Taking a people first approach

“Despite uncertainty about which are the best processes to start automating, conventional wisdom is still typically to start with a big bang approach with high upfront investments associated with software, hardware and consulting, which carries more project risk, is more rigid and is less innovative, “said Marios Stavropoulos, CEO and Co-founder of Softomotive, “In whichever currency you work in, it simply does not add up any longer. This has led some of our customers to say that there must be a better way to RPA rather than doing the same old thing. It is a time for a people first approach to managing process automation to drive the next productivity revolution.”

Stavropoulos explained that Softomotive’s People1st Approach to RPA means putting people before robots. People or ‘Citizen Developers’ have the knowledge, skills and understanding to consistently select and develop the best tasks and processes to automate. Only once these have been tested and proven should they be deployed enterprise-wide, in either attended (Bots interacting with humans) or unattended mode (Bots acting independently).

Marios continued: “Our People1st approach to RPA, by giving everyone their own digital assistant, places the power firmly into the hands of the people that do the work. This means in a People1st world, everyone is a ‘Citizen Developer’ because they know best what works and what does not.

It should not be left to a centralised department like the Center of Excellence (COE) to make this happen.”

The key advantages of adopting a People1st approach to RPA are summarised below:

Marios explained: “A brand new business model for managing process automation is required to address our People1st approach which splits into three distinct stages called ‘the Three Is’. First, is Innovate, then Incubate and finally Implement. Each of these have a number of steps making up a seven-step blue print for introducing a People1st approach to RPA.”

Argyris Kaninis, the COO and Co-founder of Softomotive added: “Softomotive is the only RPA vendor to offer a desktop version WinAutomation, as well as server-based unattended and attended automation solutions ProcessRobot. These two working together are uniquely qualified to support a People 1st Approach to RPA because the desktop version is easily installed on everyone’s computer to accelerate innovation in process automation from the bottom up”. He continued, “Once the best automations have been filtered, tested and prepared by the COE, they can be scaled as business as usual using our enterprise RPA platform. The transition from one to the other is made easy since both solutions share the same RPA engine.”