iopex-wp-rpa-should you automate since the world is … · 2019-08-05 · an infographic on the...

Should you Automate since the world is automating?

Whitepaper

Whitepaper

Table of contents

Abstract: 1

Introduction: 1

RPA, Artificial Intelligence and Machine learning as a service: The What? 3

How best we can use RPA in ITSM? – The How? 5

Essentials of RPA implementation in IT services: The why? 7

Use Case of RPA in business processes: 10

Key things to check while implementing RPA in your organizations: 11

Conclusion: 12

RPA

www.iopex.com Whitepaper

0202

Abstract:This whitepaper will take a deep dive into automation in IT services – it will make a valid attempt to answer the question, should you automate since the world is automating? An overview on the evolution of ITIL and RPA, how Artificial intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are an integral part of Robotic Process Automation (RPA), how it can be used in the IT services, ITIL – followed up with uses cases and ways of implementing automation in your current business processes.

The three-stage process of IT services management is an interesting aspect of this whitepaper, as it highlights on how the manual process of the service management was shifted to automation model with the introduction of machine learning and Natural language understanding. An infographic on the implementation of Automation in your relevant industry is another key contribution from this whitepaper.

Introduction:As a company we believe that 50% of the back-office processes can be automated using Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) but, having mentioned that it remains as an irony that most of the IT service operations are still not automated considering the technological innovations that have happened in recent years. Anyone who reads this whitepaper with the intention of implementing RPA for their IT services such as their ITIL process would know the benefits that RPA is already bringing to the table in other functions across industries. To name a few benefits that RPA can offer to business are - reduction in costs, better customer experiences, lower operational risks, improved internal processes, better integration with the current IT systems.

Should you Automate since the world is automating?

ITIL processes:Information Technology Infrastructure Library is a standard framework developed to deliver efficient IT support services such as selection, planning, delivery and maintenance within a business organization.

1 9 8 5 2 0 2 0

1989ITIL introduced to

standarizeIT service

management.

2019ITIL 4 promises to

add practical guidance,draw connections betweenITIL and new approaches

such as DevOps, and delveinto what IT leadershipand IT value mean for

21st century practitioners.

2007ITIL v3 introduces a feedback loop for

improvement in theITIL Service

Lifecycle. The ITILguidelines now cover

service strategy, design,transition and operation

with continual serviceimprovement built in.

2001ITIL v2 provides a more

uniform and usable structurefor service support and

delivery.

2011ITIL 2011 expands upon andclarifies processes in ITIL v3,adding some processes and

focusing on strategy.

The ITIL framework comes under ITSM (IT Service Management) which is a strategic methodology adopted to design, deliver and manage the way organizations use information technology (IT). It comprises of all the support service activities and processes such as incident management, service fulfilment, change management, service catalogue management, asset management, and knowledge management.

ITSM versus IT systems management versus ITIL:There is a vague difference between ITIL and ITSM, as mentioned already ITSM is a way to optimize all the service activities and processes within an organization and on the other hand, ITIL is a tool which helps to achieve that optimization for each of those services. ITIL encompasses the following stages:

■ Service Strategy


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■ Service Design

■ Service Transition

■ Service Operation

■ Continuous Service Enhancement

IT systems management and network management are technology driven and focused on the technical services part whereas ITSM is more of a customer-centric system, all these systems undergo consistent improvisations on the service, IT infrastructure and process involved in a business unit. Some of the benefits of ITIL are:

1. Better alignment of IT services to the organization’s business processes, hence better customer engagement.

2. Improves the quality of IT services on the levels of availability, capacity, security and consistency to plan solutions accordingly.

3. IT delivery services cost is reduced by eliminating wasted efforts and helps to focus on high priority jobs.

ITIL offers a handful of benefits to the IT services management, however as a part of the continuous process enhancement and innovations the next big thing that every company is focusing on is the integration of automation and machine learning to save additional cost, time and to improve the overall framework.

Continual Service Improvement

Serv

ice D

esign Service Transition

Service Operation

ITILService Strategy

RPA, Artificial Intelligence and Machine learning as a service: The What?Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is the technology that enables users to design software or a robot to perform actions like humans by emulation and integration with the digital systems to execute various business processes. The best part of RPA is that it doesn’t replace the existing IT system or framework, rather it integrates with it to provide faster and better results.

Business benefits of RPA: Some of the significant benefits that RPA can bring to the table businesses are:

Better Accuracy Rates:

RPA software and robots are programmed with certain rules and algorithms; hence it is consistent, compliant and adheres to zero

errors.

Compliance Proof:

All the actions performed by RPA

machine is monitored and they execute tasks

more reliably, thus standardization is taken care of automatically.

Cost Reduction:

RPA has already proved with various functions that it can save operational and

transactional cost up to 80% depending upon the type of processes.

Scalability Factor:

Since RPA can integrate with the existing systems, it can be implemented simultaneously from

desktop to cloud, which eventually scales up

the existing processes. Deploying new robots

can be done quickly with minimal costs.

Better speed and productivity:

Most of the back-office tasks are repetitive in

nature. RPA can take over less valued repetitive tasks which improves speed, in turn employees can focus on more productive tasks

to improve the bottom line.


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How RPA works?Like how industrial robots transform work performed in a factory, RPA bots enables businesses to transform back-office tasks. Bots can integrate and interact with the existing system via process mapping, screen mapping, effort mapping and can automate jobs like data input, opening files, copy paste which involves fewer skills and are highly repetitive in nature. RPA uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to interact with the systems in the same manner as a human being will do.

Artificial Intelligence (AI):It is all about self-learning through experience in AI. Machines can interact with the current systems and interpret the exceptions when performed repeatedly, AI will then record all these exceptions through learning and pass the new information to the system, which will react differently when it encounters a similar situation just like a human being.

Machine Learning:It is an application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) that empowers the systems to learn automatically when encountered with exceptions/deviations to enhance the current process followed by the system. Machine learning applications are developed by various programs and algorithms depending upon the process, function and industry.

How best we can use RPA in ITSM? – The How?We have come to a point to understand, how best we can use Robotic Process Automation in IT Services Management? This will open doors to a lot of questions and help companies to build the best RPA process in their IT Services.

Evolution from Software-as-a-service to Machine Learning-as-a-service: Three StagesIn the initial stages, the manual efforts involved in an IT service was transformed into Robotic Process Automation with the help of software-as-a-service. Bots took over the repetitive and time-consuming tasks that were previously performed by humans. RPA enabled companies to focus on the needs and pain points of an IT infrastructure to develop bots to replace such processes. But IT services involve a more complex structure with systems, processes, tasks and queries.

This form RPA could automate only individual tasks and not the entire IT process, hence companies had to look out for an advanced version of RPA. Some of the complex tasks involved in IT services are user authorization and password resets, cybersecurity incidents, virtual server provisioning and configuration. This takes us to the next stage of evolution.

In stage two, companies had to consider the two challenges, a) to handle more complex tasks and b) to automate the entire IT process of an IT service, this led companies to focus on Intelligent Automation. In this form of automation, bots are designed to understand human languages, Natural language understanding (NLU). In the previous stage, bots can perform simple and repetitive tasks, whereas in this stage these intelligent bots can handle complex tasks which involve unstructured requests, through machine learning/natural language understanding.

Natural language understanding is under constant development ever since its inception, on those lines companies have started to deploy chatbots which are capable of recording requests received from users, interpret it and communicate to IT automated systems or bots to execute tasks. Again, this system of automation has two challenges, a) Highly Manual – currently humans should involve in the process of identifying the queries, interpreting them and build bots which again needs to constant fed to improve the efficiency. b) Scalability factor – It is very difficult for companies to move this automation process to the next big level as it involves hiring employees, train them and develop bots with the help of them.


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Faq,Service

Catalogs

Continuous Training(Manual)

AI - BOT

Identify “Intents”(Manual)

Train NLU(Manual)

Build Bot(Manual)

Chat Logs

The third stage of evolution came into the picture to address these challenges, where bots are built with Artificial intelligence which can be influenced by the existing enterprise data that automatically scales up their capability to perform tasks. Here, everything is automated – the IT services requests come in form of tickets, these tickets are the data to be interpreted - the bots identify the intent of the requests, compile them as per the request type and automate them completely by using clustering techniques.

Service Tickets

Continuous Training(Automatic)

Identify “Intents” Train NLU Build Bot

Chat Logs

Automatic

AI - BOT

The Enterprise AI/Automation enables the organization to minimize manual tasks to a great extent and empowers its employees to focus on more productivity works. So, to answer the how – the best possible way to implement RPA in your business process is to

Essentials of RPA implementation in IT services: The why?We have already seen that RPA can help reduce cost and improve productivity, but there are a couple of other specific advantages with respect to IT service desks/Customer support.

■ Enterprise Automation can manage both dense and sparse data.

■ Better interaction with Customer hence enhanced customer satisfaction.


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Data Availability: Depending upon the data availability these AI-powered bots help companies to make decisions, data-driven decision making has become a sought-after way for organizations to get into new ventures. Hence, these bots can manage both sparse and dense data for decision making, but depending upon the data availability, bots are built with a different framework to interpret and provide suggestions.

Similarly, in IT services data are either available in a form where employees record the queries in a ticket management tool or excel and by interpreting the intent of those data, the bots would come up with proper results for future assistance. Likewise, in the case of a large pool of data, the data available in different forms like documents, email, knowledge base, tools and chat logs are arranged in different data sets which are then interpreted to create bots.

Enterprise Unique Language

IT - Help Desk

Semantic Parsing

Grammar Engineering

Machine Learning

Chat Log CRM Documents E-Mail KnowledgeBase

User Interactions: This can be classified into two major categories depending upon the type of bots deployed by the company – AI worker and AI assistant.

AI worker bots: In this form of interaction, the AI bots are deployed in IT software tools like Service or Remedy and are not visible to users who interact with these systems. This type of bots doesn’t make any user interactions in the form of one-on-one conversation, rather it can be trained to resolve a service request or trigger the requests to a customer service agent.

Example: Services such as unlocking accounts and updating passwords can be executed using this type of bots. Whereas if a user comes up with a request to provide authorization to access an account – then these bots can be either trained to respond or divert these queries to a service agent depending upon the security issues associated.

AI Assistant bots: This type of bots are more like an L1 support agent, which can have one-on-one conversations with users and solve tickets/issues which are pre-programmed. Issues which are not pre-programmed are diverted and assigned to agents and sends a reminder for follow up.

Example: Queries like user information, product or service information can be assisted by AI assistant bots, via chatbots. If a request is new and complex, the bots record it and assign it to a service agent.

We have seen the key benefits that RPA can bring to companies, but then while going for RPA in IT services, companies should not forget the fact that it adds customer value by enhancing the user experience, customer engagement and customer service which eventually creates a positive impact on the bottom line of the business.


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Cost EfficiencyRPA reduces the cost of transaction processingby up to 80%.

ScalingRPA effectively decouples resource costs fromprocess volume.. This greatly simplifies operationalscaling. allowing organisations to focus resourceson other key areas of expansion. organisationalchange and capacity increases.

Ease-of-useRelative to other forms of automation andtransformation. RPA is easy to implement.Configure and maintain.

AgilityAdapting to demand fluctuationsis a key advantage of RPA.

Why implement RPA?There are seven powerfulbenefits of RPA:

We have seen the what, why and how, now let’s find out where it can best ensemble in your current business process, as mentioned above that 50% of the back-office tasks can be automated, the below infographics illustrates the potential of RPA implementation across functions and industries.

LEGEND

F&AACCOUNTS RECEIVABLE, ACCOUNTS PAYABLE,

GENERAL LEDGER

PROCUREMENTINVOICE PROCESSING, REQUISITION TO

PURCHASE ORDER

HUMAN RESOURCEPAYROLL, HIRING, CANDIDATE

MANAGEMENT

CONTACT CENTERCUSTOMER SERVICE INDUSTRY-SPECIFIC PROCESSES

BANKING &FINANCIALSERVICES

CARDS ACTIVATION

FRAUDS CLAIMSDISCOVERY

INSURANCECLAIMS PROCESSING

NEW BUSINESSPREPARATION

HEALTHCARE REPORTS AUTOMATION

SYSTEMRECONILIATION

MANUFACTURING BILLS OF MATERIAL(BOM) GENERATION

HI-TECH &TELECOM

SERVICE ORDERMANAGEMENT

QUALITY REPORTING

ENERGY & UNILITIES

ACCOUNT SETUP

METER-READINGVALIDATION

Use Case of RPA in business processes:RPA in ITIL: The below examples will show, how a process in ITIL can be optimized using Machine Learning. The current ITIL workflow can become optimized process automation to save additional cost and time.

Example:1. A new service request is raised by the user via email or call

(Software update).

2. The workflow creates a ticket and assigns to the service agent.

3. The ticket is reviewed and assessed by the service agent.

4. Service desk agent uses workflow to contact someone for approval

5. Service desk agent uses the software distribution tool to fulfil the need potentially or inform the field associate to handle the end user’s requirement.

6. The end user’s feedback is assessed and closes the ticket.

The following example will show how automation be integrated to influence the ITIL framework:

1. A new service request is raised by the user via chatbots. (Software update).

2. The workflow creates a ticket and assigns to the service agent.

3. The ticket is reviewed and assessed by the service agent.

4. Service desk agent uses workflow to contact someone for approval

5. Service desk agent uses the software distribution tool to fulfil the need potentially or inform the field associate to handle the end user’s requirement.

6. The end user’s feedback is assessed and closes the ticket.

As one can notice that there is much difference between the two processes, so let’s find out what if we can include machine learning/AI to further influence the current ITIL process.


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1. A new service request is raised by the user via chatbots. (Software update).

2. Machine learning is used to log and assess the need for the request and find out whether it requires any pre-approval.

3. The system generates a software distribution tool in the form of orchestration.

4. The end user’s feedback is assessed, and the ticket is closed by automation.

Key things to check while implementing RPA in your organizations:Both ITPA and RPA are similar concepts, but the company should have a well-defined plan on how to use these for improved efficiency. This is where RPA is a great enhancement for companies, as it can be integrated with the current IT process and systems without disturbing the current workflow. When Robotic Process Automation and business process planning are in proper sync, then the possibilities of producing great results is inevitable. Some of the key things to focus while implementing RPA are:

■ Respond to external stimuli and decide the time to execute on various functions.

■ To act independent and program any application as per necessity.

■ Data Protection and tractional integrity should never be compromised.

■ Audit trails across all system management functions are mandatory.

While ensuring the above steps are taken into consideration, some of the other key things to check while implementing RPA are.

■ Automation Opportunities: Determining process adaptability to automation implementation is vital for any organization to see success. Though there is a lot of scope for automation in many processes across industries, it varies with factors such as process size, SLAs, industry, current process, client relationship etc.

■ Opportunity Validation: Once the process is determined the next step is to validate the framework of the process, ideally most of the processes are majorly segmented into transactional and decisional parts, and while choosing automation most companies opt for a transactional side of it to achieve quick wins, again it all depends on company decision.

■ Choose a design model: Designing the automation plan to match the current business process is one way of choosing the design model, the other way is to update/change the current business process according to the automation plan that is going to be integrated. Both have their own advantages and disadvantages, typically the automation team would suggest both the model’s benefits and its in the company’s discreet to take the final call.

■ Automation plan: Once the business process model is decided, then the next step would be designing an automation plan to identify the exceptions and integrate it with it. From the past observations, it is best if we can automate 75% of the process and retain the remaining for the employees to handle. 100% automation lead to chaos in most cases.

■ The pilot phase: Doing a pilot run of the new automation plan on the current process to identify if there any challenges faced by the employees and end users would be next step to have a seamless automation system in place.

■ Launch the plan: If the pilot process is successful then the transition of automation activities is executed by training and handling contingency – Proper documentation of the entire process with infographics would be another important aspect of this step.

■ Sustain and Maintain Automation: Any new change is a challenge, but once we start using on a regular basis it becomes a practice and starts to provide the desired benefits. Again, automation is not a one-time activity, hence it is necessary that we keep an eye on the changing process and accommodate automation accordingly.


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Conclusion:We now have a clear answer to the question, should you automate because the world is automating? – yes, we should automate by what we should automate, how we can do that and what are the essentials to consider are some of the key takeaways from this whitepaper. Accept it or not, Automation has become a revolution in all the business processes, hence it important for companies to choose automation to stay in run, but to compete and win against others one has to choose the expert who can help your company to have a smooth transition from your current business model to an automation business model.

Another huge advantage of automation is Analytics which is not discussed in this whitepaper – to keep it short since the entire automation process involves in monitoring and recording through artificial intelligence – the data gathered can be used to make data-driven decision-making which is another different topic altogether. To leave a final note on the vendor selection for your automation implementation, the following blog will provide a few guiding principles.

RPA

About iOPEXiOPEX, is an intelligent automation and services company that drives digital transformation in user acquisition, service fulfillment, customer service and back-end operations. iOPEX was founded in 2009 and is headquartered in San Jose, US. Today we have over 1,600 employees servicing customers across the globe including Fortune 100 and some of the most world’s most innovative companies.

Email: [email protected] | Phone: +1-408-747-1788 | Website: www.iopex.com

iOPEX Technologies Inc.1245 S. Winchester Blvd, Suite 309, San Jose, CA. 95128