When optimizing your organization\u2019s automation program, you should already have a solid foundation of strategies, technology frameworks and governance. The optimization stage is all about taking your program further to make the entire program more robust.<\/strong><\/p>\n Taking the long view is the best approach. Optimization aims to improve the automation program \u2013 and the entire organization \u2013 over time. Think of it as landscaping. It is not enough to cut the lawn once and call it good. Neither is it sufficient to simply cut back on one manual process and decide that your automation days are over.<\/p>\n Backyards and organizations are both living systems. Both become unruly without continual upkeep. Both benefit from routine monitoring, trimming and tending to reach optimal health and vitality.<\/p>\n The organization needs to have a culture conducive to the automation strategy. Your culture should embrace change, continuous learning and improvement. Employees should feel empowered to speak up when they see something the business can improve or automate and voice their opinions on how or why to do so.<\/p>\n Your organization needs to ingrain strategy for automation across the entire enterprise to better achieve your goals. You should tailor your automation strategy toward the needs of the organization, and you should also consider your organization\u2019s future state. At the process level, don\u2019t only focus on how work gets done today, but look at how your teams will work in the future with automation technologies like machine learning or artificial intelligence<\/a> at their disposal.<\/strong><\/p>\n It is not only your automation strategy you should embed throughout company culture. At this stage, don\u2019t silo the automations themselves but holistically embed them in day-to-day operations across departments. The vision of enterprise automation maturity<\/a> is to connect your teams to more efficient, meaningful work by eliminating manual tasks and closing the gaps between people, processes and technology.<\/p>\n Dedicated automation roles will lead to new development and career paths team members may want to take. Use a learning management system (LMS) to author the paths that make sense for your organization. With an LMS, you can build out clear steps individuals should take to achieve their own growth as employees and foster higher quality automations throughout the organization.<\/p>\n Team members should be able to use an LMS to discover the next steps toward the path they wish to take. Whether that career path is as an analyst, developer or even in self-service training, enable them the opportunity to start growth and learning before the next major project begins.<\/p>\n Having these paths and steps inside an existing LMS ensures widespread adoption across the organization.<\/strong> This adoption creates a sustained talent pipeline while fostering employee satisfaction. A sustained talent pipeline places value on the future of education and training, which is critical to your company\u2019s long-term health. Sustaining talent gives companies more control over their workforce, the skillsets they need and the best ways to train them. This sustainment will allow companies like yours to stay competitive in a global market.<\/p>\n An LMS is something the organization should tackle as a whole and not simply as an automation endeavor. We suggest coupling or building on top of any existing LMS investment instead of creating one solely for the purposes highlighted above.<\/p>\n If you have gotten this far, your organization already has a self-service intake for automation project ideas. Integrating scoring and prioritization into these intake forms helps create a more efficient center of excellence<\/a> (CoE) or steering committee meetings. When you provide the fields and require them before employees submit their ideas for review, you ensure consistency, ownership and understanding from the users submitting the idea.<\/p>\n Steering committees and CoEs should focus on providing value related to the organization\u2019s business strategy.<\/strong> This step could involve dedicating resources to identifying training programs or helping prioritize and deliver automations. At this point, the steering committee should be less concerned with prioritizing new projects for development but instead focused on determining which business areas need additional enhancements. Remember, the goal here is to optimize the current automation program, not to embark on a new one.<\/p>\n Companies often silo delivery and support programs with individual support teams that may be a part of the larger technology support team. Taking your automation program to the next step involves handing the keys over to new drivers. If you have ever enjoyed seeing your kid practice driving on a riding mower, tractor or ATV, then you know the value of empowering teammates to take the wheel. A thriving company similarly encourages emerging talent to contribute to its automation program.<\/strong><\/p>\n Citizen-driven delivery, or citizen development<\/a>, is often seen as ideal – and in many ways, it is. Organizations that can incorporate citizen development as one of their top COE priorities enjoy high-functioning, highly involved workforces.<\/p>\n Of course, we are not suggesting you simply hand over all your projects to citizen developers to see end-to-end and without oversight. Here is how we suggest you deploy citizen development initiatives to optimize your automation program.<\/p>\n First, citizen-driven delivery should start with discovery sessions and basic automation design. Citizen developers can build the simple parts of automations, for example, by recording their screens or providing 80 percent of an automation. From there, an architect or senior developer can review the code and either provide inputs or harden the automation to make sure they solve the other 20 percent of the automation. An example of a simple project could be a small quality-of-life improvement, such as an automation that searches an order number you have highlighted when you press a shortcut or hotkey.<\/strong><\/p>\n Additionally, we can characterize continuous integration and continuous delivery as fairly mature practices in most automation programs. These types of automation goals can help guide your teams to focus on smaller improvements (like the example highlighted above) first. Making these seemingly minor improvements actually drives processes toward larger quality-of-life improvements for the entire organization.<\/p>\n Hyperautomation may seem like a huge endeavor to cover, but chances are you may already be using hyperautomation techniques at this point. Gartner defines<\/a> hyperautomation as \u201ca business-driven, disciplined approach that organizations use to rapidly identify, vet and automate as many business and IT processes as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Automation](\"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/blog_BPM-RPA-Maturity-Stages_1-5_01032023-1024x578.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nOrganization<\/h2>\n
Driving Vision, Strategy and Alignment Through Culture and Organization<\/h3>\n
Education and Training Automation Talent<\/h3>\n
Operations<\/h2>\n
Automation Program Intake and Prioritization<\/h3>\n
Automation Program Delivery and Support<\/h3>\n
Enablement<\/h2>\n
Technology Enablement<\/h3>\n