How to Do RPA Business Analysis?

A process is a series of interrelated actions that follow each other and deliver value towards a goal.

It is an essential institutionalized step for the sustainable development of the company in a highly competitive industry and is one of the critical stages of a company’s growth. Institutionalization is related to the improvement of processes. To carry out all activities, effective process management must be established.

The process definition is an essential reference for a healthy and correctly defined process. As a result, we can say which activities are processes and which are not.

Process management consists of many stages, including the organization of interrelated processes within the framework of company activities, the documentation, and the execution of activities such as performance measurement. Procedures vary by industry. For this reason, process chains such as using department-specific templates, organizing workshops with managers, and recording the activities or actions conducted are discussed within the process management framework. Studies such as the preparation of process models and company or department-specific process documents are also the responsibility of process management.

Before starting a process that is approved for compliance with RPA, it should be researched which department of which sector will do business. In addition, information should be collected by asking the process owner what the relevant unit does. To whom, what, and how is the process to be worked on is addressed; Starting the revolution without knowing very well what it aims and solves will lead to gaps between the lines in the documentation and the technical side improvements. Of course, the only condition in process dominance is not knowing the work done.

In the RPA process to be worked on, it is also vital that the person concerned (the person who is the owner of the job/process, who does this job and now wants to transfer his position to robotic automation) moves his/her work to the RPA business analyst completely and correctly, together with the errors he/she encounters. In addition, it is a healthy choice regarding functioning, not avoiding the questions asked, and providing end-to-end support to the process.

At the approval stage of the documented process, the request of the person concerned to correct the deficiencies/errors by examining the process analysis document in detail is also significant for the progress of the process. Constantly changing a process that was approved and started to be developed without careful examination by the person concerned due to frequent revisions is nothing but a waste of money, effort, and time.

The responsibilities of the RPA business analyst role, which is an essential part of the RPA team, can be listed as follows:

In short, the day for an RPA business analyst; Many projects require working back and forth between workflows and meetings. Being able to follow and perform more than one job at the same time requires a good analysis and the ability to read between the lines and take notes quickly and legibly.

Business Knowledge: Deep understanding of business functions and specific areas analyzed.

Business Intelligence: Helps understand the importance of fundamental business principles and best practices across industries for reviewing organizational strategy.

Reliability and Ethics: It’s about what is and isn’t acceptable data use, whose data has legal implications, and what can be accessed or viewed and what isn’t.

Industry Knowledge: Used to understand practices and activities within an industry and similar processes across industries for organizational strategy.

Solution Knowledge: Solution knowledge is valuable when recommending various approaches based on technologies, analytical platforms, and future trends.

Systems Thinking: Helps holistically think about the interactions between people, processes, and technological aspects to propose a specific strategy.

Adaptability: Helps adjust the analysis approach as more data is uncovered, new insights are learned, or various levels of stakeholders are involved.

Organizational Information: It is useful when designing the strategy, considering the business’s management structure and architecture.

Knowledge of Methodology: Useful when developing an approach based on context, dependencies, opportunities, and constraints.

Collaboration, Facilitation, and Communication Skills: Effective collaboration with the right stakeholders requires effective communication skills. Facilitation skills are required to manage meetings, workshops, and other collaborations.

Interaction Skills: Helps facilitate interaction between multiple stakeholders involved in the process.

Analytical Thinking and Problem Solving: Helps solve problems efficiently and effectively. It involves methodical thinking that helps break complex problems into manageable components, find solutions, and make decisions.

Conceptual Thinking: Helps to combine abstract, significant, and potentially disparate information to arrive at an appropriate strategy.

Decision Making: It helps make an informed decision based on various criteria and objective evaluation.

Visualization Skills: Data storytelling and data visualization work together to provide clear, concise, and visually appealing communication.

Creative thinking: It helps to analyze various ideas and approaches to implement a particular strategy.

Analysis Skills: Basic skills in statistics are a basic understanding of data analytics. Additionally, this includes data science tools and technologies.

Compliance of the process with RPA should be checked.

• Can be explained with a specific workflow,

• It has a standard data structure,

• RPA compliance requirements for processes with defined variables;

o Relying on rules,

o Having repetitive/repetitive steps,

o Consisting of periodic and time-based transactions,

o Containing digital data,

o Being error prone.

Technical analysis should be done.

Technical analysis is the most crucial part of project development. With correct technical analysis, you can increase your project development speed. In technical analysis, the process must be broken down into small parts.

• What is the brief description of the job?
• What is the frequency of the work? (What times on which days?)
• How many working hours does a person allocate for this job?
• What is the error rate of this job?
• Does the person doing the work make decisions cognitively? If it gives; How much of this process does it affect?
• What are the applications/software or hardware used while doing business? (if any)
• Is there file archiving?
• Is external interaction required while the robot is running?

The most common problem encountered in this step is that the narrator, who owns the process, cannot explain his work due to professional blindness. For example, Problems arise due to the narrator’s forgetting to explain the errors he encounters on the screen (such as pop-ups, windows, extra tabs, pressing enter instead of the home button, double-clicking instead of a single click).

The applications that the robot will use should be tested.

Which applications the robot uses for the process should be determined, and it should be confirmed whether these environments are test environments. It should be checked whether data is processed/changed during the process or just information is read. It should be determined on which application (test/live) the development will be made. A username and password, if any, must be requested.

Authorization checks should be made.

If there is a lack of authority, these deficiencies should be identified before starting the developments. If there is, it should be reported to the system administrator and project managers, and it should be requested that the deficiencies of authority be corrected.

Process document must be filled.

In line with the questions and information obtained up to this stage, the learned work (process) should be documented using plenty of visuals.

If you are stuck at the point of writing the process, if your stomach hurts when you get to the head of the desk, if you have done your best not to register and listed all the excuses, you did not ask the right questions.

(Observation note: Every process narrator dreams of simply showing/describing the happy path and getting away with the happiness of handing over the workload to the robot.)

It is forwarded to the technical team.

The process, whose preliminary analysis and testing is completed, is explained to the technical team, and transferred to the robot.

After being tested, it is put live.

After the robot is tested and successful, it is taken to the live environment, and the customer is trained.

Lack of Industry Knowledge

The RPA business analyst must collaborate with the user to understand the requirements. Domain knowledge plays a vital role in gaining a clear and complete understanding of the requirements. To abstract some event and concept patterns while writing the process document will make things fun and easy to obtain information about the sector currently being worked on.

In a few weeks, gaining expertise in the industry for which the process is written is impossible. But enough information can be gained in a few weeks to add value to the project.

Lack of Up-To-Date Processes

It takes much effort and mental fatigue to bring results. Following this, the lion’s share is the process of keeping the project up-to-date and developing it. Process documentation is often incomplete or has been approved by the customer without further review. These things prevent process compliance and delivery date.

Insufficient Involvement of Process Owners

One of the main success criteria for each project is the participation of the person (narrator) who wants to transfer his work to RPA. The most widespread problem here is that as a result of the person leaving the job in the middle of the project or changing the unit by rotation, someone less competent in the process is replaced. Here, the person who will tell the process becomes the person with the slightest command of the process, and the completion time of the process document is interrupted by frequently tampering with the rules.

Another problem encountered is that the person who will explain the process misses the meetings and often proposes revisions afterward. Here again, the project time is exceeded, and the completion time of both the document and the development is disrupted.

Another problem is that the department officials approve RPA without the approval of the unit employee. The main reason for the issues experienced with the person who oversees the process working in the business unit lies here. Employees who do not want to cooperate and cannot accept RPA, cause delays, incorrect or incomplete process transfer, logout issues, and even approval issues.

Conflict with Users

Sometimes you may find yourself in a situation where you cannot understand the user’s complaints. In some processes, rough feedback or complaints to the manager may occur during delivery, even if you have done the best work with your team. This can even lead to conflicts within the group. Here, the first attempt is to understand the resistance or the need for a new solution. Ensuring the person concerned understands the process, erroneous or missing parts can be passed over. Otherwise, it may take some time for you to understand some things.

Professionalism

Business analysts are one of the most under-appreciated, underpaid, and overlooked members of the IT world. It is suggested that they do not need technical skills. But on the contrary, they know how to maintain their business processes and are adept at managing the requirements technically. They often connect a connecting intermediary between a project’s technical and commercial aspects. They are people who contribute to the development of the project plan and support the project from beginning to end. They collaborate with developers to ensure that the project is built to the most up-to-date standards and meets the expectations of the business. They contribute to developing solutions that benefit the company and the customer, ensuring that the job is completed on time and to the required standards.

When starting an RPA process analysis, it is first decided whether the process is suitable for robotic automation. At this decision stage, the project manager and technical team are consulted by asking relevant questions to the customer who owns the process. Then the eligibility decision is made.

The analysis studies of the process, which is decided to be suitable for robotic process automation, are started, and the relevant process analysis document is filled. Here, the work step flow, which requires ensuring the process flow and accuracy, occurs due to work being scrutinized and touched frequently.

The approved process document is delivered to the technical team for further development. After development, process testing takes place. After completed tests, the process is taken a life, and the project is completed by giving unified console (UC) training to the customer (user).