How to Nail RPA @ EMC

Excellence in Process Improvement and Excellence in Innovation Awards Winner: EMC

If you want to learn about a real success story using RPA, then watch SSON's interview with the EMC team that picked up not one, but two awards in Orlando earlier this month. [SSON Excellence Awards were sponsored by ISG]

Here's how they did it: they attended this very event [Shared Services and Outsourcing Week] last year and left with a few good ideas and a handful of vendor contacts. Then they developed some proof of concepts (in the case of the Process Improvement Award, it was based on the offer letter process) with their chosen provider, Automation Anywhere. As of last month, the RPA Center of Excellence/GBS team represented by Mark Simon, had started with 50 bots, was already implementing 30 automations and moving, in his words, "very quickly".

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Operating in a high-tech industry it's no surprise that EMC has taken a very proactive approach to digital transformation for its customers and that executives very quickly understood the relevance for internal processing as well.

Current automations are managed through the GBS RPA COE, which runs a variety of rules-based repetitive tasks for HR, Finance, or presales. "It's an amazing opportunity to free up staff for more productive work," explains Mark. [Note: the 80/20 rule is used to identifying what to automate and what not.]

Note: We've posted EMC's winning Awards application online – read the Innovation Award application here – and the Process Improvement application here!

And while there were some initial reservations within HR around no person touching the process, you can actually build quality checks into the technology itself, explains Joe Cotnoir. "A robot won't transpose numbers into the wrong field the way humans do".

One key factor that Mark emphasizes is that you have to get the messaging right. Don't lose sight of the overall premise which is to free people up for more value added work. "It's not about cutting staff but about adding value".

If you are interested in, or considering robotic process automation yourself, don't miss this video – it will give you all the encouragement you need!

Below: Mark Simon (Left), Value Creation and Digital Transformation, GBS, and Joseph Cotnoir (right), Manager, Global Business Operations, EMC