Better #Automation: Olaoluwa Daramola - Technology Consultant @ EY

find that there are a lot of deviations from the process you find that you know it's taking longer than you anticipate this you know gives you an opportunity to really spotlight that process and dig deeper to try and understand where the inefficiencies might be coming from now a lot of the time you find out that it's really as a result of some things that maybe we're probably built out from the start right it's properly built up from the start and then there's like a modification that somebody has to do that now elongates the process you could actually decide you know one way to fix the problem from the start right so where the problem is coming from or you could automate the process and you know take out that inefficiency because that thing still needs to happen so typically when you find situations like that i think automation really does deliver a lot of value for people and customers that you know think that you know their processes can be more efficient in general [Music] once upon a time there were millions of businesses struggling every day they wasted time effort and energy on repetitive tasks that added no value one day the better automation podcast by processio came to help them find a way because of this these businesses save time reduce costs innovate and make better decisions because of that these businesses grow scale and use human creativity to change this world hello my name is aziz and i'm your host at better automation podcast by processio where i interview the world's top experts and share their very best ideas on how to improve automation in your business processes and life my guest today is a technology consultant at ernst young although he is here at his personal capacity so this podcast is not representative of anything related to ernst young and he has almost five years of experience in intelligent automation and rpa across west africa currently he is helping some of nigeria's biggest banks make the most of their rpa investments hola how are you today hi aziz i'm so happy to be on the podcast thanks for having me it's my honor it's my privilege and to begin with some context what's your story of falling in love or being fascinated with automation yeah so that story really did start out you know sometime in 2018 and i did work at a non-banking financial institution where the cfo was very strategic and really wanted to know more about what was going on within one of the departments of the organization so he did reach out to me to ask you know to do a process review for some of the processes that's you know existed within that department and after doing that i realized that a lot of the work they did was you know heavily ruled based you know monotonous and was repeatable right so imagine a situation where you know you received a schedule from a client and then you now had to you know create different versions of that same piece of information for payments for record keeping and i realized that there was a lot of value to gain from automating that process so i did go about you know that um even though it was more traditional software development using python flask and building a web application but then i was able to empower those teams and that team rather um to you know quickly generate those things that they typically spent hours on end working on and you know i really did see firsthand the impact of automation because my and my co-workers were a lot more you know excited to come into work they left earlier they were a lot happier and that was really where it started out for me and then on that same journey i was very very privileged to meet someone that works at my current employer and we had a very great conversation and that you know really led to me realizing that you know rpa was the next step in that journey for me because it allowed me you know have a lot more impact and a lot more organization so yes that was my story thank you and a detail that seems interesting to me is that people who are leaving their work happier and more engaged and more returning to home more involved in every way so is this correct yes yes people were a lot more involved um you could see you know they had more time to spend on more strategic higher value tasks so some of the people in that department actually went on to you know join other digital transformation initiatives within the organization because they have freed up a lot of time that they would have typically spent um doing those manual processes thank you and to understand because some people or might think okay i love process automation creating standard operating procedures etc but some people have some kind of inner resistance to it because they feel that work will become mind numbing or that the work will not be creative enough to stand out in the marketplace or to have very unique experiences to the customer what's your perspective on this do you feel that if everything or as much as possible in the business with automated that will become a competitive advantage or a killer of innovation yeah so my opinion on that is really interesting i do believe that you know with a lot more work being automated you know it really does free up your employees to you know think outside of the box find things that you wouldn't have traditionally done in a certain way and do it um and i think you know automation or digital in your organization actually does you know significantly increase the potential of a lot of your employees so i've seen tried um in situations where people i met as process owners ended up becoming business analysts um taking on automation uh figuring out you know what kind of tasks in their previous department could be automated as well so it's really really exciting and it really does supercharge you know your organization with the full force of automation because then you know everything from the um discovery to you know fully automating the the processes is really now a journey that everybody within your organization can be a part of and can learn from and you know develop even more so yeah i think i think that's something every organization should explore i love your optimistic perspective and i have so many questions to ask you so i'll begin with this one you mentioned that everybody could be on board that it can open new doors for them but as human beings change is scary even though it can be positive so how to get people on board before they see the benefits because they will see them later so that they will participate they will be engaged they will be excited because a natural fear of the unknown happens in all humans where some will think well what if are they copying me so that i will lose my job or what will i be doing if so much of my job is automated etc so how to alleviate fears clarify the processes as well as make it a pleasant experience that leads to a positive rather than a new thing that people will feel oh my god this is making going to make my job either harder or more unpleasant yeah that's really interesting so you know a lot of people do have that initial resistance but typically what happens is with a lot of organizations they tend to do something called you know a proof of concept where you know they show people how you know the automation can impact what they're currently doing and usually you know you kind of have that snowball effect where once you see you happen in one place and then everybody else now says hey i think i want this for myself right so it's really really fascinating because then you know you can now have that snowball effect across the organization across different departments so showing them up front that this is what the technology can do for you this is how to make the most of the technology and then also making sure you have you know a great um communication loop between the people who are automating the work and then the people who used to do the work manually so that we understand it's a collaborative effort to elevate um a lot of the mundane tasks that they really didn't want to do in the first place so i think that that that's really exciting thank you and can you share more about the situation and rate of adoption of automation in nigeria how common is it how excited are companies and maybe the government or you are more about you know involved with the banking sector about it how much progress is going there and just share the view and how you could compare it to other parts of the world yeah thanks for that great question as is so for nigeria specifically i think you know the automation journey um a lot of the financial institutions do derive a lot of return on investments for automating their processes because you know typically large banks of insurance companies these guys have thousands of employees doing different things that really are can benefit from you know automation so yes it did really start out in that space but then we're starting to see interest from other kinds of organizations so organizations in the telecommunications industry um manufacturing um because they're starting to see the value of it right so because yes it did start out in banking you know and i think that's really the same story in a lot of major um geographies as well i think the banks were really at the forefront of technology and that's adoption in that space but then other industries are coming hearts behind and the great thing is you know with time going and you know technology advancing people that are starting their journeys right now are you know getting more and better solutions than the people that did start their journeys in 2018 um so it's a an exciting time for everyone in space well we're excited to bring on more more um people from other industries you know get on with automation and see how much automation can impact your business thank you i love this and let's say someone viewing or listening have never been involved in process auditing in process automation so i have two questions one what should be the north star or the guide that lets you know whether a part of a process is inefficient or a waste and therefore it should be automated how to go about creating processes that serve the outcomes you look for and let's say someone wants to have a digital transformation or automation project can you describe it what are the steps and so that they will have a clear idea of how it goes okay fantastic so for me you know a lot of times the north star um really does start with you know discovery right you know when you find that um certain processes take too long to complete so you know maybe um you have a standard um process map but then you find that there are a lot of deviations from the process you find that you know it's taking longer than you anticipate this you know gives you an opportunity to really spotlight that process and dig deeper to try and understand where those inefficiencies might be coming from now a lot of times you'll find out that it's really as a result of some things that maybe we're probably built out from the start right it's properly built up from the start and then there's like a modification that somebody has to do that now elongates the process you could actually decide you know one way to fix the problem from the start right so where the problem is coming from or you could automate the process and you know take out that efficiency because that thing still needs to happen so typically um when you find situations like that i think automation really does deliver a lot of value for people and customers that you know think that you know their processes can be more efficient in general and i think really just you said about the digital transformation journey a lot of times it does really start out as you know from desire right so typically companies have their strategic goals whether it exists to you know improve operational excellence um deliver higher value to their customers or just make their employees more happy so as an organization really identify you know your goals that you know strategic goals that automation can help you with and then try and figure out which particular processes or which particular things in that domain do you want to automate and that would really really ensure that at the end of the day when you taking on the the um that software development life cycle for automation unless automation you're ensuring that at the end of the day you're reaching that goal um so that you know everybody's satisfied so i really think those are really the key steps to take when um starting out an automation initiative um that would deliver value to your organization thank you so much and since you're an expert and there is something called like the expert curse which is or the knowledge course which is assuming that everybody knows what we're talking about if you could explain in a simple way what is intelligent automation and what is rpa so that anybody listening who loves automation will have clearly a clear image of what they are okay that's great so i'll start out with rpa right so the word rpa rpa is really robotic process automation and typically you know robotic in that sense doesn't mean physical robots but really about you know mundane rule-based repetitive stuff that you want to hand off to software right so rpa really is you know enabling or using software to mimic um rule-based tasks on a computer so that that is really what rpa is and rpa really does excel with things like you know processing of um logic based rules um moving data between systems and you know pretty much retrieving data from the internet as well um structured data as well so for intelligent automation intelligent transformation kind of takes you know rpa a step further by you know leveraging on other technologies within the technology landscape so ocr technology artificial intelligence machine learning process mining intelligent automation is really about you know enabling um software robots do what they couldn't really do before because of the lack of intelligence so if you have a process that has something that needs a subjective um decision to be made or is based on some sort of human intelligence that is really where intelligent automation thrives and that's really where you should look into implementing an ie over rpa thank you i love what you're talking about and since you're also involved with the technology and the processes where do you see the future of automation what new emerging technologies could change the landscape and how as well as how much in africa do you believe automation rpa intelligent automation would become a main factor or would it stay within high uh profitability industries like finance banking etc yeah so on the next trends i still do believe that intelligence is really you know where the next step is so process intelligence you know computer vision uh machine learning a lot more cases would come up um a lot more complex use cases will come up that will leverage on those technologies to drive you know automation making your automations a little bit more intelligent that's really really you know the next frontier and the great thing is we're already doing that right now and it's really really exciting and for african businesses i really do believe that you know everybody stands to profit um from automation journeys so even if you're just a startup getting started um finally found product market and you want to scale your business whether you're in 100 year old bank in africa automation you can still um benefit from starting out an automation initiative or whether you're tell communications that is also a very very key area for automation i do believe that you know africa still has a great potential because a lot of these companies are still not fully adopted or fully embraced um digital and that you know really does um allow massive opportunities for us to you know um get into automation so it's really hot right now and i think it's a great time to get into automation for anybody that lives on the african continent um yeah thank you so much and for people let's say someone looks up to you and maybe they're in nigeria or anywhere in the world and they want to become an intelligent automation and rpa experts such as yourself what would you recommend for them to study how should they go about learning because this is a growing field where more people could find a future and a career so i would say start with where you start where you are um for me starting out was you know somebody nudging me to do something about setting processes or find out more about certain processes so if you already have a great job and you know you think you can add automation to it just take a look at some of the processes within your organization and that might help you get started now also really understand your own strengths and your own skills so for instance if you're really really good at your logical thinking but then you've never really been good at you know software development or you know writing code there's still the local you know no code aspect of automation you could explore so playing to your strengths is really important identifying which of these tools allow you to do um or use most of your strengths is really important because that is where um you would find space to thrive and excel within that domain you are so i think it's a great time to get started um a lot of rpa organizations or companies do have you know great academy platforms where you could go and learn um and then really do um kickstart your journey there so i'll just say stay hungry you know look out for opportunities for automation and really just you know get going from where you are so yeah that's it thank you and i will also speak about something else that can be very important to executives and business owners and entrepreneurs a lot of them are overworking and almost burning out how can automation be a beneficial thing that helps them reclaim some more time in order to restore their energy and work in an efficient way as well as some people don't trust rules-based decision-making in that way because they think look life is too complicated to be simplified into such simple rules so what can you say in order to alleviate some of their fears that actually you become dumb by having rules that are yes no or one two three while in reality the options could be infinite and they assume they require creativity every time so i'll start out with um executives i really do want to automate um stuff to get more time back i think it's really interesting because you know a lot of executives do have personal assistants you know that do one or two things for them and really if you do check it a lot of those things that they do are rule-based yes so you could actually explore you know trying out automation of one or two tasks that typically your personal assistants will do for you uh just like um scheduling meetings um replying to specific kinds of emails um that would give you some time back and i think it's very interesting because i did you know embark on a very small automation project where i really did want to send out you know personalized uh messages to people who wanted to get to know me a little bit more so i kind of set up a form that allowed them decide what they wanted to know about me and you know once they did that and submitted that form uh they eventually got a personalized email telling them you know the different things they wanted to know about me and that was a very interesting way of you know interacting with people that wanted to know more about me without having to spend time every day um writing back right so that's a very interesting example and something that i'm sure executives might want to um gain value from right um and then for rule-based automation i do believe that you know yes you might think that a lot of times intelligence um is required but then i would say like a lot more times you would find that intelligence is only really required when there's an exception right when it is not following the standard um defined process and you know there are different ways to work around that so when you have a situation where you know you need a human subjective um response you could actually do a side by side thing where you and the robots or the automation do working hand in hand so when it's exactly not sure throw it up to you but then i do assure you that spending time to define your process and define your flow you do find out that a lot more times process is actually a lot more um rule-based and representative than you would actually think thank you this is really good i really appreciate everything you do and therefore do you feel like some people are saying even entrepreneurs when they're creating a new company should and are more and more moving into already preparing a plan for automation before the company and the product exists do you agree with that or do you feel that the role and the automation should be started when there is stability in the business so when is basically the best time to begin thinking about automation and using automation in your business can it be even before the beginning that you have a clear plan about it or after you go through the chaos of entrepreneurship and innovation then when you have something that works you stabilize it with automation yeah so i do believe that you know thinking about automation should actually be done from day one um you do find out that a lot of entrepreneurs do things at the beginning of their business that wouldn't typically scale right um so automation does allow you scale that but then you still do have to define the bounds within which that automation is supposed to perform right and you know the problem with things at scale is if it's broken at scale then you do have a massive problem all right um but then i do believe that automation should be thought about from the very beginning and then you know define the process and then apply the automation to scale significantly i really do think that's where you derive the most value because if you haven't figured out the process and then you automate it at scale you're really really creating a lot of depth so yeah thank you so much this was my privilege my honor and of course for everyone who is going through this automation journey i highly recommend processio processio is the modern low code no code platform for advanced automation and create an enterprise grade backend for your software any viewer and listener can request access to a totally free account at processio.app and for those with higher business needs you can use an exclusive and very generous discount code for 50 it's better 50 off one word in capital letters more information in the description thank you again this was my privilege and keep going you're doing fantastic things there in west africa thanks aziz i really appreciate you having me on the show um thanks for all you do for the community as well talk later [Music]

2022-06-24 19:07

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