8 Categories of Risk RPA can Pose on Business and How to Mitigate them

ROI and risk are two of the most important factors to consider when choosing a service provider. RPA tools have become more accessible to the average enterprise, but there are still many risks that can impact your bottom line. This blog will explore the top 8 risks associated with RPA and how to mitigate them.

If you're looking to implement RPA, you've probably heard of the risks. But what are they, and how can you mitigate them? Let's take a look:

1. RPA Strategy Risk:

RPA is a powerful technology that drives innovation, improves customer service, and maximizes competitiveness for its organizational adopters.

However, businesses often fail to deliver its full value by setting up the wrong goals and expectations, or misusing it for one-off, isolated areas. These can lead to under-resourcing the RPA initiative, inhibiting it from reaching its full potential.

Examples of some of the worst strategies are when RPA is seen as a way to reduce costs by reducing FTEs instead of using it to innovate and improve how work is done. This ultimately leads to an unhappy workforce and a bad external reputation for the organization.

2.  RPA Sourcing Risk:

Sourcing for an RPA solution can be a challenge if you don't know where to look for qualified talent. You should consider using a partner that has access to a large pool of qualified consultants, as well as those who specialize in specific areas of expertise. A partner could also help with sourcing for talent by conducting market research on their own or working with their clients' HR departments to identify candidates for each position.

3. Tool Selection Risk:

Tools are only as good as the data they're given, so be sure you choose one that is capable of handling your workloads and data volumes. Make sure you test out different tools before choosing one that fits your needs best, so you'll have time before deployment begins to make any necessary adjustments.

4.     Stakeholders buy-in risks:

Most companies are hesitant about using robots because they don't want people to think they're replacing human workers—but if the technology saves money at scale, then those savings should be passed on to employees in some way. The key is getting them over their initial reservations so they see how much value RPA can add to their business processes. 

5. Launch/project risks:

This is where things get tricky! If your team is new at working with robots and doesn't understand RPA properly (or if they don't want to learn), then your project could end up failing before it even gets started—and that would be very frustrating for everyone involved.

6.     Operational/execution risk:

When implementing an RPA strategy, there are always going to be some operational issues that pop up. These can include things like training employees on the new technology or ensuring they have the right skillsets to execute the new automation process effectively.

Here are some of the most common operational risks when deploying bots into your company- 

• Robots stop working or do not function as intended
• Not enough bot force 
• Costly maintenance

7.     Change management risk:

When implementing an RPA strategy, there's always going to be human error—whether it's from not properly training employees on how to use the technology or making a mistake when programming code for it. This can lead to change management issues that need addressing as well.

8.     Maturity risk:

In the modern world, business transformation initiatives are nothing short of revolutionary. They are not just about changing a company's business model, but also its culture and its people.

As companies grow and mature, they must take on new challenges that can be both rewarding and scary. When companies reach maturity with their initial deployment and begin expanding RPA across different business units and geographies, they can experience:

- Rapid proliferation of automation requests, duplicated efforts across divisions, and under-utilization of bots. Other risks can include unchanged labor and process silos, lack of preparation for automation progress into cognitive technologies, shortage or shortage of RPA talent, etc.

All in all, these risks can make it hard for companies to move forward quickly enough to stay competitive in today's rapidly changing world economy.

For businesses who are in the early adoption and pilot stages, it may look like RPA is complex and has no value. User management to ensure that there is proper access and RPA project governance will go a long way in helping manage risk. Most companies understand that new technological advancements come with risk. This doesn't mean that they are planning on not implementing RPA; they just want to mitigate their risks as much as possible through proper design and implementation, and user management is the first step in this process. To mitigate the risks involved with RPA, we need to take a balanced approach. First, we have to understand the risks and then use this to design mitigating controls that make RPA successful.