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cat.thomasPathfinder Community Team

published in Automation Leaders Blog

Overheard at User Group Dinners: Listen in on our customer conversations.Automation Pathfinder Program

Getting together with customers over dinner always provides a frictionless forum to share information and success stories. So we frequently do just that. Missed mingling over a meal with us? Have no fear. Here’s a synopsis of some of the themes that came up at our most recent user group dinners:Theme: To create more customer-focused, end-to-end experiences, it’s critical to think about how to expand traditional automation programs. In other words, after automating tasks and processes, many customers are looking to automate customer-focused experiences. They’re asking questions, like: “Can automation help us respond more quickly to customer requests? If so, how?”. This is a goal worth working toward and one to keep top of mind.Theme: Scale and growth are still at the heart of automation efforts. Customers shared big, hairy goals they’re looking to achieve. Here are some examples: Double the amount of automation processes Train more people in the art of automation with Build a Bot and B

cat.thomasPathfinder Community Team

published in Automation Leaders Blog

Stories of Scale from our Q4 User GroupsAutomation Pathfinder Program

Our User Group meetings are always lively and chock full of ideas, ways to overcome challenges, shared goals and so much more. Haven’t attended one yet? Here’s your chance to eavesdrop on the best of what we’ve seen come out of our Q4 2022 round of these community gatherings:Theme: Just. Start. This is one we hear A LOT. And it’s still a conversation highlight in User Group meeting after User Group meeting. Start small, but start. Don’t stall. Our speaker, Jim Frost, Lead Engagement Partner at R-Path Automation, refined the thought, sharing that: “For anyone in their initiation stages of their automation program, don’t try to do the most complicated thing straight out of the gate. Do something small yet meaningful, get the quick win and get the train moving. In another group, Bonnie Dallum, Global Intelligent COE Lead at Cargill agreed: “Think big, but start small. Don’t boil the ocean right away. Carve out something small in the beginning and bring the use case to your partners to sho

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Anonymous

published in Automation Leaders Blog

Getting Hands on With CoE Manager

Hands-on With CoE ManagerOne of the most exciting topics at Imagine 2022 was the announcement of CoE Manager for the Automation Success Platform. In this tutorial, we’ll walk through the process of using CoE Manager to submit, track, manage, and monitor an automation opportunity from idea submission to a deployed automation.What is CoE Manager?CoE Manager is a cloud-based platform enabling automation programs to scale, and drive value from their automation practice.Scale your automation pipeline by optimizing the idea submission process Systematically analyze submitted opportunities based on complexity, alignment to strategic objectives, and ROI for the business Minimize the effort in tracking, reporting, and managing your automation delivery cycle Report on value generated by delivered automations Including projections for automations that are still in pipeline/development What is an Opportunity?Every automation/use-case that is tracked in CoE Manager is an opportunity. An submitt

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Anonymous

published in Automation Leaders Blog

How to Hype Your Automation Program

Whether it’s a series of intranet posts, emails or a coveted Intranet hub dedicated to socializing your Automation Program, these are great tips for educating and inspiring your audience about the power of automation. Start by welcoming everyone to your Automation Hub or Email Series. Introduce Automation not so much as an army of bots (which can sound confusing, or scary) but as digital co-workers ready to help with routine work or make someone’s everyday life easier. Here are recommendations from the Automation Anywhere Community. Try them on for size in your own promotion and engagement efforts: Hello world, Meet Your Automation Program Encourage as many people as possible to get involved in the automation process. Let them know that the best way to start is by learning about the power of Automation or reaching out to team members with specific questions. Introduce Your Team Let everyone know your team has been charged with automating the enterprise, and how you’re using technology

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Anonymous

published in Automation Leaders Blog

Leverage A+ Accelerators to Start, Accelerate, and ScaleAutomation Pathfinder Program

What are A+ Accelerators? They're concise, pre-packaged, outcome-based services engagements. Created from real-world customer experiences, A+ Accelerators can help solve a wide variety of automation challenges. This collection has been curated specially for you as part of the Automation Pathfinder experience. Choose from a library of A+ Accelerators to solve any issue with scaling automation Delivered by our Professional Services experts who guide you and your team to the right solution Ensure success with validated outcomes-based packages Get the tools, training, and best practices necessary to help drive your automation program success From discovering the next set of processes to automate, to checking the health of your automation program, to improving employee productivity with human-bot collaboration, our Professional Services experts have identified best practices to accelerate your automation journey success. Explore our A+ Accelerators library for a selection of solution

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Anonymous

published in Automation Leaders Blog

Special Access: Templates and Planning Documents from Professional ServicesAutomation Pathfinder Program

Here are some expert guides for every step of your automation journey. Whether you are just embarking on your intelligent automation journey, scaling your program or driving large scale transformation, these guides from our experts in professional services will help. Bot Velocity Planning (Excel)Process Definition Document (Word)Solution Design Document - AARI Desktop (Word)Solution Design Document - AARI Web (Word)Solution Design Document - AARI On-Demand (Word)Solution Design Document - AARI Run Local via Event Triggers (Word)Solution Design Document - Run via Control Room Request (Word)Solution Design Document - Run Local On-Demand (Word)Solution Design Document - Run Local On-Demand with Workload Manager (Word)Solution Design Document - Run Local On-Demand (Word)Solution Design Document - Run Local via Event Trigger with Workload Management (Word)Solution Design Document - Run Remote On-Demand (Word)Solution Design Document - Run Remote On-Demand with Workload Manager (Word)Soluti

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Anonymous

published in Automation Leaders Blog

Stories of Scale from our Q3 User GroupAutomation Pathfinder Program

Our User Group meetings are always lively and chock full of ideas, ways to overcome challenges, shared goals and so much more. Haven’t attended one yet? Here’s your chance to eavesdrop on the best of what we’ve seen come out of our most recent round of these community gatherings: Theme: Meet our Meta Bot! One customer, a global retailer, shared information about their own automation journey and how they leverage a “Meta Bot” to achieve demonstrable ROI. What’s a Meta Bot? We thought you’d never ask. A “Meta Bot” is a piece of effective, reusable code that, with only a few tweaks, can have multiple applications to automate a range of business processes. Having a “template” bot not only reduces developer time and effort to iterate offshoots, it also blows open the door to opportunities for new use cases, quick wins, and big hour savings. This concept has the power to shift an organization’s mindset of what can be achieved with an automation program. Theme: Work smarter, not harder. The

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Anonymous

published in Automation Leaders Blog

Confessions of Automation LeadersAutomation Pathfinder Program

These quick-to-read case studies all stand out for their innovative approaches to getting associates to rally around the Citizen Development cause: Fujitec CO LTD. Who They are: One of the world’s biggest players in the “E&E” game – they manufacture, install, and maintain elevators and escalators with more than 10,000 employees in Japan. The Challenge: Before even implementing an automated digital workforce, they were drawn to the Automation Anywhere Citizen Development Program. They could easily see the many benefits it offered their own users to develop and scale automations themselves. But they needed to promote the idea and get people on board. The Solution: Fujitec created an internal support system with online and video training accessible to anyone interested in automation development and deployment. The CoE members periodically published a “Developer’s Champion” booklet to recognize the number of digital co-workers developed and light a friendly, competitive fire be

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Anonymous

published in Automation Leaders Blog

5 Pillars for Moving Your Automation Program "Beyond the Bot"Automation Pathfinder Program

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Anonymous

published in Automation Leaders Blog

Blueprint: Winning Plays for all 5 Pillars of Success and ScaleAutomation Pathfinder Program

Pathfinder Mission Control: The Community’s Complete Book of Plays for Automation Hyperscale Looking for all of the community's winning plays in one place? This is it. These easy-to-use checklists will ensure that your Automation Program moves “Beyond the Bot” to drive business strategy and growth. Think of this as your all-under-one-roof accountability system for your most important automation program priorities. PROGRAM This is where you can check the boxes to start, accelerate and scale your automation program from Vision Casting and Environment Set Up through Performance and Delivery Metrics. Develop Compelling Vision and Goals STARTConduct workshops, set goals, develop a compelling vision Identify key success metrics for your program Document metrics and targets for success such as number of successful runs or amount of hours saved ACCELERATESet goals, track progress and define actions to drive your program’s progress forward, such as expanded idea contribution, automation devel

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Anonymous

published in Automation Leaders Blog

Blueprint: Promoting Your Automation ProgramAutomation Pathfinder Program

AKA: So, you didn’t know you needed to be a marketer. When you launched into the position as Automation Leader you were charged with delivering automation to your organization. Obviously, right? Now you’ve delivered some automations and earned your first wins. Next, it’s up to you to communicate your program’s success. Whether it be to key stakeholders, other department heads, or potential business users in the automation orbit, it’s on you to spread the benefits of automation using your program’s results as proof of business ROI. Bet you didn’t know you needed to be a marketer too, eh? No fear – this is your chance to get important buy-in from the rest of your organization so you can accelerate transformation and deliver more impact to your company. Cue Automation fever. When to Promote You’ve delivered your first quick wins with automations, but how do you know when you’ve achieved enough to start shouting your success from the rooftops? Do your initial pilots or POCs carry enough c

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Anonymous

published in Automation Leaders Blog

Blueprint: Driving a Healthy Use Case PipelineAutomation Pathfinder Program

You want a continuous pipeline of new automation use cases to tackle. You already knew that, but how and where do you generate that thriving flow of automation priorities across diverse lines of business? From our experience here at Automation Anywhere (yes, we drink our own champagne), as well as from many community success stories, we’ve extracted three tips to help you drive a healthy use case pipeline. 1. Find Your LOBBF When it’s time to expand your reach after your first wins, there are typically two methods we see Automation Leaders employ to find their next use cases. Crowdsource. This is a strong play for a high volume of ideas. Reach out to users and ask for input on what they should automate next. Theoretically, this is helpful to discover where pain points are for your end users. However, when automation criteria isn’t meticulously outlined, the inbound suggestions can range from far too simple to downright comical–a smattering of ideas that aren’t the quality use cases yo

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Anonymous

published in Automation Leaders Blog

Blueprint: Demonstrate Maximum Value of Your Automation ProgramAutomation Pathfinder Program

When your automation program is up and humming, it’s undoubtedly providing value to your organization. But in order to understand just how far that value stretches, you have to ask the right questions to unfurl the more substantial, perhaps unquantifiable, metrics that are truly giving your program clout. And the best questions to ask—and answer with metrics—will likely shift based on the phase you’re in: Start, Accelerate, or Scale. Ask the Right Questions Think about baseball and the movie Moneyball. Haven’t seen it? Here’s a synopsis: Because of a limited budget, a young Yale grad comes into the Oakland A’s organization to help them draft and trade players based on some unconventional metrics. Most major baseball organizations with deep pockets like the Yankees draft top picks and pay multi-million dollar contracts to bring in big name, and sometimes overhyped, players. They often want big hitters, so when evaluating a draft or trade pick they asked the question: what’s his batting

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Anonymous

published in Automation Leaders Blog

Blueprint: Achieving Success at Scale with Citizen DevelopmentAutomation Pathfinder Program

We know the drill: You’re an automation leader in your company’s center of excellence (CoE). It’s 8:30 pm. You should be at home. But you’re still working away—lots to do and not many on your team to do it. You’re wrestling with the question your CIO just asked: can’t you go faster if you train up some citizen developers? You understand why citizen development sounds great. But the practical side of you thinks opening up automation development across the organization sounds risky in terms of governance and quality. We get it. But with the proper tools, training and support systems in place, Citizen Development is an incredibly effective way to scale automation success across your enterprise. It can even take the pressure off of your own time- and resource-strapped CoE. Preparation is Key Make sure you have these key elements in place before moving forward with a citizen development effort: Secure Sponsorship. General support is good. But citizen development requires more than that to

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Anonymous

published in Automation Leaders Blog

Where to start scaling: Citizen Development or Democratized Automation?Automation Pathfinder Program

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Anonymous

published in Automation Leaders Blog

Blueprint: Achieve Hyperscale by Democratizing your Automation ProgramAutomation Pathfinder Program

AKA: Can just anyone really do this? Fact: Citizen Development is hot right now. It’s a buzzword, something stakeholders and sponsors are demanding we make happen and even something many of us may feel we’re behind on. After all, you have your automation program going strong, you’ve had some wins, you’re expanding across the business, it’s driving results…but you haven’t launched a Citizen Development program yet. Are you missing the boat? What is Democratization? Simply put, success at scale is about empowering more people through automation. And that’s NOT just Citizen Development. Democratization is about delivering opportunities around and the benefits of automation to a diverse group of employees at a variety of levels. It’s one of the effective ways to involve teams and talent in a system and a program and, ultimately, make automation a part of your culture that can grow as your organization does. Consider Your Goals What are you trying to get out of opening up automation to the

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Anonymous

published in Automation Leaders Blog

Lessons from the Desk of our CIOAutomation Pathfinder Program

From the Desk of our CIO: An Email Template to Promote Your Automation Program If you can craft an email, you can get started on the road to evangelizing your Automation Program. Here’s how we do it at Automation Anywhere. <<Start with the title of your newsletter. Ours is obvious and includes a timeframe:>> Automation @Automation Anywhere Newsletter (FY23 1st Half Update) <<Start the newsletter out with a warm introduction that gets people excited about automation within the organization—here’s an example from our own Automation Leader:>>From the Office of the CIO While Automation Anywhere is helping its customers build a digital workforce, our Global IT organization is doing the same for our internal operations. When I joined last year, I committed to becoming the best customer of our technology. We restructured our internal automation Center of Excellence, set up a customer zero program, and evangelized and scaled our program. These efforts produced significa

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Anonymous

published in Automation Leaders Blog

Developing an Intake Process for Automation IdeasAutomation Pathfinder Program

Everything begins with an idea - Earl Nightingale, Author & Radio Speaker One of the most important things in your automation program - the gasoline in the automation engine - is the automation ideas themselves! When the workforce has absorbed the true “art of the possible” with automation, they’ll have lots of ideas for things that should be automated. A solid intake process will ensure people are encouraged to submit ideas and your CoE will have what they need to quickly determine next steps. Let’s talk about some features of a healthy intake process! Features of a Good Intake Process Ultimately there is a delicate balance you’ll want to strike for your intake process. Your objective is to get the key details of the idea to the Center of Excellence as quickly as possible, while ensuring sufficient detail is provided so that it can be quickly assessed and next steps defined. Let’s make it simple - here are 3 features to consider for your idea intake process! #1 - Make it acc

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Anonymous

published in Automation Leaders Blog

Deciding on the Right Data to Prove PerformanceAutomation Pathfinder Program

Consistency is Key If you expect to have 3-4 different federated teams building automations on the Automation 360 platform 18 months from now, expect to have about 12 different methods of reporting savings. Why? Because without guidance from the organization’s governing Automation Practice on capturing, storing, and reporting savings, everyone will come up with their own methods - and expect many of them to be less than accurate or auditable. Seek to answer questions like:How are we measuring the value that our automations are generating? How do we track how much money an automation saves? What’s the best way to track these values across multiple bots? How do business value metrics like money and/or time saved relate to operational metrics like the number of bot runs? And which ones do I report on to an executive? See the Future Whether you’re just starting out with Automation Anywhere, or your organization has been building bots for a while, one thing is certain: someone - with some l

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Anonymous

published in Automation Leaders Blog

Citizen Development Enablement - Accelerate PhaseAutomation Pathfinder Program

Citizen Development is a lever for scale that many organizations leverage to expand and multiply the ROI for their automation programs. A citizen developer is an employee who comes from something other than a computer-science background - who is creating automations that are consumed by themselves or their team. Citizen Developers are typically motivated business users who’ve identified areas for streamlining/automating areas of their business processes and are interested in creating solutions to meet their own need(s). Organizations who’ve taken on Citizen Development programs have unlocked 2 key benefits:Faster Innovation - With business users able to self-identify, and prioritize their own use cases, they aren’t reliant on the capacity of a central automation development team to deliver innovative automations.ROI Acceleration - The development of additional automations means that organizations are seeing automation impacts more broadly across their organization, rather than being l

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Anonymous

published in Automation Leaders Blog

Building an Internal Community of PracticeAutomation Pathfinder Program

Federating your development efforts means that, by this point, you likely have a decent number of newcomers who have benefitted from regular “office hours” sessions by asking questions, listening in to the answers provided to the questions from others, or learning about newly available reusable assets. As your automation program continues to grow, there are two key areas that can help accelerate the onboarding and maturation of new developers being brought into the “fold” of your burgeoning automation practice. Citizen Developer Office Hours The first time I was told about Robotic Process Automation at my previous employer it was described to me by a well-meaning business leader who said “it’s these robots that sit behind you and watch what you’re doing on your computer...they eventually start to use your keyboard and mouse for you, and you don't have to do anything.” He wasn't trying to mislead anyone intentionally, he just legitimately didn't really understand the technology, so he

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Anonymous

published in Automation Leaders Blog

Propelling the Next Leg of ExpansionAutomation Pathfinder Program

By this point in the journey for your Automation Practice, you’ve partnered with at least one new line of business for the delivery of new automations. Regardless of whether that delivery came by way of your core automation practice doing the design and delivery or you empowered this new line of business to be somewhat independent, the lessons learned and the momentum gained for the expansion of automation across your organization can empower the next leg of expansion within your organization. Let’s look at some keys to systematically scale your automation initiatives as you continue to expand. A Systematic Onboarding Approach Key to expanding your automation efforts to be organization-wide is systematically onboarding new “factories” to your automation practice. As you worked with onboarding your first few lines of business in the Accelerate phase, reflect back on the things that helped this onboarding process to go more smoothly, as well as those things that seemed to confuse/detrac

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Anonymous

published in Automation Leaders Blog

Delivering Automations for a New Functional AreaAutomation Pathfinder Program

With some successful deliveries attributed to your automation program and some grassroots evangelism efforts underway to communicate the value being delivered for the organization, it's time to explore delivering automations for a new functional area within the organization. As this is likely the first expansion of automation delivery outside of the automation center of excellence team, it will be vitally important to make this first delivery partnership successful, and set the stage for a systematic approach to scale as you move forward. Taking The Show On The Road Similarly to when your automation team got started with automation; identifying quick win processes, capturing and applying best practices, establishing a pattern for documentation and delivery, etc; it will be important that any newly-onboarded factory goes through some of those same steps, albeit enabled by the “lessons learned” from the automation CoE team. All of that said, the participation and involvement of this new

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Anonymous

published in Automation Leaders Blog

Setting the Stage for an Automation-First OrganizationAutomation Pathfinder Program

The Vision for an Automation-First Company Culture Many of the lessons from this journey--from the production of bots, to a robust pipeline where anyone is encouraged to submit ideas, to the ongoing promotion and evangelism efforts--are designed to ultimately support an organization adopting an “Automation-First” company culture. An Automation-First company culture represents a shift for many organizations in the way that they view their processes, their people, and the platforms that they use daily. Knowing how an Automation-First organization views these assets can help set the stage for where your organization can go along its automation journey and can empower you with a vision for how the future of your organization’s digital transformation strategy can be empowered through the expanded adoption of automation. Processes - Objectively looking at the processes that make up the work that individuals are doing across functional areas of an organization, one theme seems to repeat its

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Anonymous

published in Automation Leaders Blog

Hyperscaling the Automation Journey: Scaling with Citizen Development

Once your automation program has "in orbit" (pun entirely intended) and ready to scale to that next level of your automation program growth. In this special Hyperscaling The Automation Journey series of #AAillustrates, we're diving into the proficiencies of automation programs that grow and scale - with our third session in the series: Scaling with Citizen Development. If you missed one of our previous sessions, we've got them all on the Hyperscaling The Automation Journey landing page - so be sure to check them out for additional content on growing and scaling your CoE. This session's focus is squarely looking at the experience of inviting business users (presumably with 0 background in computer science or information technology) to contribute to the automation program within your organization. Why Citizen Development? There's a couple key reasons why organizations will reach for the Citizen Development lever which looking to scale their automation program: Enabling Function for Bus

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