How To Build a Sustainable Governance Framework for RPA & IA

What Is RPA Governance?

RPA governance aligns your automation with your business goals. It can help you establish a framework for developing, deploying and maintaining a robust RPA solution. Without RPA governance, your automations will be much harder to control, scale and keep sustainable.

One strategy for ensuring RPA governance is by establishing a Center of Excellence (CoE).

What is a CoE?

Your Center of Excellence (CoE) is a group of skilled individuals from within your organization who oversee the implementation and governance of your RPA initiatives. They choose which business processes get automated and which automation tools to use. Their governance includes:

• Identifying, assessing and prioritizing processes for automation.
• Designing, building and running automations.
• Training people in automation best practices.

Why is RPA governance important?

RPA governance gives you a total cost of ownership (TCO), compliance with industry standards and a boost in productivity and process quality.

Here’s what IA or RPA governance ensures:

• Compliance and regulation: Digital workers adhere to regulatory compliance, helping organizations avoid non-compliance and the associated penalties.
• Data security: Data is handled securely, and access is restricted to authorized personnel to reduce the risk of data breaches and privacy violations.
• Process stability: Continuous monitoring of digital workers ensures process stability and reduces the likelihood of errors and disruptions.
• Scalability: Automations are scalable, including processes of increasing complexity, helping maintain business continuity and reliability.
• Resource allocation: Resources are allocated to the optimal places for better cost-efficiency.
• Quality control: Guidelines are used for RPA software bot development, testing and deployment for higher-quality automation solutions.
• Change management: Governance helps organizations manage change with clear guidelines, training and policies for adopting new automated processes.

What are the challenges in RPA governance?

There are two major points to consider when establishing RPA governance for your automation program: change management and infrastructure.

1. Change management: Train and support your employees as you adopt automation into your business processes. Show them how they can support and create ideas and have your CoE plan training and education sessions to get everyone on board.
2. Infrastructure: Ensure you have the right infrastructure in place, and you’ve chosen IA or RPA software suitable to your needs. Your systems need to be able to handle your automation software, so select tools that align with that.

How To Build an RPA Governance Framework

To see the benefits of RPA, your RPA governance framework should be rooted in a strategic operating model. This will act as your blueprint for a successful automation journey – not just in building it, but adding to it and monitoring it for more opportunities.

Your CoE are your contractors when building a governance framework. Ensure your people are trained and ready to support your RPA projects. Let’s get to the building. Hammers up!

RPA governance best practices

Here’s what to look out for with your robotic process automation (RPA) governance:

• Policies and procedures: Develop and document clear policies for RPA deployment, operation and maintenance. These policies should include business user access controls, data security, compliance and change management.
• Training and education: Ensure everyone is aware of automation’s possibilities and set any roles and responsibilities right away. Crowdsource ideas and empower your people to see automation as a digital assistant to free them from time-consuming, repetitive tasks.
• Risk assessment: Identify any risks associated with RPA implementation and develop strategies to mitigate these risks.
• Monitor: Continuously check the progress of your digital workers to see that they’re operating efficiently and meeting your business outcomes.
• Report: Audit your automated processes to ensure they’re running as expected and there are no bottlenecks or slowdowns.

Keep Building

With automation, the building never stops – and that’s a good thing! With the right governance structure, your IA or RPA program will keep growing and scaling to create esven more efficiencies across your organization.

For more guidance on how you can build and strategically grow your automations, consult the SS&C | Blue Prism® Robotic Operating Model (ROM™2).

Alexis Veenendaal is an Associate Content Writer and Editor at SS&C Blue Prism. She’ll tell you all the cool tips and tricks for implementing intelligent automation into your workplace. She has lived and worked internationally as a professional writer and designer for nearly a decade after graduating from the University of Lethbridge for English Literature. Her personal pursuits include authoring books and digital cartography.