Digital workforce is still a workforce so at a high level it would follow similar protocol of assessing number of FTE (physical or digital) required to perform specific tasks and activities. From digital workforce perspective it depends on
- How many business functions Digital workforce will be managing?
- Are your business processes sequential or can be run in parallel?
- What are the dependencies across multiple digital workforce?
For example, in invoice processing, a bot may scan the inbox, open the email and download attached invoice and store at a common file store. Another Bot will open the attachments and carry out the data entry task into the Financial Processing system by copying/pasting data. Potentially another bot will be required to send intimation back to the client. All the bots can be synchronized to perform the entire process in a seamless manner. Alternatively, there could be one bot who is performing end-to-end tasks from reading the email to sending communication back to client, both would have some benefits and challenges.
Infrastructure considerations is another key factor while scaling up. If you are running the same process on different machines simultaneously which may cut down on time, multiple bots are required.
Additionally, different RPA product vendors license their products differently, giving some variation on how and what you need to calculate. The three extremes are
- Costing by bot
- Costing by transaction
- Costing by time/processing.
These differences are important to understand.
The most significant dependency is the frequency of work over time. Some businesses have seasonal peaks, all businesses have fluctuation throughout the day. So, an assessment of which pricing model works best for your business is important.
Please feel free to reach out for additional consultation and discussion.
