RPA: DRIVING HR TRANSFORMATION
As part of IHRP’s HRTech Taskforce, our key focus has been to enable the Singapore HR community adopt a Digital mindset and future-proof them by making them HRTech-ready. Harnessing these technologies can enable HR to gain greater efficiencies and free up their time for strategic value-add activities that help their organisations transform and grow.
As part of the 4-part IHRP’s Tech Talk Series, the first webinar showcased how Robotic Process Automation (RPA) can play a key role for HR teams that are looking to lay a strong foundation for a new digital workplace and workforce.
For those who missed the webinar, here’s a quick event summary:
WHAT IS RPA?
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is the foundation of Digital Transformation that can optimize operational efficiencies and increase productivity, while delivering cost savings and service improvements across countless HR processes. Over the past few years, RPA has moved from a fringe application to wider adoption.
RPA has found its use in HR to automate monotonous, repetitive and time-consuming processes in Recruitment (e.g. downloading of resumes from multiple portals onto a common folder), Auditing Datasets, Benefit Administration (such as Leave Claim Administration, Health Plan Enrolment, Filing of Employee Bonus Schemes), Employee Onboarding & Shared Services processes (such as filing of employee documents) and Policy Issuance & signatures. The list can be extended across all HR processes, from recruitment to retirement.
Irrespective of the industry and back end/legacy systems, the session explored how automation in HR and Operations can be applied across all industries and lines of HR business. The slide above shared by SimplifyNext also shows the various RPA players in the market.
BENEFITS OF RPA?
With the extensive exposure to RPA — HR implementation for clients in Singapore, Jason Ku of Simplify Next shared a quick summary of the immense benefits of intelligent automation.
Connie Poshala of Blue Prism shared this self explanatory slide on “Before & After” Automation that showed how HR teams can benefit from Analysis & Insights which were earlier sorely missed.
STEPS FOR A SUCCESSFUL AUTOMATION JOURNEY
As shared by Jason Ku, based on SimplifyNext’s journey working with multiple clients….
- Understand the journey itself and plan ahead. What is the problem you are trying to solve, what are the expected end goals and what is the timeline to achieve the implementation? These will help plan the journey and find the right people and skills required to be successful in the automation journey
- Capability development (identify, train or hire) within the organisation to institutionalise the automation journey
- Partnership within IT and HR for bridging the gap and ensuring business goals and objectives are met in a sustainable manner
And as shard by Vincent Tan, based on ComfortDelgro’s RPA journey, the outcome of a well executed implementation is truly a win-win!
CONCLUSION
The HR teams are also under pressure to “deliver more with less”; there is a strong nudge from Singapore government to adopt a technology-enabled, productivity-focused approach; and a stronger push from leadership teams for data-driven decision making to ensure ROI for every dollar spent. And, RPA can be the first step for all such progressive HR teams!
ADDITIONAL SOURCES
Webinar Video Recording
2020 Singapore HRTech Market Map
