Software Bots - The Next Frontier for Shared Services and Functional Excellence

A Software Bot is a fundamental element of Robotics Process Automation (RPA). RPA can be deployed to automate repeatable, mundane, rules-based work-flowed process tasks across multiple functions in an organization, including Shared Services. While RPA holds high promise, using Software Bots for process automation is not straightforward. The purposes of this research are to (1) examine where Software Bots currently are being deployed in Shared Services organizations and (2) understand the business case, drivers and challenges. We conducted a survey involving Shared Services leaders, functional leaders and RPA experts and discuss the best practices for analysing and optimizing the business benefits of implementing Software Bots. The majority of the companies surveyed have limited application of Software Bots in automating their business processes and are finding difficulties in quantifying tangible savings and identifying cost of implementation. Based on these results we identify functional processes which are candidates for automation using Software Bots and outline implementation steps to automate processes beyond business process optimization.