What does it take to make robotic process automation (RPA) and broader intelligent automation strategies successful? While there is still no singular best practice approach or playbook, HFS research indicates that the use of centers of excellence (CoE) with skin-in-the-game collaboration between IT and business operations dramatically improves both the effectiveness of initial adoption and the continued proliferation of end-to-end use cases.

In our continued effort to spotlight emerging intelligent automation execution strategies, this Voice of the Customer Point of View (POV) report examines the automation journey of Allied Irish Banks (AIB) and its strategic service partner Wipro. While AIB’s RPA CoE has a lead role in this narrative, its use of business process management (BPM) plays a critical supporting role from both a functionality and cultural perspective.

How to create, build and operate an effective automation CoE

Banking and financial services (BFS) firms have been at the forefront of the investigation and adoption of intelligent automation. Recent HFS research shows that BFS firms have a higher percentage of pilots and implementations of RPA and AI technologies than their peers in other industries. While success has been a somewhat mixed bag thus far, with the processes most heavily targeted for transformation not always yielding the expected returns for cost and business value, BFS firms’ relative satisfaction with initiatives is higher than for other industries (See Exhibit 1). We believe that one of the crucial contributing factors is the development of CoEs.