I have been saying it for a while now, governance is the most important aspect of implementing intelligent automation. Governance is like rule of law in the nation-state. But who assures rule of law in the corporation? Because there is no police, like in the nation-state, and there is no written constitution and laws, like in the nation-state. I am not a fan of the nation-state either, I consider it a mistake, but I do not prefer totalitarian dictatorships as well. However, without governance, that is, proper process and clear rules accepted, acknowledged, and followed by most of the people working together in a corporation, the corporation is nothing but a big dictatorship at the mercy of influent older managers.
Without governance, people or leaders will rebel against bots and will demand the reversal to the manual process, because the repetitive manual process is a big part of the modern worker’s toolkit to fight his miserable anxiety. We also understand people being afraid of automation, but leaders? It must be older women leaders who are rejecting innovation the most, as some studies of innovation have shown, like UTAUT model of Venkatesh et al. Why would be older women more prone to bash and trash automation? Is it because they are more humanistic, is it because they believe more in humanism, a secular religion that rejects traditional monotheistic religions and authoritarian (prejudiced) personality, or, on the contrary, is it their traditional monotheistic religious beliefs that makes them reject innovation as the “work of devil”? We do not know.
Now, there are people who want RPA and intelligent automation destroyed. We do not know who these people are, as “they” are more groups, but we have a clue. Might be socialists who are alarmed by media, and rival traditional software developers, who feel their influence (and salary, to be honest) is decreasing.
Some businesses, who at the moment do not consider intelligent automation as strategic, prefer either to do the process manually, or prefer spending huge amount of dollars in so-called “modern” apps with APIs, so that … people will use them later. In either case, you can’t really compare their cost with costs of intelligent automation or RPA, because, at least in my view, RPA is years light ahead of these “modern” apps. I have never seen cheaper projects and ROI than in RPA, and ROI should be still king in business, at least this was true last time I checked.
Instead of investing massively in RPA and intelligent automation, what we see in these corporations who do not invent in RPA and intelligent automation product growth anymore, is a plethora of managers, most of them close to retirement, badmouthing RPA and planning to destroy this program, that is, throw hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of code on the window (and who knows how many millions of dollars in future potential unrealized savings) in which they were forced in the last years to invest by C-level people who were visionaries and prefer less cost and more productivity, and which were sabotaged by business folks stoned by the fear of losing their jobs, and in which their managers had nothing to object to this public and transparent sabotage.
The bright future that IT managers promise is a future of expensive “modern” apps supported by some kind of expensive software developers that hopefully business people will not sabotage like RPA.
How much do these “modern” apps cost? According to this site, a medium complex “modern” app costs between $80000 and $150000. How much does support cost? According to the same website, a freelancer on the market costs between $75 and $400 per hour. If you hire them, this cost can double. Then compare to how much RPA costs and RPA support costs. A medium complex bot costs between $20000 and $40000. Support costs between $35 and $55 per hour for a hired employee. For a freelancer, those number will most likely be 50% of the permanent hire. So, what does the strategic planning of getting rid of RPA and intelligent automation, and building “modern” apps that will be manually operated by people hope to achieve? Nothing but a permanent increase in cost, driven by the IT industrial complex, led by bribe-induced monopolies like Microsoft. How is that even strategic? Where does the money come from for this socialist experiment? Maybe for shared service centers this can be, but for profit centers? Profit centers do not afford to do socialist experiments.
Instead of doing these comparisons and deciding on an economical way forward, currently there is just bad-mouthing of RPA in big companies’ shared service centers and the very slow building of these “modern” apps, who are awaited by the businesses like the new messiahs, and which will be nothing more than the new disasters that nobody will use. No wonder success rate of IT projects is 20%.
Let me tell you a story, because this type of fight is not happening only within IT or business process world. I go to the beach club this summer. As I stopped drinking almost 2 years ago, I drink solely non-alcoholic drinks. So, I went to the bartender and I ordered a non-alcoholic cocktail. The bartender, who was obviously having a great time, but he seemed also very drunk, almost did not want to serve me, and tried to humiliate me in front of other clients because I was ordering a non-alcoholic cocktail. He challenged me and my “manhood”, and I had almost to beg him to prepare me a non-alcoholic cocktail, after I waited for approximately half an hour in the queue. This is exactly what is going on with the traditional software developers and intelligent automation within technology world right now. Bullying for obvious political decisions. Some alcohol drinkers and traditional software developers feel that their world is shaking and they are not so cool anymore. They feel their world of privilege is under attack by some people they disrespect (we are not so technical as they are, my oh my), and who, by the way, chose better lifestyles with nicer outcomes and more fun. Because trust me, intelligent automation has a lot of fun right now, inventing the processes and the companies of the future.
The managers who are obsessed with working with people will try to destroy RPA, and this is happening, while the managers who care about productivity will embrace RPA and will want more and more. The managers who are young and ambitious, and who care about productivity, will want productivity and will obviously understand that people and technology combination are the key to their success and will not want RPA and intelligent automation gone in 5 or 10 years, but will choose the best tool for the best situation.
Why isn’t there a higher authority giving a mandate to automate to everyone? That would be governance, good governance, based on statistics and the well-being of everyone. And in business well-being usually means productivity. And excuse me, but RPA beats “modern” apps at productivity, for the simple reason because they have exactly the same benefits, but much lower cost.
In a state of anarchy, without proper governance, everyone does what they can to keep doing what they’ve been doing all their lives because they feel comfortable doing. But what do we do in the state of anarchy with people like traditional IT software developers, who have a direct interest in destroying RPA and intelligent automation, who started to become more authoritarian and prejudiced because they want the whole cake for themselves? Who is the authority to discipline and police their violent attacks towards RPA and intelligent automation folks? Should we have a civil war, or someone who has enough authority and power, like a president, make peace and institute a proper governance? Win-win, or lose-lose.
These situations expose a very nasty view on the corporation. There is no law in the corporation, because decisions are made exclusively by decision-makers in their 60s who have their own agendas, and who haven’t touched a new technology in years.
As I explained before, older women prefer people, younger men prefer productivity. Generally sparking, of course. Depending on the these things, there is just the political will of the manager or group of managers, usually all same age and with same prejudices, and you, as young person who understands some things, cannot fight that. According to the official ideology, you need to wait your turn until maybe one day you will make the shots. You cannot sue these decision, like in the nation-state, and go to trial. Corporation is a big totalitarian dictatorship, at least American ones. And American corporations are everywhere.
And there’s a lot of corruption in these corporations especially because of the lack of transparency, aka governance, aka rule of law, aka clear processes that cover 100% of the cases.
The concept of good governance is the most important aspect of having a good intelligent automation product and program. In my forthcoming book, enabling the right governance is a key aspect of conquering the challenges in implementation of intelligence automation. Good governance has 7 pillars in my book:
- Collaboration between IT and business is essential
- People should learn to love robots
- The people involved in the intelligent automation project should be great communicators
- Have an intelligent automation strategy (preferably developed together with top management)
- Have a working change and stakeholder management and communication approach
- Use a balanced scorecard to evaluate the performance of your intelligent automation
- Get constant executive support
Intelligent Automation Product Owner 
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