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Automation, if executed poorly, can have negative impacts on data usage, processes, employee morale and customer satisfaction.

10 Automation Mistakes to avoid:

1. Focusing on a single technology
Once an organization has purchased and implemented a specific process automation tool, such as robotic process automation (RPA), successfully, it’s natural that colleagues want to adopt it more widely.

2. Believing that business can automate without IT
More and more business users believe that the adoption of RPA and low-code/no-code applications don’t require the assistance of IT. But business users may lack knowledge of how customer and data records work, and there’s a risk of mishandling the information.

3. Thinking automation is always the solution
Automation may be the best long-term option for business and IT processes, but leaders cannot simply use it to cover gaps in a poorly designed process. Automation is not meant to make up for failures in systems or defer system replacement.

4. Not engaging all stakeholders
Automation, by nature, has a broad impact on the enterprise, which means you should engage stakeholders from across the organization for decision making and sign off. For example, if adoption of new automation processes changes the nature of people’s roles, involve HR; changes to access rights and IDs, or server requirements must involve security or IT.

5. Failing to devote enough time to testing
Automation technologies only work when the algorithms and rules are exactly correct. The technologies may seem easy to use, but they are unforgiving when programmed incorrectly. They can very quickly wreck business data and fail to deliver the desired business outcome.

6. Wasting effort on overly complicated processes
At times, organizations find themselves in a quagmire when automating a process. That most often happens when processes are not well-documented or understood, if the workflow is not consistent or if there are too many variants in the decision-making process.

7. Treating automation as simple task replication
Using automation tools to copy exactly what is being done manually misses a critical benefit of automation — improving the end-to-end process to create a better customer and employee experience. If process redesign is not part of the automation process, you may use the wrong automation tool and lose the business outcome you hope to achieve.

8. Failing to monitor in postproduction
Just like any system implementation, automation projects will require extensive “hands-on” IT involvement after implementation. For example, for RPA rollouts, establish continuous assessment, monitoring and regular quality checks to ensure that robots have been scripted correctly and are continuing to work as expected. This avoids huge data cleanup tasks.

9. Using the wrong metrics to measure success
It’s typical to measure technology applications and tools to ensure that they are working as designed. However, this doesn’t reflect whether or not the project is successful. Measuring the impact on processes and the enterprise as a whole is key to the success of automation.

10. Ignoring the culture and employee impact
While it’s critical to focus on how to adopt and scale automation, it is equally important to consider the impact on employees, especially if roles are eliminated or reimagined.

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You can read more about Automation Mistakes  here.

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