(1) Lack of Executive Buy in/Commitment
If a single department head thinks that he/she is going to drive an enterprise-wide adoption of RPA it will usually run out of gas. You need a CEO/CFO to buy into Digital Transformation. Its full Executive buy-in or bust.
(2) Reliance on an Outside Consultant
This will never make financial sense. Consultants are in the body shop business for one reason… to burn hours & to keep people onsite forever or until you run out of money. RPA Citizen Developers can be driven and governed internally. Organizations that embrace citizen development almost always outpace organizations that only allow a few developers to perform automations.
(3) Science Project vs. Corporate Priority
When organizations request a POC, they’re assuming RPA hasn’t been proven yet. A POC should be called “Phase 1” or “a Pilot”. There’s no “Concept” to prove as RPA has been around for years. As an example, UiPath alone has over 8,500 customers.
(4) Starting too Small
Many consultants, especially the big guys (ahem… Big 4) usually allow customers to deploy one single automation but still spend lots of money on consulting. These same customers are calling us to get things back on track because they end up with 1 automation after 4 years and sometimes $1,000,000 spent to deploy it. For a fraction of that cost we typically automate 6-7 workflows in a few weeks.
(5) Waiting for a Perfect Time
When people tell me “We are buried right now- we just don’t have time for an RPA deployment”. That means to me they have no idea what RPA is. RPA exists for this very reason. RPA creates time. The right time to deploy RPA is always right now! There is no better ROI in technology- period!