RPA Tool Buyer’s Guide Copyright © 2016 Virtusa Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
RPA Tool Buyer’s Guide Copyright © 2016 Virtusa Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
RPA Tool Buyer’s Guide Copyright © 2016 Virtusa Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
Evaluation Criteria to Consider when Selecting a RPA Tool
The chosen RPA tool plays a crucial role in your automation journey, and
can directly impact the outcome of an RPA implementation. Therefore,
tool selection should be carried out after carefully assessing your business
requirements, the technology stack of the applications, and expected
outcomes.
While the above could vary between business and operational units even
within the same organization, one could hardly argue that the common
goal is to achieve quick wins, where the ROI exceeds break-even-point in
the shortest possible time and additional benefits are accrued sooner than
later from the dramatic change in pace and efficiency with which
operations are now handled via RPA.
RPA Tool Buyer’s Guide Copyright © 2016 Virtusa Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
Ease of Use
Can I really afford to invest in an
entire army of automation experts
to get a job automated? Can I
expect these technical experts to
understand the nuances of the
business as my SMEs do as of now,
to do a thorough job of the
automation?
Some tools provide simple ‘record
and play back’ based automation.
It’s an industry-acknowledged fact
that the ‘record and playback’
approach cannot cater even for
medium complexity tasks,
although it creates an aura of
superficial user-friendliness.
While most automation tools
could provide a variety of features,
some of which are technically
more sophisticated than others,
attempting to work with them may
not be an easy feat. In most cases
programmatic skills to automate
even a basic use case, and the
learning curve could be quite
steep and frustrating without
further support from the vendor.
As such, what you essentially
require is an automation tool
which can easily provide your
domain savvy operational SMEs an
opportunity to get involved in the
automation process with minimal
technical knowhow. A tool that is
flexible enough to accommodate
basic process automation with
built in commands, wizards and
GUIs that can be extended for
more complex work as and when
required through alternative
mechanisms would be the ideal
bet for any enterprise.
RPA Tool Buyer’s Guide Copyright © 2016 Virtusa Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
Scalability
Given the highly disruptive nature
of RPA, even the most nimble and
courageous organizations will
often avoid a big-bang approach
preferring to scale based on the
nature of their business,
organizational resilience to
change, etc. Under such
circumstances getting tied down
to a tool/platform which leaves
minimal room to scale up/down is
certainly not advisable.
As such, the recommended course
of action is to take a good look at
the architecture of the tool and
the basic requirements for
configuration and deployment.
Some tool vendors mandates that
you buy a certain number of bots
whereas you may actually need a
fewer number than that. Some
tools enable you to start with a
small investment, however when
you need to scale up you may need
to spend a fortune on the
additional bots and plug-ins.
Ask yourself the following. Does it require dedicated automation environments or can it be adjusted on-demand through cloud and virtualization services? What about execution? Can this tool help multiple robots execute multiple workflows? Simultaneously by adding execution agents for parallel (grid) execution and support for an array of platforms (operating systems, browsers and devices) with minimal additional expenditure? Can we start small (pilot) and if it works well would it be possible to scale-up in a cost effective manner? If the answer is yes to most of the above, you will probably get your money’s worth when you eventually choose to do a company-wide RPA implementation across various BUs.
RPA Tool Buyer’s Guide Copyright © 2016 Virtusa Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
Reliability
The last thing you want to do is
invest in an automation tool with
no proven record of stability,
leaving you to incur large expenses
for maintenance and support
while the business operations
automated using these tools are
now in a worse predicament than
when they were initially done
manually.
RPA tools are relatively new, and
strive to reach the reliability and
efficiency level of Test Automation
tools.
As such, always look at the
reliability and robustness of the
underlying automation framework
upon which the tools is built. While
conducting a detailed POC / pilot,
investing some additional time to
evaluate the tool’s potential to
cater to multiple use cases, under
different conditions and data
volumes, and ability to run a large
number of iterations without
performance degradation could be
quite useful in the long run
especially as you move from
automating simple structured
processes across the presentation
layer, to more complex processes
which require integration with
other system APIs for example.
RPA Tool Buyer’s Guide Copyright © 2016 Virtusa Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
Technology Spectrum
While most commercial tools
specialize in automating certain
areas, it could become quite
restrictive at an enterprise level
given the diversity of operations
and their unique requirements.
As such, when choosing a tool you
will need to be proactive and
evaluate the potential to get add-
ons from the same vendor or
consider integration mechanisms
in the event the existing vendor
cannot support your requirements
in future.
On the other hand, you, shopping around for a single tool that supports automation across a number of channels such as web, mobile and desktop applications, web services and database automation. Essentially, the tool should be able to do true end-to-end automation. Having said that, don’t go for a sledgehammer to crack a nut. So, you shouldn’t be paying for fancy features like AI modules or HCR if you are not going to use them in the near future. So, a tool that fulfills your current requirement, but has the ability to cater to your foreseeable future requirements would be beneficial for most enterprises.
RPA Tool Buyer’s Guide Copyright © 2016 Virtusa Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
Flexibility Most likely, none of the tools in the industry would be able to fulfil your automation requirements. Standard features and functionalities of a tool are geared to cater for common requirements. When your business cases require something that cannot be fulfilled using such off-the-shelf features, you would need to work with the vendor for customizations. You may end up
paying much more for the customizations than the initial investment. Hence, you should identify the customizations to the tool in the early stages (ideally during your tool evaluation stage) and discuss the cost of such customizations and add-ons with the vendor. Alternatively, you can opt for a tool which allows you to build custom features without having to pay extra for the vendor. Also, you should look for a tool that supports a number of operating systems for the bots. Some tools support only a specific Operating System. Not only such tools mandate procuring expensive Operating systems and infrastructure, also requires deploying your application related RPA on the OS supported by the tool. This could open a can of worms.
RPA Tool Buyer’s Guide Copyright © 2016 Virtusa Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
Monitoring and ROI Dashboards Once a virtual workforce is deployed
enterprise-wide, it’s vital to put in
place the relevant governance
mechanisms to ensure the intended
benefits are achieved. In that
respect, having solid monitoring and
control mechanisms is paramount
for business continuity. For
example, there may be highly critical
activities that are allocated to the
bots, and if one of them goes down
unexpectedly, it’s very important
that the right stakeholders are
automatically notified to provide the
relevant workaround. Additionally,
many operational managers would
require sufficient visibility on the
various jobs being executed by the
bots to make timely decisions.
So yes, an execution dashboard is a
crucial component of any RPA tool
you select. Also, look at the
mechanisms employed to notify
users of manual actions pending on
their end (for partially automated
workflows), prioritize items if
needed, the level of detail provided
on potential errors and ease of
rectifying same via the tool’s
interface itself. A clean, friendly GUI
with drill down facilities for relevant
features and a “User Inbox”
generally fall into this category.
Additionally, it will be great if your
tool helps in providing ROI
dashboard features out of the box
as you will often have to justify your
investments. If this is not possible,
ensure the tool provides API access
to these so that you can create your
own custom dashboards. Being able
to apply a relevant dollar value up
front and do a ‘what if analysis’
against the selected processes can
easily help you secure buy in from
sponsors too.
RPA Tool Buyer’s Guide Copyright © 2016 Virtusa Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
Support and Professional Services Generally, most tools offer a range of support plans. You should opt for a plan that provides support during your organization’s standard operational hours, and SLA that are in align with the business criticality of the
processes you intend to apply RPA. So, discuss various support options and those costs with the tool vendor. Most tool vendors provide only the tool and standard tool related support. This means, you need to have your team fully trained on the tool or hire a third-party services provider to implement RPA using the particular tool. Therefore, inquire about training related costs from the tool vendor. Also, you may want to inquire on the professional service fee (rate card) from the tool vendor’s recommended implementation partners or an independent service provider of your choice. The last thing you would want is to end up with a vendor and a service provider who would put the blame on each other’s competency if things go wrong.
RPA Tool Buyer’s Guide Copyright © 2016 Virtusa Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
Sample Evaluation Checklist This checklist will give you a starting point to perform an extensive evaluation of an RPA tool / framework. It covers a range of criterion including technical capability, licensing and support mechanism enabling an optimal selection process. This checklist is currently populated with Accello specific data for your convenience, but can be used as is or contracted/expanded to evaluate other commercial products in the market.
Criterion Accello RPA Tool 2 General Applicability IT process automation Yes
Business process automation Yes
Cross-channel (frond end, services, database) / Multi-paradigm (web, mobile, thick client etc.) process automation
Yes - Accello can seamlessly switch between channels / paradigms
Partial / User assisted automation (such as the ones that mandate conscious decision-making / human intervention like approvals)
Yes
Processes that involve web based applications (such as web scraping, and filling in forms)
Yes
Processes that involve services and APIs Yes
Processes that involve thick client applications / terminals / SSH
Yes
Writing to / Reading from databases Yes
Processes that involve mobile applications Yes
User interactions with operating systems such as File / Folder operations
Yes
Email Operations - send / read content and attachments Yes
Extracting structured data from various sources such as PDF, Excel, Documents, Web sites etc.
Yes
Creating reports by extracting/merging data from multiple sources
Yes
Processes that can require actions based on simple rules / decisions
Yes
RPA Tool Buyer’s Guide Copyright © 2016 Virtusa Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
Processes that can require cognitive / AI based decision-making
Cognitive / AI modules are a separate product line, but can be integrated with Accello. The feasibility of Cognitive/AI automation will be confirmed upon analyzing the exact business case. Some cases may require a third-party commercial add-on
Tasks that need to be formed at pre-defined times or intervals
Yes
Text recognition from scanned documents and images Yes
Applications with non-English locale automation Yes
<Include additional criteria as required>
User Friendliness and Ease of Adoption Required level of programming knowledge Almost No. Accello is a zero
code automation solution. However, if you'd like to extend Accello by creating custom commands, then you'd require programming knowledge.
Infrastructure cost for hosting / installing Accello Low. Provides both on-premises and cloud based hosting. You can use physical machines or VMs. Accello bots can run on a number of operating systems.
Ease of installation and configuration Easy. The Accello team does the installation and configuration for you.
User friendliness Accello provides a simple, intuitive UI including a visual flow-chart like workflow builder
Required effort for learning the tool Low. End users can learn the tool within less than 8 hours. Accello provides live training over the web for its customers.
Feasibility of migration to a different tool Yes - provides a universal markup file. An interpreter needs to be written for the specific target tool.
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Ease of getting an evaluation version Yes - Provides a 30-day valid evaluation license to the cloud based sandbox. Also, provides recorded training and live support during the evaluation period for potential clients.
<Include additional criteria as required>
Designer (IDE) Features Record and playback No
Ability to model scripts using workflow builder Yes. Provides a visual flow-chart like workflow builder
Automation Framework Yes. Inbuilt
Ability to create scripts without coding Yes. Zero code
Ability to create custom commands Yes. Supports calling external Java, SH and Bat, and using the methods in those as custom commands
Regular Expression Support Yes
Reusable Business Processes Yes
Reusable Data Tables Yes
Reusable UI Objects Yes
Object recognition techniques XPATH / CSS / Attribute Level / Image based
Method of Object recognition Provides Object Spy. Doesn’t require technical know-how of OR techniques such as XPATH
Object Repository Yes. Centralized
Support for complex variables / data types Yes
Support for modelling data and web schema Yes
Inbuilt Triggers Yes (Mail, File Operations, User Actions)
Ability to create custom triggers Yes
Inbuilt notifications Yes
Ability to define custom notifications Yes
Ability to run SQL / PLSQL Yes
Ability to run MDX queries Yes
Ability to use functions from standard scripting languages Yes - JavaScript
<Include additional criteria as required>
Executor Features Ability to schedule execution Yes - through Jenkins
Event Trigger based execution Yes - inbuilt / user defined
Notifications/Alerts in case of failures Yes
Ability to invoke through command line Yes
Ability to select specific bots for execution Yes
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Parallel Execution support - single business process on multiple bots
Yes
Parallel Execution support - multiple business processes on multiple bots
Yes
Data provided for issue identification and troubleshooting
Provides detailed logs, video recording of the execution, and screenshots on error
Ability to commission / decommission bots Yes
Reports and Dashboards Yes - Provides a number of useful reports and a web (desktop and mobile) based dashboard.
Life span of data Persistent. Everything (Scripts, Objects Data, Logs etc.) is stored in an internal database
<Include additional criteria as required>
Web Application Automation Support for multiple browser types Yes - IE, FF, Chrome, Safari
Headless execution Yes
Support for Flex, Silverlight, Applets No
Support for iframes and pop ups Yes
Oracle Forms Yes. Requires a third party commercial add-on
SAP - Web Yes. Requires a third party commercial add-on
SharePoint Yes
Pega PRPC Yes
Support for Citrix No
<Include additional criteria as required>
Thick Client Automation REST Yes
SOAP Yes
Custom APIs Yes - will be confirmed upon a feasibility assessment
MQ Yes - ActiveMQ
<Include additional criteria as required>
Database Automation Support for SQL DBMS Yes. Readily supports
MySQL, Microsoft SQL, and Oracle. Support can be extended to any database that supports JDBC
RPA Tool Buyer’s Guide Copyright © 2016 Virtusa Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
Support for Non-SQL DBMS Yes. Readily supports the Orient database
Support for DW Yes on SSAS
<Include additional criteria as required>
Mobile Applications Automation Supported application types Native, Web, Hybrid
Supported OS Android, iOS
<Include additional criteria as required>
Widely Used Data Sources Automation (Excel, PDF etc.) Excel - ability to import existing master datasheets
Excel - ability to run macros Yes
Excel - ability to compare formulae and results Yes
Excel - ability to insert formulae to Excel sheets Yes
PDF - ability to identify word/line/table data/logo accurately
Yes
PDF - ability to read tabular data Yes
PDR - ability to capture relative positions Yes (using XPATH)
<Include additional criteria as required>
Intelligent Character Recognition Automation Optical Character Recognition (OCR) -Ability to recognize numbers
Yes
OCR - Ability to recognize the English alphabet Yes
Optical Character Recognition - Non-English Certain languages are supported. May require a commercial add-on
Handwritten Character Recognition (HCR) - Ability to recognize numbers
Yes
Handwritten Character Recognition - Ability to recognize the English alphabet
Requires a commercial add-on
Handwritten Character Recognition - Non-English Certain languages are supported. Requires a commercial add-on
<Include additional criteria as required>
Security and Auditability Ability to encrypt data Yes
Ability to mask sensitive information - front end Yes
Ability to mask sensitive information - logs Yes - encrypted fields will not be displayed in the logs
Automatic Backup Processes Yes
Detailed Application Log Yes - provides verbose logging
Script Execution log Yes
User role management Yes - 3 user roles (Admin, Designer, Guest)
Revision history of scripts Yes
Ability to roll back scripts Yes
RPA Tool Buyer’s Guide Copyright © 2016 Virtusa Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
<Include additional criteria as required>
Scalability and Availability Disaster Recovery site support Yes
Automatic Backup Processes Yes
Ability to add the bot as required Yes
Ability to decommission the bot Yes
<Include additional criteria as required>
Support Standard support hours ET 9.00 AM - 6.00 PM
IST 9.00 AM - 6.00 PM
Support Plan Options Provides flexible support plans to suit the client's requirements (Platinum, Gold, Standard)
Help / Support materials Online User Guide, Online training videos and sample projects, User Forum
Training Plans Free - Live Training Over Web - Free On-premises training - Paid
<Include additional criteria as required>
Licensing License Plans Offers attractive Annual
Subscription based License Plans including, Enterprise License Agreement (ELA) bundled with RPA service offering Starter Plan for small enterprises
<Include additional criteria as required>
Professional Services RPA Consultancy Provides both onsite and
offshore RPA consultancy. Also, offers RPA design and implementation, execution and monitoring.
<Include additional criteria as required>