EVP of products at Kofax, a supplier of intelligent automation software to digitally transform end-to-end business operations.
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As intelligent automation continues to mature, more organizations are turning to robotic process automation (RPA) technologies to increase efficiencies amid a skills shortage. But there’s a lot to consider, such as security and scalability, as enterprises increase the mix of human and digital workers.
Especially given this shift, digital workforce management solutions are becoming essential to efficiently and securely manage all digital workers, no matter what resources are performing the work — people, automation or both.
At Kofax, we provide this type of digital workforce management solution, and we guide our clients on four key areas to make the most of the technology:
1. Governance And Security
As human and digital workforces merge, a single governance environment becomes more essential. Automated processes must meet audit and compliance requirements. Security is also of paramount importance, with risk mitigation being a high priority for organizations across all industries. Yet many companies don’t properly consider the security risks associated with RPA, such as the access software robots have to sensitive data.
By gaining central control, managers can synchronize software robot releases with broader IT system updates, minimizing disruptions and failures among the digital workforce. By leveraging digital workforce management software for this purpose, companies can secure and monitor how information is used by all resources. Integrating identity management with enterprise security solutions supports unified governance over the access human and digital workers have to sensitive systems and applications.
Managers can curb potential misuse of digital worker credentials through the segregation of duties, in which functions are spread out across people and departments. They can ensure a particular individual doesn’t have access to too much sensitive information based on the combination of digital workers they oversee.
It’s important to remember that a digital workforce management solution should enable the organization to manage and enforce policy controls throughout the entire life cycle of the digital worker, from creation all the way through decommissioning. Control over the entire life span of digital workers enhances security, compliance and auditability.
2. Workforce Orchestration And Management
An open platform allows enterprises to orchestrate work across people, in-house technologies and third-party RPA bots. As a manager, you can assign the right worker, whether it’s a human or digital worker, to the right task, at the right time, while maintaining control over the complexity and cost associated with a given task or project. Additionally, by leveraging an open platform, you can take advantage of more advanced AI technologies as they emerge.
Consider using the sophisticated platform to build robots and connect to external applications using custom code to increase the pace at which your company can expand its digital workforce. Support for modular robot building and reuse enables companies to build complex robots without having to write complicated code.
3. Visibility
By maintaining total visibility into all resources performing tasks within a process, you can drive continuous improvement. Your organization should be able to answer such questions as:
• What tasks are being worked on?
• What’s in the pipeline?
• How does process performance compare with key performance indicators (KPIs)?
By leveraging the process discovery and visualization capabilities of your intelligent automation platform, you can gain insight into business processes across the enterprise. Executives and managers get a holistic view, overcoming the boundaries between departmental silos and making it easier to identify opportunities for digital workforce automation that can have a greater impact across the entire organization.
4. Scalability
Successful intelligent automation is scalable. However, the majority of organizations have struggled to expand their initiatives. The largest barrier to automation was process fragmentation, showing that many early adopters have fallen into a state of fragmented operations.
The processes themselves, however, aren’t fragmented. Rather, resources performing the work, including automation and digital resources, exist in silos. Fragmented operations can increase overhead costs and eat into the return on investment of digital transformation investments. An open, integrated platform allows for common governance helping prevent fragmented operations.
Companies that want to excel in digital workforce management should explore low-code, customizable, intelligent automation platforms. A solution such as this harnesses the power of RPA, letting organizations build and manage a digital workforce, exponentially increasing capacity, and enabling human and robot workers to amplify each other’s work.
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