Automating excellence into customer experiences

CX Network: Could you give us a flavor of your career journey so far?

Sidney Madison Prescott: I started out within Asset and Configuration management, running a global program for data quality and governance. That gave me a great foundation, specifically in relation to combatting data silos and pursuing data quality. This dedication to ensuring data is accurate, complete and consistent is extremely important so data can be trusted for automation initiatives and business decisions. Whether it is being used by the C-suite to make monumental decisions at an enterprise level or by an analyst trying to optimize client management.

I think my biggest achievement so far is setting-up an intelligent automation center of excellence in a Fortune 250 company with frameworks to optimize processes for both internal staff and external customers. I am a firm believer in building holistic digital transformation strategies that enable brands, through engineering, to achieve the massive objectives they set at an enterprise level.  To do this successfully, it is vital Robotic Process Automation (RPA) project owners relate to business stakeholders and customers and drill down to what their goals and pain points are.

What are your top tips for successful intelligent automation implementation in 2021?

SMP:

• Start small with a pilot and a clear vision of what success looks like, be sure to realistically manage expectations about what the initiative will deliver.
• Executive buy-in is critical. Make sure you have an executive sponsor who believes in your initiative at the proof-of-concept stage. This drives trust in the program’s potential from your wider stakeholders and opens the door towards a world of opportunity in terms of engagement levels and passion from the workforce.
• It is all about data and analytics. Throughout automation project lifecycles, there must be an extremely heavy focus on data metrics and analytics. These elements help calculate returns, enhance executive buy-in and improve stakeholder engagement levels, as you can showcase the automation’s progress with data-driven results. For instance, you may be able to show your brand can perform more transactions at a higher frequency, because of certain processes being automated.

Do you have a golden rule for ensuring automation creates meaningful benefits for customers?

SMP: In order to truly deliver value with automation projects, there must be a strong understanding of the existing landscape for the process in question.  You must explore the historical relevance of the process: why did this process originate? What is the goal of this process? Are current results benefiting revenue levels or the customer experience? What is the customer’s opinion of the current process?

This foundation guides how we design technologically-savvy process upgrades that will amplify the strengths of the process and minimize its flaws.

A lot of CX practitioners struggle with getting started with automation. What can CX practitioners look to gain from your book Robotic Process Automation: A Citizen Developer's Guide to Hyperautomation Using UiPath StudioX?

SMP: The impetus behind the book was around equipping readers with hands-on knowledge to help them get started with automation.

The book provides a wide variety of exercises that tackle traditional business challenges. It also includes a lot of datapoints to inform inputs for automation, as well as a GitHub repository as, where readers can engage with different levels of code.

As authors we wanted readers who picked up the book to be able to say, whether or not they had prior knowledge of RPA, that they now understand key automation concepts, good use cases and how to design processes that are repeatable and scalable.  

To access more insights from Sidney Madison Prescott, view her session at CXN Live: CX Automation 2021 also check out her book Robotic Process Automation: A Citizen Developer's Guide to Hyperautomation Using UiPath StudioX.