KnowledgeLake Blog

Choosing an Enterprise Automation Solution Provider: 3 Key Characteristics

Written by Joe Labbe | Sep 19, 2019 2:12:00 PM

You’re Not Buying RPA, You’re Buying an Outcome

If your organization is in the market for a content management solution that includes robotic process automation, you’re looking for an outcome—not cool technology. But you’d be surprised how many organizations are sold on impressive technology and never receive the promises of improved productivity or reduced costs.

Because of this, there are a few things you should consider before choosing an RPA content management solution provider. You don’t want to invest in a solution only to realize months down the line that you haven’t received the outcome you were promised at the beginning. As you evaluate your options, do what you can to prevent buyer’s remorse. Watch for the following three things:

1. Your solution provider should focus on opportunities and outcomes—not technology. Let’s remember what the goals of this project are. In implementing an RPA solution, your organization is most likely looking to improve or replace an existing process or establish a process that creates a new business opportunity. Talking about the technology behind the scenes may be unavoidable, especially with your IT team members. But when communicating with people who will be using the solution every day, it’s important that your solution provider is giving them the information that’s important to them and leaving the tech details for those who truly care.

Click to Tweet: Investing in an RPA content management solution? Your solution provider should focus on opportunities and outcomes—not technology.

2. Your solution provider should use tangible metrics to measure success. How will your solution provider recognize success when they get there? Every RPA project should have a clearly defined set of metrics to define success. While tech metrics are fine to include, your solution provider should focus most of their attention on metrics that are tangible for all the departments involved in evaluating the project’s outcome.

Be cautious of too many vague metrics like “improved customer satisfaction” or “increased customer acquisition.” These kinds of metrics are often more complex than they seem. They cannot necessarily be attributed solely to the success of the automation.

3. They should make it clear they’re not running away once you’re up and running. One of the main reasons why RPA projects fail is poor support. RPA automations link stuff together that was not intended to be linked. And that stuff can be cranky and highly unpredictable. Even a small change to one of the systems or data sources participating in an automation can bring the whole process to a screeching halt. These slowdowns not only hurt return on investment but could become a sinkhole of lost opportunities. When problems come up, you’ll want a dependable team there to help you.

Here at KnowledgeLake, we pride ourselves on our ability to deliver on the promises of our solution. While we may have cool technology, we know that we’re only as good as the outcomes we can deliver to our customers.