3 strategies for reaping the ROI of RPA A guide to bolstering business agility in tough times with hyperautomation and low-code app development 3 strategies for reaping the ROI of RPA A guide to bolstering business agility in tough times with hyperautomation and low-code app development How hyperautomation helps you say YES to spending less while growing more Sometimes just surviving in a tough business climate feels like it should be accomplishment enough. Yet it isn’t. Your competition will keep evolving even if you don’t. But sometimes saying “yes” to both spending less and growing more seems impossible. Especially when you’re maintaining costly legacy systems that lack agility and don’t support the latest digital technologies. That’s where automation and low-code development come in. Migrating away from inefficient legacy systems and instead using powerful, modern tools such as hyperautomation and robotic process automation (RPA) helps your company streamline operations and reinvigorate digital transformation. You can reduce development time and costs, automate manual and repetitive tasks, and free up employee brainpower to focus on more strategic, creative, and rewarding work that moves your business forward. You’ll also be able to offer more personalized, intuitive experiences to customers and employees alike—the kinds of experiences that reduce your retention costs. This ebook explains more about what RPA is, what it can do for your business, and how to implement it. And you’ll find three strategies that ServiceNow hyperautomation customers use to reap the benefits of RPA in their organizations. | 2 3 strategies for reaping the ROI of RPA A guide to bolstering business agility in tough times with hyperautomation and low-code app development What is robotic process automation—and what can it do for your business? Across industries, automation helps organizations do more with less, reducing expenses while improving accuracy and output. But traditional automation is generally built on application development with high-code that requires extensive expertise to automate the integration of relevant systems. This scenario can be hard to maintain when resources are thin and budgets are tight. RPA takes a different approach: building tasks on low-code tooling at the user-interface level. Because RPA can copy and learn from user actions, there’s no need to make costly changes to the underlying IT infrastructure. As a result, RPA democratizes digital transformation, and it opens up the driver’s seat to more people than just professional developers and those with computer science backgrounds. It gives everyday employees the chance to focus on improving the work they love—placing business-led automation innovation into the hands of those who can do the most with it. In RPA, bots can be attended or unattended, depending on whether they require any assistance or oversight from human operators. Bots that don’t need supervision liberate people resources to be spent on more valuable, mentally demanding activities. In essence: RPA automates specific kinds of actual human activities and also large-scale data-movement activities. It’s capable of quickly and accurately handling repetitive, monotonous, and rule- or schedule-based tasks and duties—the kinds that workers dislike doing. Automation is on the rise 23% growth per year expected between now and 2027 for the worldwide RPA and hyperautomation market1 31% average cost reduction expected from intelligent automation over the next 3 years (up from 24% in 2020)2 With… an estimated ROI of under 18 months2 1 ResearchAndMarkets.com, Global RPA and hyperautomation market report 2022: Industry set to grow to $26 billion by 2027, June 23, 2022 2 Deloitte Insights, Automation with intelligence, June 30, 2022 | 3 3 strategies for reaping the ROI of RPA A guide to bolstering business agility in tough times with hyperautomation and low-code app development What can RPA tackle? RPA bots are capable of learning from human users to re-create a range of user actions, such as: • Logging in to applications • Copying and pasting information • Filling out forms • Making calculations • Scraping browsers • Opening emails and attachments • Collecting data from applications • Moving documents and files • Extracting content from emails, PDFs, and forms In addition to simple tasks, RPA can help automate entire legacy system functions—those critical but cumbersome processes built on clunky, siloed architectures that are too slow to respond to modern-day business challenges. For example, hyperautomation can overhaul and streamline the procure-to-pay process end to end—from sourcing to procuring to paying. | 4 3 strategies for reaping the ROI of RPA A guide to bolstering business agility in tough times with hyperautomation and low-code app development Low Technical Barrier Easier to configure bots with low-code tools Benefits of Robotic Process Automation Reliability Bots tirelessly work 24/7 without interruption Accuracy Extremely precise, uniform work that's much less prone to typos or other errors Productivity Process cycle times are much faster compared to manual process approaches Improved Employee Morale Workers can dedicate more time to engaging, interesting work Noninvasive Technology No disruption to underlying legacy systems, reducing the burden on IT Compliance Bots follow regulatory compliance rules perfectly and provide an audit trail Consistency Routine tasks are performed the same way each and every time | 5 3 strategies for reaping the ROI of RPA A guide to bolstering business agility in tough times with hyperautomation and low-code app development What’s the difference between automation, hyperautomation, and RPA? • Automation typically occurs on a small scale as a process-by-process point solution. • Hyperautomation incorporates multiple automation tools and solutions—such as AI, machine learning, and RPA—to create comprehensive automation initiatives. Hyperautomation expands automation capabilities to every IT or business process that can reasonably be automated. It can even automate complex cross- enterprise or cross-workflow processes. • Robotic process automation is a hyperautomation technology that creates and deploys software bots designed to learn, mimic, and execute human actions in business processes. 47% of developers and architects say low-code tools enable businesspeople outside of IT to develop solutions without help from IT Source: IDC, Future workforce insights: Why strategic automation empowers employees, September 2022 Take any boring copy- and-paste task, and RPA automates it. RPA lets machines do rote tasks (which they love), while humans get to do whatever they like to do. Source: ServiceNow, Workflow Quarterly Winter 2022—The Optimization Issue, December 2022 | 6 3 strategies for reaping the ROI of RPA A guide to bolstering business agility in tough times with hyperautomation and low-code app development Moving from idea to implementation Now that you know what RPA can do, you may be wondering: How do I go about deploying it? The most effective approach to achieve hyperautomation is to use the right automation tool for the need. That means taking a holistic approach in your strategic planning so you can include the tools you need when and where you need them. Continually Optimize Enable 2 Measure 4 3 Plan Prioritize Opportunities and KPIs Enable & Govern the Creators Apply the Right Technology for the Need Measure Impact 1 5 Optimize Figuring out where to begin and how to evolve your RPA journey works like a loop: 1. Plan and prioritize your opportunities and KPIs. 2. Enable and govern your creators, the people building your automation and low-code applications. 3. Apply the right technology for the need. 4. Measure your impact. 5. Continually optimize by looking critically at your hyperautomation landscape and reprioritizing opportunities and KPIs, which kicks off the process loop again. | 7 3 strategies for reaping the ROI of RPA A guide to bolstering business agility in tough times with hyperautomation and low-code app development 3 real-world strategies for RPA success Planning and theory are one thing—what about real-world execution? Read how three companies rolled out ServiceNow hyperautomation and RPA solutions for real business results. CUSTOMER OUTCOMES | 8 3 strategies for reaping the ROI of RPA A guide to bolstering business agility in tough times with hyperautomation and low-code app development STRATEGY 1 Modernize legacy systems Transform digital work using automation A telecom, media, and technology provider needed to automate manual, time-consuming change-management processes, as well as reduce the high cost of human processing and revenue leakage. ServiceNow® Automation Engine benefits: • Integrate seven fragmented software systems under one platform • Fully automate the change-management process with RPA bots across 100+ system fields • Transform back-end manual activities to automated digital work 98% requests automated 70% productivity gain 99% accuracy achieved Results | 9 3 strategies for reaping the ROI of RPA A guide to bolstering business agility in tough times with hyperautomation and low-code app development STRATEGY 2 Streamline digital operations Optimize digital operations with RPA A large regional bank in the United States needed to reduce manual data entry and improve data quality for submitting requests, as well as handle an increased backlog of innovation requests. ServiceNow® App Engine and Automation Engine helped: • Improve flexibility and multi-threaded workflow execution with out-of-the-box solutions • Deliver business solutions faster with low-code app development • Eliminate manual swivel-chair work by deploying RPA bots to integrate with core banking platforms without using an API 23K customer requests automated per year 30 screens automated in 1 RPA bot process 4 RPA bots deployed in less than 3 months Results | 10