Manual process scheduling is laden with costs. Here are the top reasons why, and how to tackle them

Sneha.P.R

November 2, 2022

Getting RPA (Robotic Process Automation) or an automation program up and running is a huge accomplishment. But running them smoothly at scale across the business, is an even bigger feat that most organizations continue to struggle with.

Scaling automation initiatives across multiple technologies and vendors often adds complexity to your automation platform. In addition, as the automation portfolio grows, daily operations and scheduling bots become convoluted, leading to inefficiency, errors and increasing costs which is not only frustrating, expensive, and risky but it also limits the potential of the employee and the program to deliver long-term value. 

Current challenges in RPA /automation operations

Managing an increasing number of bots, processes, and scripts with quality in a cost-efficient way is not easy for a mid-size or big automation team/Centre of Excellence (CoE). Moreover, with a multi-vendor and technology ecosystem, scheduling becomes complex and needs continuous monitoring and optimization. 

On the other hand, the CoE needs to ensure they stay within budgets while they stay on their toes to adhere to SLAs. To sum up, the intricacy of managing, monitoring, and orchestrating bots puts teams in an ever-ending cycle of meeting SLAs. When done manually, these tasks can be particularly daunting and inefficient. 

To top it, automation teams must contend with several other challenges in operating and maintaining their automation, often leading to increased complexities, lower SLA adherence, and growing costs in terms of people, infrastructure, and licenses.

What Manual scheduling can and cannot do:

 Manual scheduling –

  • Can cover alerts, but that is a very static way of scheduling and is not scalable overall.
  • Can cover for automation of failing tasks and retries, but the consequences are also high, as per the previous point, and reusability is low.
  • Cannot  predict when issues might occur, which will have implications for the other planned schedules.
  • Cannot support or predict the dynamic allocation of runs or even manual unplanned runs, which can cause planned schedules to fail due to the time passed.
  • Cannot cope with the increased load automatically but would always require manual intervention and rescheduling or replanning.

Manual scheduling can be counterproductive for automation teams in the long run and a major contributor to why so many IA (Intelligent Automation) programs do not reach their potential. So let us explore a few reasons why manual scheduling your business processes could cost your business time and money:

Manual scheduling becomes complex, and bot failures are common, leading to low utilization of bots and machines. As a result, automation CoEs (Centre of Excellence) may need help to utilize their bots optimally, increasing the costs.

Additionally, when creating time-based static schedules, it can be challenging to guarantee that processes can be executed according to the SLA. The more processes are automated, the more complex the operations, often requiring the company to increase headcount to manage the workload. The varying volume of work can make scheduling and execution according to SLA even more challenging.

The time has come for a change in how RPA and automations in general are managed and executed. With dynamic scheduling, it is possible to increase efficiency and reduce costs that align with business outcomes and the bottom line.

Let us see how Turbotic tackles and solves each of the above problems with its advanced features:

 #1 Automated monitoring and first-line support 

 Scaling automation can often be time-consuming and require a lot of resources, which can negatively impact the ROI if mismanaged. To simplify the operational tasks and control costs, Turbotic optimizes the execution of your process based on business and technical requirements – to increase resource utilization and meet expectations and business stakeholder requirements (SLAs). 

 At the same time, Turbotic enables automated monitoring and first-line support with recovery rules for faster resolution time, fewer incidents, and less manual effort. 

  #2 Automated and dynamic scheduling

 The lack of dynamic scheduling ability among RPA platforms makes it challenging to execute processes optimally and increases maintenance costs. Automation teams need to ensure the utilization of bots while also optimizing the schedule and meeting business stakeholder satisfaction – this requires manual efforts and micromanaging bots. Turbotic addresses this with automated and dynamic scheduling of your automation solutions and dynamically triggering them as needed. 

Turbotic also helps you understand what resources and robots go unutilized over time so you can focus your efforts on where they have the largest impact.​ And now, with our latest update to the Turbotic platform – 2.0Houston release, we further strengthen your ability to reduce operational efforts, optimize utilization and the scheduling of processes. 

 #3 Automated notifications and incident creation

 At Turbotic, we understand that while processes are typically scheduled to meet business stakeholder expectations, there is no guarantee that they will be executed successfully and on time. To tackle this issue, Turbotic ensures that processes are performed per the SLAs and notify users and business stakeholders if SLAs still need to be met. This way, you can rest assured that your operations are being handled efficiently and professionally – giving you the peace of mind you need to focus on other areas of your business.

In addition, with automated notifications and incident creation, you can easily share failures and increase visibility for business stakeholders to take immediate action. 

Why Turbotic

Our latest update to the Turbotic platform is built to support automation teams in decreasing cost and complexity in operations. Its advanced features with dynamic scheduling, self-recovery of processes, and end-to-end automated orchestration eliminate bottlenecks and aim to increase your automation programs' ROI.  

Dynamic orchestration can further prevent disasters such as missing deadlines or violating SLAs. It provides real-time monitoring and alerts for potential conflicts. This practical approach allows for a proactive way of solving problems instead of a reactive one, saving time, money, and headaches eventually.

Empowered with real-time visualization and optimization features, automation teams and CoEs can simplify end-to-end automation management and orchestrate RPA and AI (Artificial Intelligence) solutions across vendors and technologies – enabling organizations to:

 

  • Create efficiency in operations: Speed up your processes and make them more efficient as you scale your automation platform.
  • Improve utilization: Create efficiency in your operations and double bot and infrastructure capacity with dynamic scheduling.
  • Eliminate complexity and Increase ROI: Eliminate scheduling bottlenecks and increase ROI with end-to-end automated orchestration.

With Turbotic, you can orchestrate your automation efficiently and rest assured that your intelligent automation landscape is well cared for – a better way to ensure that your employees are happy, and your robots are healthy. 

 Single platform, multiple benefits: 

1)    Save operational costs in people, licenses, and infrastructure

2)    Avoid conflicts and errors

3)    Enable predictive operations performance

4)    Fully optimized scheduling

5)    Reduce business lead time

6)    Increase resources utilization

Automation management and in particular lifecycle management, should not be a manual exercise.  It is not just process automation, its equally about automation optimization and managing the entire automation lifecycle.