The Automation guys cover 10 questions about Process Automation for the TAG Community

Welcome to another episode of the Process and Automation Podcast. We're extremely passionate about all things process and automation, hence we can't stop recording these new episodes. And thanks a lot for so many questions we receive into our community. And today we will make one of those questions the topic of our episode. One of the big questions we are being asked is how can you find the right automation solution? And as you know, automation can be very powerful for your business. It will be used for automating mundane repetitive tasks in businesses. So yeah, today we will go through top 10 questions you can ask yourself and also the vendors you're speaking with to find out how to choose the right automation solution. And yeah, Arno, let's Let's kick it off.

Thanks, Sascha. Yeah, nice intro. And I think that these are kind of 10 typical questions to find that right automation solution. And the first thing you need to ask yourself is sort of what type of automation, you know, do I actually need? You know, you're going to go out there and start evaluating these solutions. And, you know, and you have to keep in mind that there's not a one-size-fits-all, you know, so there's not going to be something out there that that's gonna sort of fit everything that, you know, in terms of solution fit, fit everything that you wanna do with it. You know, a lot of solutions are very specialized and it can be sort of very confusing, you know, to make a decision, you know, when you do your research. So there's typically sort of 3 types of automations out there that I wanna discuss. The first one is front-end automation, and this is really low and no-code code automation used by business people out there that hasn't got technical expertise to build forms or workflows and processes. And, you know, typical examples of this is, you know, business process automation sequences. So these are workflows and this is human-to-human workflow sequences, things like robotic process automation or RPA. So again, these is what we've considered to be frontend automation. And then of course, you know, we, we get the backend automation and, you know, these are sort of batch automations that orchestrate things like file movements, jobs, and processes that, you know, need to be instantiated in a, you know, in a specific sequence or at a specific time. So an example of this would be workload automation or service orchestration and or automated platform automation. So these are kind of your backend type automations. And then the third one is really data automation. So these are sort of data automation, like extract, transfer, load jobs, so ETL. So it's typically automation that moves data from transactional systems to, data warehouses, for example, and in that process, transforming the data and normalizing it. And again, you know, ETL jobs, we've heard about that, but you could use automation tools to do that as well. So again, it's that what type of automation do I need? It could be one of these three: the front end, the back end, or the data automation, or combination of the three.

Cool. Yeah, that's great. And yeah, let's go straight to the next question or to the next topic here. Should I choose an automation solution specialized to my industry? That's a very good question. If possible, you should choose an automation solution that has already some ready-to-go elements for your industry. Yeah, because you have special things and topics and processes relevant to your industry. And yeah, the benefits of going with a vendor who specializes in the industry is very, very much so the time to market. You have already so many pre-built out-of-the-box integrations, connectors, and lots of templates for you ready to go. So yeah, that allows you to go so much quicker live with a product or a solution instead of building everything from scratch. I think that makes really, really much sense. And at the same time, these specialized vendors and software solution providers, they speak your language, and it really makes sense to not explain again and again what you want to achieve. So, yeah, so that's a huge benefit there. And Obviously, their industry expertise puts them in a position to guide you really effectively during that implementation of the automation project. So that is also supporting the return of investment you're looking for very quickly. And yeah, and they've likely solved your specific problem before with other clients. So it's not unknown territory. So they can confidently say this helped this company, this enterprise with this problem and produce this kind of value. And if they have lots of those use cases, this is a really good path to go.

Yeah. So the next one I want to talk about is installation options. So let's assume that you've actually identified the type of automation, you've actually looked at your industry, maybe you found an industry-specific vendor out there. Next, you need to understand, you know, what are my options when I actually deploy the platform? So typically we've got on-prem deployment and, you know, some automation solutions can only be installed on-prem, you know, and if you're considering on-prem installation, you know, ensure you factor this into your long-term business strategy. So for example, if you move, if you plan to move your data your data centers to the cloud at some point, you know, obviously on-premise installation wouldn't be the best fit in this scenario. The next option is obviously cloud, you know, and again, some organizations out there doesn't want to have anything to do with cloud for various reasons. You know, other organizations are all, you know, for cloud, and there's sort of the bit in the middle where a lot of people are sort of warming to this idea of hosting their business-critical applications on the cloud. So you'll probably want to evaluate your organization's current appetite for cloud and, you know, look a bit into the future at your future plans when considering, you know, a cloud installation option or a cloud-hosted service. And of course, the third option is what we called hybrid deployment. Now, hybrid deployment, as the name suggests, is a combination of on-premise and cloud. So it could be that you've got some on-premise installation, and that could be for various reasons that you want to keep that on-premise, and there might be some elements that you want to push to the cloud. So we've seen this in a lot of the vendors we use, that people want to have the bots on-prem, but the actual orchestration of the bots, they're quite happy to push that into the cloud. So hybrid is sort of the bit in the middle where you could perhaps keep business-critical data on-premise, and then anything operationally to do with your automations, that's not business-sensitive data or client data, you can push that into the cloud. And with the hybrid solution, you can also have a path where you can migrate from on-prem to cloud. Of course, if you use this type of environment, it is important to obviously consider connectivity between your cloud and the on-premise, and we need deploy your solutions, you need to make sure that you're aware of all the sort of parameters and variables at stake so that your automation doesn't break when you, you know, move, you know, processes from your on-prem to your cloud environment. Or, you know, there's a solution that you deploy where there's dependencies, and it could be connectivity and all of these sort of things. So it's just one to look out for because effectively, you are in two different places. You're relying on your on-premise infrastructure but also the cloud infrastructure that needs to be connected.

Now, cool, thank you. So yeah, the next big question you should ask yourself is— and vendors, when you do your research and speaking with, with these vendors— how does pricing work? So it is very certain that there are many different pricing models out there for these automation solutions. So there are normal subscription models, there's like pre— you pay them annually upfront, you pay them monthly, you pay them by the users, by the servers, by the number of apps. There's so many different variations out there and some are far more complicated than others. But yeah, really needs to be looked at what, what, what your specific use cases are and how your company wants to use the software. So key sort of pricing considerations I can share are, yeah, there are definitely a variety of pricing models on the market and yeah, it's really, really good to remember. So one isn't really better than the rest, so it really needs to fit with your, with your needs and ask each vendor you vet how their pricing model works and how it will impact you long term. So some of them might want to have a really good starting offer and then further down the line, yeah, it's crazy. Or once, once you're sort of locked in too much with so many different things, it's really difficult to get out of it. And so maybe it wasn't a good deal. So yeah, find out what features and services are included in the base price and what what's considered to an add-on, particularly ongoing product support and training. So all those things are very, very important. And yeah, pricing is very, very interesting for sure.

Yeah, and it kind of leads on to the next one where you want to see what's included in your license or your subscription agreement for your automation software. Because, you know, you know, you want to know that you're establishing a good partnership with your vendor that would help you perhaps install software and built out and configure some of your initial use cases. You know, you might sort of look at a particular pain point that drove you to seek out a solution in the first place. So, you know, look out for vendors that's willing to help you on that, you know, and get that into obviously your contract. Make sure you've, you know, got an installation and configuration of the platform included if it's not already. And that way it just means that from the start you've got sort of best practices in place already and it's a solid foundation. And also you might need to migrate from your existing automation tool. So just make sure that, you know, any existing sort of automation jobs that needs to be migrated to a new tool, that, you know, all the scripts are written and they, you know, they are actually fit for purpose to migrate that to the new platform. So you might want to include that in your agreement as well. You know, in this way, you know, you're going to move to a new system from the old one very seamlessly without, you know, processes falling apart and things falling through the crack. And there's all sorts of roadblocks, you know, that keeps you from making a success of your automation solution, you know, when it goes live. And also the last point here is really, you know, ask vendors if they help clients migrate from old systems of their software and if they have a migration framework and what sort of success they've had in the past doing the migration. You know, don't, again, don't be afraid to ask all of these tough questions because we do see these a lot where migration is something, data migration, for example, process migration is not usually discussed. That's something we usually try and put to the forefront quickly because we know that's a real-world thing that's going to come back in at some point, you know, when you roll out or when you migrate to automation platform.

Yeah, I think that also brings me very nicely to the next question you should ask. So what assurances do I have if the product isn't delivered on time or doesn't work as promised? Yeah, that's obviously a really, really important one. So how can you protect your investment and to avoid situations where that doesn't work out so well as promised? Yeah, make really sure the vendor you choose is a trusted and well-regarded partner and player in their the automation space and in the partner network you may be, yeah, in the partner network the vendor has around them. Yeah, ask the vendors if they offer any product and implementation guarantees. So obviously it is not just the responsibility of the vendor to make it a success. So it's very often obviously a combined sort of result. So I can imagine when it comes to guarantees, there's always how much has you have, have you provided as a business to make it a success. So yeah, anyway, so there might be some vendors, they offering specific guarantees. Yeah, for when it goes wrong. And but of course, if you have chosen a really, really good vendor, the chances are very low that the project really, really fails dramatically. Yeah, consult peer review sites. Like PeerSpot, G2, and Gartner Peer Insights. So yeah, you, you hear a lot of testimonials there for these specific products, and then, then you can again reach out to those specific vendors and ask who is your best partner or who has been the best partner, those kind of things. Hey, and ask vendors if they can provide names of clients of whom they have solved a similar problem. Yeah, and ask those references for for their real honest review of the vendor and the partner. So yeah, very, very important to get a really good partner to make this as a success.

Yeah. And again, this, this flows nicely into the next one where you have to raise, you know, the, the question about support options. Because again, no matter how sophisticated your infrastructure automation is and how good it is, you know, it will inevitably encounter this, a problem at some point, and that could be an external factor, and that's got absolutely nothing to do with the automation solution. So for example, a supplier might forget to put a file in a specific place, as a silly example, and you know, you were supposed to rename the file, and that could cause an automation workflow to fail. So you need to make sure that in scenarios like that, when things do fall over technically, that you have the right support in place to handle these situations so that, you know, all of your critical operations are not compromised or impacted for a very long time when these problems occur, particularly around sort of critical month-end periods or end-of-quarter periods or end-of-year processes or periods where processes need to run and need to be completed on time and in a specific order. So again, ask the vendor if you can look at the types of support that's included and also look at their the support agreement, you know, look at SLAs and those sort of things. Important questions obviously to ask is, you know, do they offer 24/7 support if that's what you needed? You know, how's the support being conducted? Is it over email? Is it phone support, first line support? You know, can you get hold of somebody in the middle of the night if something's gone wrong, if you're in various time zones? And again, you know, vendors will charge slightly more for premium support. And in some cases, you know, this is what can distinguish two otherwise seemingly identical vendors out there, if you know what I mean. So it's just the support options, I think, is quite important to look at as well. And training is a big one as well that you need to ask, you know, what type of training is offered, because it is imperative that you also find out, you know, what does the training academy look like from the various vendors. You know, ask them what the training entails, ask them for the course curriculum. Is it virtual? Is it on-site? Is there a certification process? And again, you know, when the time comes for you, for your vendor to build out your initial use case, make sure your team, you know, will be able to, you know, participate in training courses. And also when the vendor builds out, they can correlate what they're seeing, what the vendor is doing when they build out maybe initial use case versus what's in the training. You know, so that's quite important. And, you know, ask the vendors if they provide advanced training that allows you to take your knowledge to the next level. So you're not just after one-on-one training. You know, if your primary automation administrator or operator were to leave the company, you know, ask your vendor if there's ongoing, well, if there's opportunities to obviously train various other people as well. And so there's always a kind of contingency. So keep your training program alive. So if there's sort of turnover within your team or you lose members of the team, you know, there's not knowledge loss or gaps in administration of your solution. So again, Ask what training they offer, what does it entail, how is it presented, and, you know, look at ongoing training opportunities, make sure that's in place so that, like I said, if there is a member of staff that leaves, you know, you're not left in a very difficult situation because nobody knows how the system works or how it can be administrated.

Yeah, very, very important. And indeed very important when you think about managing and maintaining your automations, ongoing maintaining your automations, because it's usually not a thing you install once and then you just leave it there. So automation and process and workflow, there's always change, always improvement going on. So yeah, make sure you always have someone maintaining your automation. Arno touched on that. So what happens if when people leave. So it's really, really important to have that team available or get someone in who is managing that for you. So it's a managed automation service. And yeah, so obviously that person, either internal or external, should have that skill set to manage that automation you have in place. If something goes wrong, there's always dedicated support in place. And will be alerted to the rough issues really fast. Yeah, and then a vendor should also have that, as Arno mentioned, maybe that, that kind of service to come in and help you identify automation opportunities that, that hadn't even considered. So that's sort of the ongoing thing, not always when there's a problem, but how can you improve, how can you do more with the automation platform. So that, that should be either done internally or or with a managed service done by partners or by the vendor itself. So yeah, very, very important to get the huge success of your automation.

Yeah, so hopefully, you know, depending on where you are with your search for automation platform or vendor, hopefully these must-ask 10 questions that we've just discussed will help you to, you know, come up with a perfect sort of list of things you want to discuss with these vendors. And it's a great place to start because it gives you sort of a defined structure to really shape this conversation with the vendors and really to gather understanding on what differentiates different vendors from each other. And hopefully that will help you to determine the type of vendor that you wish to work for. And I would say it's it's very critical to go through, you know, this checklist. And there might be some other questions that will, you know, follow up as well from this as well. But, you know, my view, you know, in my mind, essentially, this is a very good starting point, finding that right automation solution provider.

Yes, you just mentioned follow-up questions maybe. But yeah, our community, the AutomationGuys.net community, is maybe the right place as well to jump into and to share your questions and discuss your topics around maybe exactly that topic we discussed today. Yeah, head over to the AutomationGuys.net, join our community, yeah, join our subscriptions sandbox to really play around with automation, yeah, and more. So theautomationguys.net, and we're looking forward to seeing you there. So yeah, we will record more episodes and looking forward to welcoming you back very soon. And until then, let's automate it. Unfortunately, that's it again with this episode of the Process and Automation Podcast. If you like this episode, episode, please give us a 5-star rating and don't forget to subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss any upcoming episode. We hope you will tune in next time and until then, let's automate it.