Something to Consider January 2018 2

The Role of Risk Management and Governance in Intelligent Automation

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and enhanced process solutions such as artificial intelligence (AI) unlock the potential to do things faster, better, and cheaper relative to what used to be.

Of course, as I have stated many times ‘the ‘robotics’ moniker is ambiguous, irrelevant and confusing. However, the combined capabilities of RPA and AI are often referred to as ‘Intelligent Automation’ (IA).

The early stages of IA are rapidly transforming the way organizations handle everything from finance and accounting to operations and human resources.

Depending on what IA components are designed to do, segregation of duties, identity and access management, edit checks, logging and monitoring, approval requirements and notifications will need to be thought through. We know many of the questions, but fewer answers at this stage. However, our brightest minds are working on these issues.

It has been observed by seasoned practitioners that RPA is about ‘fixing the potholes in the road, not building the new highway’. As an application integration technology and elimination of ‘swivel chair’ tasks, you can achieve outstanding results, but remember also that ‘automation makes bad worse, faster’. Get your processes and data in shape first!

It’s easy to get caught up in the marketing hype of ‘brand new’ technologies that are cutting edge, but we must also remember that todays innovation will be become tomorrows legacy systems, and when risk management and governance come to town, we need to consider the bigger picture.

​This weeks article reflects our way of thinking that, the latest technology is just one important part of an optimised risk and governance process. To take full advantage of the opportunities of IA and avoid the pitfalls, there are a variety of enterprise risk considerations to keep in mind when implementing either basic or enhanced RPA, or getting deeper into more complex cognitive tools, you can read them here.

Our ‘Something To Consider’ snippets are framed as small, digestible, ‘dashes of insight’ around the pillars of what we define as “World Class Finance” – Process Optimization, Financial Control and Compliance, and Risk Assurance, all underpinned by technology enablement and integration.