Do No Harm: What Five Automation Fears Are Alarming Businesses
And what to do with them
Automation of business processes is becoming more and more popular. New challenges are playing a big role here – first the pandemic, now the war. In the new business environment, it's necessary to optimize and automate more processes to save resources. However, businesses are often slow to implement new technologies due to a number of caveats and fears. What are the five most common fears of business in this matter and what solutions can help to cope with them, told Mind Head of Software Development at Integrity Vision Mila Pidgorna.
I often encounter clients in the Ukrainian and European markets who talk about hypothetical risks that prevent them from implementing automation. Even when they understand that it is necessary. But from the many years of experience of our team, I can say that these fears are not justified. Every fear of change has its own solution.
1. What organizational changes the company faces?
Most customers understand that before automating a process, it usually needs to be updated and improved, not just automated as is. Therefore, senior management of the company does not immediately dare to change something that, in principle, has been working for many years.
What solution will help?
Before implementing automation in the company, it is advisable to conduct an audit of the current situation. And here is important that the company that will implement the project conducts the necessary consultation for the customer.
We have our own set of best practices that always work. For example, you can find change agents in the company. These are conscientious workers who are interested in working with such tasks. They get satisfaction from being able to improve and modernize their work. Executives, leadership, and top managers usually know such people in their teams who are proactive, development-oriented, and interested in trying new things.
It is very important that top management supports such implementations. For example, among project sponsors or heads of departments. It is important that this authorized person can tell that the challenges that appear in the world, such as a pandemic or problems with the economy, require transformation and improvement of processes.
That is a key to emphasize that it is necessary to fight for customers and create the best conditions for them. And to talk about the fact that the company needs to implement services quickly, and how it`s important to meet the needs of customers and provide services remotely.
It should not be overlooked that the introduced innovations improve the working conditions of the employees themselves, because this means greater stability, development, and new regular customers. When a leader explains to employees why they need change, then there is more understanding and less resistance from the team.
Another important stage at the beginning of automation is the analysis and preparation of the business case. Customers have AS IS processes that need to be modeled, for example, in BPMN 2.0 (Business Process Management Notation – a language of business process modeling that is an intermediate link between formalization/visualization and implementation of a business process).
This is necessary to compare the existing process with the modernized one after automation and to understand what its efficiency will be. And it is also necessary to form a "to be" – a vision of what the process will be after implementation.
It is important that analysts help the customer choose a business case calculation methodology, identify indicators to monitor. And identify the data to collect that will show maximum efficiency and help adjust the process in the best way to meet business needs.
2. How to justify investments?
Another important issue that often worries customers is the financial investment for using the product (if it is not open source).
Both in Ukraine and in Europe, companies pay a significant amount for licenses every year. It is important that before making a decision to buy, they make sure that it is profitable and efficient for them to invest this money and really get benefits.
What solution will help?
There is an opportunity to work initially according to the MVP (minimum viable product) concept. It's when you are working with minimal functionality that can be implemented on free licenses.
For example, the Camunda vendor provides the opportunity to work in this way before the company buys the Enterprise Edition.
In this approach, the customer has the opportunity to work, for example, for six months. To test whether this business case really has advantages in terms of savings, speeds up processes and provides the desired efficiency. And after that, the client can decide whether the company needs further implementation and extension of the solution.
After that, the client is ready to move to an enterprise solution and develop the product, supplement it with the necessary features and use the extended functionality and support from the vendor.
3. How to set up product support after automation?
Many companies do not know what to do after they implement automation or how to live with it further. After their processes change organizationally, they are afraid that they will have to refine something and support these innovations.
These concerns arise from the fact that in the past companies have faced systems that require a narrow specialization and competence of developers to support. In addition, such specialists are quite difficult to find on the market.
That is why the customer becomes dependent on an internal team that has expertise in implementing such a solution.
What solution will help?
A great solution for companies that want to build their own expertise to support innovation is to build a competence center.
A company that implements automation for business can conduct education – training and workshops. It can be a joint implementation of the project including of the customer's representatives in the team.
Initially, the process is implemented by the service provider on its own. After that, you can create a joint team with employees of the customer company. It may include the analysts and developers. In such projects, we work according to Agile. During common implementation, the customer's specialists learn what kind of documentation to keep, how to write the code, how to do a code review, and how to solve IT architectural problems.
In this way, the client's team gradually acquires the necessary competencies under the care of experts. When the customer's team is already doing everything efficiently, it is possible to pass the support of the system to their own efforts. Such a methodology with a center of competence significantly reduces risks for the customer.
4. How to check the relevance of the product?
When a product takes a long time to develop, the market can change during that time. And the customer fears that this product will be no longer relevant in its current form.
What solution will help?
From my own experience, I can say that in such a situation, it is worth paying attention to work with Agile, and not Waterfall. So there is an opportunity to build functionality, work in two-week sprints, and show stakeholders new functionality every two weeks.
In the process of testing the future solution, not only the members of the working group should be involved, but also the end users. They will see the existing functionality, how this system will look and can understand if it is really something that will be convenient to use and meet their needs.
Also, in cooperation with them, you can hear valuable feedback and adjust something if necessary. In the end, such a product will be “alive” and meet the real requirements of the customer.
5. How to avoid product obsolescence?
It is important for customers that the vendor's product evolves and has constant updates that keep up with the times. If the vendor does not develop its product, it is a big risk for the customer. If the customer wants to connect this solution to his other systems over time, and some of the libraries are not compatible with new technologies, then such a product will limit the customer in using new technologies connected to this development.
What solution will help?
It is very important when choosing any vendor to understand what his concept of product development is. When a vendor uses new technologies, for example, combines a monolith and a microservice architecture, it gives the customer a choice. In addition to the development of the solution itself, it is important that the vendor guarantees support for previous versions.
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