Six things to remember when setting up an automation centre of excellence

Many organisations are starting to realise the potential of automation and digital engineering. Digital automation is becoming more and more widely used, giving organisations a competitive advantage. To stay competitive, organisations must make digital automation a top priority.

It can be difficult to know how to start the automation journey. There is a plethora of different process automation service providers, and an even larger selection of technologies and tools to choose. Often it is best to start with setting up an Automation Centre of Excellence (CoE). This means a dedicated unit that serves the whole organisation regarding automation needs and has both skilled employees and the resources. The Automation CoE is often a part of the IT department.

However, setting up an Automation CoE does not need to be a massive investment with benefits being realised years down the road. In this blog post, I cover six things to keep in mind when setting up an Automation CoE: business centricity, MVP thinking, iteration, centralised automation capabilities, increasing organisational competencies, and a versatile toolbox.

1. Business centricity

Business centricity is the starting point. Everything an organisation does related to automation from building an Automation CoE to implementing an automated solution of the simplest task needs to be guided by business objectives. The Automation CoE exists to serve business needs: To increase the speed, to increase the quality and decrease mistakes, to improve throughput, to save costs, and to improve employee and customer satisfaction. When creating the MVPs, when iterating and holding retrospectives, when discussing the needed organisational competencies, when determining the suitability of a case for automation: The first and foremost question should be “How does this help business to achieve its goals?”

“How does this help business to achieve its goals?”

2. MVP thinking

The amount of resources that need to be committed to build an Automation CoE to cater for all of the needs of the organisation can be overwhelming. However, in the beginning, this is not needed. The most important thing to keep in mind when setting up an Automation CoE is to remember that in the beginning, an MVP – minimum viable product – of the CoE is the objective. What does an Automation CoE MVP entail and how does one achieve the MVP? At its simplest, the Automation CoE consists of one person responsible for automation in the organisation: The Head of Automation CoE. All other skills, capabilities, and competencies can be built using external resources, whether from other units or outside the organisation. However, it is important that someone takes responsibility and assumes ownership of the Automation CoE: This is a minimum requirement.

Extending the MVP thinking, the success of the Automation CoE is also dependent on the business cases that are automated. MVP thinking should be extended to these business cases as well. What is the smallest possible entity that can be automated? And how can you automate that workflow in such a way that benefits can be realised already within weeks of implementation?

3. Iteration

Hand in hand with MVP thinking, iterating is a core process in successfully building an Automation CoE. After the MVP CoE has been set up and after the first MVP automation has been built and deployed, it is time to reflect, to learn, and to improve. When you automated the first workflow, did you have all the needed stakeholders from business and IT units involved? Did you face unexpected delays due to missing information or due to problems with access management? Was there something in which you succeeded particularly well? These learnings form the basis of the best practices for automation in the Automation CoE. Especially during the first automations and first months of setting up the CoE, having regular retrospectives regarding the outcomes is important. The Automation CoE will never be perfect, but with iterations it will always be better.

4. Centralised automation capabilities

It may be tempting to try automating a workflow or a process in one unit of the organisation, trying to avoid the hassle of involving multiple stakeholders from other units and from IT. However, when setting up an Automation CoE, the keyword is the ‘centre’. Centralising automation capabilities provides several benefits along the road. For example, centralising automation capabilities allows for building an MVP in a controlled manner. 

“Transparency of information is necessary and working in silos is its enemy.”

Also, having an Automation CoE catering for all functions of the organisation also means systematically gathering information from the whole organisation: Transparency of information is necessary and working in silos is its enemy. Having the information allows the Automation CoE to effectively iterate and improve, thus building the best practices for the organisation more efficiently than what could be achieved if automation occurred scattered around the organisation. This is especially crucial in large organisations, where the amount of information is overwhelming. Centralising automation capabilities is one of the most important things to keep in mind when building an Automation CoE.

5. Increasing organisational competencies

To build an Automation CoE, it is self-evident that organisational competencies need to be built to enable effective automation of workflows and processes. As discussed, the most important competence to have is the Head of CoE – someone who takes ownership and responsibility of all automation activities within the organisation. However, all other organisational competencies can be outsourced if needed – do not hesitate to ask for outside help. 

Competencies needed include analysis and identification of potential automation cases, developing and testing of automation solutions, and importantly, maintenance of the automated solutions in production. Several stakeholders from business and IT units also need to be involved to ensure that issues such as access management and appropriate handling of errors are taken care of. As you advance on your journey, iterating and building on the MVP, the automation competencies and skill level of your organisation increase.

6. Versatile toolbox

Finally, when setting up an Automation CoE, it is important to keep in mind that a versatile toolbox from the start sets an organisation for success. Starting the automation journey, it may be easy to choose one technology or tool and do all automations with that. This is not, however, the best way to advance. It is of course best to start with one tool or technology and learn from that, but it is important to avoid vendor locks. 

Another thing to keep in mind with a versatile toolbox is that the best practices in an organisation should not be built around one tool or technology. This may be a successful strategy in the short run, when an organisation masters the use of one technology, but in the long run this leads to problems. 

“The best practices in an organisation should not be built around one tool or technology. “

These problems arise as automation cases become more complex and a multitude of technologies are needed to automate one case, automation technology advances and the chosen tool is no longer as suitable as it used to be, or developers familiar with the technology may not be easily available. Hence, it is important to have a versatile toolbox: This allows for choosing the right automation technologies for the right cases.

Keeping these six things in mind sets you for success on your automation journey. Setting up an Automation CoE does not need to feel impossible: The most important thing is to figure out how the business goals can best be achieved with automation and then build an MVP to cater to that need and iterate as you advance on your journey.