RPA Strategy & Implementation Roadmap

The Client:

The client is a global leader in the pulp and paper manufacturing industry with over 10,000 team members, operations in North America and Europe, and about five billion dollars in annual revenue.

The Challenge:

As part of an SG&A reduction project conducted by another consulting firm, robotic process automation (RPA) was suggested to reduce headcount. While this recommendation did not resonate with the Finance leaders, the IT team was interested in pursuing RPA for compliance and efficiency gains. After conducting a successful pilot, they were unsure of next steps to build the RPA capability.

The Strategy:

Jabian set out to answer the following questions:

  • What is the potential value of RPA for the client?
  • How should an RPA Center of Excellence (COE) be structured initially and how should it change?
  • What is the best approach for standing up, executing, and continually improving an RPA capability?

The team leveraged Jabian’s Strategic Planning and Business Process & Analysis methodologies to deliver an RPA strategy and roadmap by:

  • conducting a workshop to define an RPA mission and vision statement,
  • identifying potential use cases for RPA through interviews and a Business Process landscape,
  • estimating a potential value range based on the identified use cases,
  • working with internal IT leaders, business sponsors, Jabian SMEs, and local RPA leaders to create multiple governance models that aligned to different stages of the maturity of the capability, and
  • developing a cost-benefit analysis utilizing the potential value and proposed Center of Excellence structure.

RPA Business Case

RPA Capability Roadmap

The Outcome:

As a result of the team’s efforts, the client had the details it needed to submit an appropriation request to fund an RPA capability. Business leaders who had been involved in the use case identification effort were fully bought into the value of the program, and the structure was put in place to continually identify, prioritize, create, and maintain automations and continually improve their capability.

Insights