Most organisations believe the cost of failed automation is equal to the cost of the project that didn’t go live or didn’t meet the expected outcomes. Unfortunately, it is not just money lost. There is a large invisible cost associated with failed automation.
According to a report by E&Y and Deloitte, about half of automation projects fail. That’s a lot of money being wasted, considering the automation market is expected to be worth USD 24 billion by 2030.
Unfortunately, it is not just money lost. There is a large invisible cost associated with failed automation.
Companies incur capital expenditures on the purchase of bot licences for their automation programs. Once an automation programme fails, the bots can’t be returned, and the technology team still needs to maintain the bot, spending time and money on it. Unutilized or underutilised bots make an automation programme unviable.
When automation fails, the unstable process or application is likely to create higher future costs for rework. The lower the stability of a process, the higher the cost of maintenance. Archaic and legacy applications are expensive to maintain owing to the steadily vanishing breed of people familiar with those systems. Accurately predicting the stability of a process is a critical factor when undertaking automation and helps estimate the true cost of automation.
Many businesses spend money and time on POCs, testing an already proven technology. There are enough implementations to prove technologies like optical character recognition, natural language processing, and robotic process automation work.
"Businesses need to check for process readiness for automation rather than test technology readiness for the process." - Hema Gandhi
A limitation of the traditional automation RoI framework is that it only measures quantifiable benefits like cost savings, productivity benefits, and speed of delivery. However, automation can have far-reaching results that impact employee engagement, customer experience, and competitive differentiation. When a project doesn’t deliver expected results or fails, the impact on morale and confidence is often high but remains unestimated.
To navigate the automation journey, it is important to know exactly what to automate. Creating an automation framework that delivers rapid assessments and builds an automation pipeline puts organisations on a scalable, sustainable, and successful path to automation.
Empowering enterprises with intelligent automation solutions for streamlined operations and accelerated growth.
