What are the benefits of RPA for MDM for you ? 

RPA is the new driver in the business world. From one side it is giving operational efficiency through automating the entire processes or just some of its steps. On the other hand RPA is elevating the level of standardization and the quality of control:
often during the process design journey a lot of new rules and controls should be applied in order the “robots” to be able to execute the job, thus we also boost the standardization on next level vs. before. Of course, this is valid not only for MDM but is applicable in all business areas where RPA is applied. All these factors are critical and important when it comes to MDM.

Something that is enforcing the benefits of RPA is that those technologies don’t require special IT skills anymore and from this the organizations receive speed and flexibility in applying their own automation solutions because of the IT independency. Lastly, is also helping RPA to be more accessible and utilised by bigger number of companies. 

What is the governance and operating model?

RPA governance and operational model are the critical basic pillars that should be established from the very beginning. Some of the companies are underestimating them and during our RPA evaluation study we identified this as a key learning. Usually the companies are investing lot of efforts in selecting the RPA tools/platform and when having all of them could be lost because of missing structure and internal procedures to implement the RPA process and strategy. Like many other projects, it requires a lot of change management in many levels within the organizations, which is taking time and continues effort. That is why the proper governance is critically important for RPA success and here we speak for things like: demand assessment, pipeline and priorities, documentation, build and design, test, monitoring, communication, contingency, continues improvement and so on. All these should be considered from the beginning even with the first pilot processes selected for automation. 

How are you looking to increase the efficiency further? What is the direction for future?

Nowadays the business environment is very dynamic, and this is generating constant increase in scope of work in many departments. It is very important to keep the competitive advantage and the efficiency in all type of organizations. This is how in Coca-Cola Hellenic we rely on the RPA: they are turning into our employees’ assistants and ensure high productivity and scale flexibility based on business trends and demands. Having that on top of the operational efficiency, our people are benefiting and also they are able to focus on more business value adding activities different than the transactional work which is also impacting positively on the internal engagement. Combining both benefits, companies can maximize the effects from RPA.

In previous question I mentioned some of the elements from the RPA governance and some of them are the assessment and prioritization which are dealing with the adequate selection of the processes to be automated. Of course, the ones within high priority are those which will bring high operational efficiency (time and/or quality) but not with significant complexity in order to optimize the implementation time and thus bringing the results faster. For example, in Coca-Cola Hellenic only for MDM area in the first 6 months after starting with RPA we have 7 live processes and for next year our ambition is to go much more aggressive after taking into consideration our first key take-aways and learnings.

Speaking for the what is next, I would like to mention one key change management factor which is the mindset of the people in the organization. All of us we should constantly think and consider “our robots” as a personal or team assistants “who” will support us as much as we give work to them. Their capabilities and utilization depend on our innovation thinking and willingness to do our business differently. 

What would you like to achieve by attending the 19th Edition in Master Data Management: Digitalization, DQ & RPA Conference?

I’m interested to see how advanced are the other companies in using and benefiting from RPA?  How the digitalization could support for better MDM quality control? Application of data analytics in MDM towards efficiency and effectiveness. Last but not least, networking and relationship.