibility
- Phase 3: Business case development
- Phase 4: Development
- Phase 5: Institutionalisation
BA plays the most critical role in this phase of identifying use cases for implementing RPA. The success of this phase heavily depends on the awareness of BA’s on how to leverage the RPA to drive improvements in their existing business processes.
Knowledge of the following will help BA’s to identify the right uses cases for the implementation of RPA
ServiceNow RPA offers rich automation capabilities across different business applications. Awareness about such widely used RPA capabilities would help BA’s to identify automation opportunities for their existing business processes. ServiceNow RPA possess 2000+ capability across different applications.
Following are the sample list of capabilities/methods across widely used applications like example Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Excel.
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Microsoft Outlook (Methods – Description) |
Microsoft Excel (Methods – Description) |
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Ø AddFolder-Adds a new folder. Ø DeleteFolder-Deletes a given folder. Ø DeleteMail-Deletes a mail using its entry ID. Ø ForwardMail-Forwards a mail. Ø GetAttachmentNames-Gets all attachment names of a mail using its entry ID. Ø GetExistingAccounts-Returns list of configured accounts. Ø GetFolderNames-Lists all foder names. Ø GetMail-Gets all details of a mail. Ø GetMails-Get mail entry IDs from a folder. Ø GetSenderName-Returns entry ID's sender mail id. Ø MarkAsRead-Marks a mail as read using its entry ID. Ø MarkAsUnread-Marks a mail as unread using its entry ID. Ø MoveMail-Moves mail from one folder to another folder using its entry ID. Ø ReadMsgFile-Reads .msg file from file system. Ø Reply-Gives reply to a mail. Ø SaveAllAttachments-Saves all attachments of a mail with given entry ID into a given folder. Ø SaveAttachment-Saves specified attachment of a mail with given entry ID into a given folder. Ø SaveMail-Saves mail with specific format. Ø SendMail-Sends a mail to others. Ø SentAs-Send mail on behalf Ø SetAccount-Initiates an account.
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Ø AddNewWorksheet-Adds a new worksheet in an excel file. Ø AutoFill-Used to insert formula to entire column Ø Close-Closes an excel file. Ø ColumnsCount-Counts the number of populated columns in a worksheet. Ø Copy-Copy data of a range of cells from a worksheet. Ø CreateChart-Creates a chart for specific range in specific worksheet. Ø CreatePivotTable-Used to create pivot table. Ø DeleteColumn-Deletes a column from the worksheet. Ø DeleteContentFromRange-Deletes the data from specific range in specific worksheet. Ø DeleteEmptyColumns-Used to delete empty columns. Ø DeleteEmptyRows-Used to delete empty rows. Ø DeleteRow-Deletes a row from the worksheet. Ø DeleteWorksheet-Delete a specific worksheet from an excel file. Ø ExportChartAsImages-Used to export charts as images. Ø ExportToPDF-Used to export excel file as PDF file. Ø FillBlankValues-used to fill blank values. Ø FindAndReplace-Find and replace the specific text in specific worksheet. Ø GetActiveSheetName-Gets the active worksheet name. Ø GetCellAddressIfRowHas-Gets cell(s) address of a particular row if row contains specified text. Ø GetCellFormula-Gets the cell formula from a worksheet. Ø GetCellValue-Gets the cell value from a worksheet. Ø GetCellValueIfRowHas-Gets cell value(s) of a particular row if row contains specified text. Ø GetCellValues-Gets the values of multiple cells. Ø GetCellColor-Gets the RGB value of a given cell from a worksheet. Ø GetColumnNameByIndex-Returns name of the column based on index value eg. 1 is A Ø GetFilterData-Used to get filter data. Ø GetFilteredDataAddress-Used to get filtered data address. |
BA’s can interact with the technology team to find the advanced capabilities of RPA Solution across different applications and systems.
Having the awareness how RPA is generally used across the industry would greatly help BA’s to apply the same in their own business landscape. ServiceNow provides ‘RPA Sample Templates’ as pre-built automations of reusable use cases that customers can use to get a head start on their automation initiatives.It offers a guidance on how to implement RPA across different business processes. RPA Sample Templates provides the much needed introduction into the varied application of RPA across diverse use cases. Such templates are released across different industries, functions, third party applications and personas. These template automations are of very high level only, skeleton automations, which needs to customised to respective customer environment.
Following are some sample use cases from random industries.
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Healthcare industry |
Banking Industry |
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Ø Patient Registration and Data Entry Ø Appointment Scheduling Ø Claims Processing Ø Pharmacy Order Processing Ø Patient Follow-Up and Care Management Ø Healthcare Compliance and Reporting Ø Medical Records Requests Ø Medical Device Monitoring and Inventory Management |
Ø Customer Onboarding Ø Account Opening and Closing Ø Loan Application Processing Ø Payment Processing Ø Credit Card Application Processing Ø Fraud Detection and Prevention Ø Account Reconciliation |
Alternatively, BA’s can refer the knowledge base of different RPA Vendors to identify application on RPA technology.
Having the knowledge on both the RPA capabilities and its application is key for BA’s for identifying the potential RPA use cases within their business and function.
Having identified an improvement opportunity with RPA, BA’s should validate the potential use case with different stakeholders by conducting individual and joint discussions with them. These include Process Owners, End Users, Process Excellence team, Risk and Compliance team, and the Technology team.
The primary objective of the interaction with Process Owners and end users would be to document the process in detail, the different activities undertaken, the inputs and outputs of each activity, the different applications involved, business rules, the pain points, and performance metrics related to the process.
Compliance and Risk related requirements should be documented based on discussion with Risk and Compliance teams. Organisational Process excellence objectives should be gathered from Organisational Quality and Process Excellence team.
With the details collected, BA’s should then discuss with the Technology team to evaluate the Technical feasibility of automating the business process using RPA Technology. At this stage, there should be a detailed analysis of how RPA capabilities should be used to achieve the different objectives recorded by different teams. There should be a separate evaluation of the Information security requirements with Info Sec team also.
Once the use case is successfully validated, BA’s should start developing a Business Case.
BA’s should develop a comprehensive Business Case for the automation of each use case and get a buy-in from the leadership. It should provide the justification for undertaking a particular project or initiative by demonstrating its potential value, feasibility, and alignment with the organisation's strategic goals. The leadership team generally reviews such Business Cases and approves the same based on different strategic objectives and allocates funding for the same. A Business Case should ideally voice the importance and context of undertaking individual automations for the organisation.
During this phase, BA should also prepare a well-defined requirement document that details the process and functional requirements.
While the technology team plays the primary role during this phase, BA can support the team with necessary functional input about the entire process. During this phase, BA’s can also do end to end testing and facilitate User acceptance testing along with the end user community. In scenarios where the development is outsourced, BA’s plays a significant role coordinating with the vendor organisation development team. In the final Change Control Board meeting, where final go ahead is given to move the automation to Production, BA’s can provide key inputs regarding the business perspective of such automations
Once an automation is approved to be moved to Production, BA’s should drive institutionalisation of the same. It starts with much needed training to the user community on driving awareness and acceptance of the new process. User acceptance is key criterion for the success of any such automations and BA’s with their coordination skills play a major role again to achieving that.
BA’s can continuously monitor the performance of such automations, record the performance metrics and record any issues being reported on such automations. This would help to continually improve the benefits of RPA Implementation.
While it would be the Technology team that ideally decide on adopting RPA technology in the organisation, it’s the BA’s which plays the most critical role in the implementation of RPA across different business process. BA’s should be continually trained and equipped with the required skill for RPA. Continuous sharing of RPA success stories should be facilitated within the BA community across different departments, which will drive successful institutionalisation of the RPA technology within the Organization.
