Roughly 4 weeks work…” said the consultant.

 

“4 weeks to update purchase order status and status date?” I inquired as a concerned program manager for a SaaS ERP implementation project. I found myself making quick calculations in my head, 160 hours at approximately $200 an hour would amount to $32,000 to update two fields from one system to another.

 

“…well, you have to understand that this would need an interface between the two systems. We have to complete a functional design, technical design, development, functional testing, user acceptance testing, migration scripts and do all this using our SOA standards.” explained the consultant. While listening to his explanation, I envisioned myself justifying this cost to the CFO, asking for additional funding. It wasn’t a pleasant thought.

     

…the update of information from one system to another seems trivial in functionality but not in terms of cost.

     

In this case, the requirement was to update the status and corresponding status date of purchase orders located an on-premise ERP system to the Projects Management module in another SaaS system in the cloud.

 

This is not the first time nor will it be the last time, where the update of information from one system to another seems trivial in functionality but not in terms of cost. I knew instinctively that the consultant’s estimate was not far off. Every interface had to be developed as per standards and rigorously tested before it could be deployed into production.

     

…leveraging existing investments in RPA is a no brainer.

     

Now, what if we didn’t have to build an interface to synchronize the Purchase Order status with the Project Management system. How could that be done, you ask? Robotic Process Automation (RPA); a perfect technology that can be leveraged to meet the requirements for the above scenario. Here is an efficient way an RPA engine can be designed to meet our requirements:

 

1. Create an automation workflow,
2. Deploy it to an automation agent,
3. Schedule a bot to do the following steps,
4. Log into the on-premise ERP system,
5. Record all open purchase order numbers, their status and status dates into a data file,
6. Log into the Project Management SaaS system,
7. Open the corresponding purchase order,
8. Locate the purchase order number on the data file,
9. Update the status and date there,
10. Log off all applications, close and archive the datafile.

 

In situations where data is message-based and can be updated from a front-end screen, leveraging existing investments in RPA is a no brainer. Also, a bot can be schedule for a 24/7 utilization, so it is capable of doing multiple such message based, high volume data exchanges between varied systems.

 

Thus, RPA provides a reliable and low-cost data exchange mechanism when compared to developing and maintaining an expensive message-based solution using Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).