When implementing RPA, it’s crucial to assess whether automation is delivering value to your company. In this guide, we highlight key RPA metrics that are essential for evaluating success from both a business management and technical perspective.
RPA Tech Lead at Destan
One of the most exciting aspects of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is that you can measure practically everything.
But I’m not referring to the bot performance or other technical metrics that are mostly relevant to RPA developers. I mean the real business metrics that matter—those that help you measure ROI, assess business gains, and determine whether RPA automation is truly profitable for your organization.
That’s the true power of RPA: the ability to generate a data-driven report that clearly illustrates the impact of automation—whether it’s cost savings, a shorter payment cycle, or reduced time spent on processes—ready to present to your CEO, board members, or other key stakeholders.
Here’s a selection of RPA metrics that are valuable to track, from both a business project management and technical standpoint.
Should you know them all? Yes. It’s important to familiarize yourself with all the metrics listed below to fully understand how to measure the effectiveness of your RPA projects.
Should you track all of them? No. Over-tracking can be more harmful than tracking nothing at all. Focusing on too many metrics can lead to distractions and overwhelm. It’s better to choose a few key metrics and consistently monitor them over time.
Remember, the types of metrics you prioritize can also vary depending on the nature of your RPA project. For example, time-related metrics may not be relevant for projects where processes run overnight or have no strict deadline. However, timing may be crucial for projects with tight SLAs.
The Expected Business Value is a key RPA metric that consolidates all related business KPIs. It quantifies the total cost savings from enhanced performance, resource optimization, and reduced errors, adjusted by the average FTE cost over a specified period.
Productivity Gains are a widely used metric to assess RPA effectiveness. It indicates the number of Full-Time Equivalents (FTEs) saved by automating a process (or several). For instance, if automation replaces the manual tasks of four employees, each spending two hours daily on a task, the productivity gain could be measured as 1 FTE per month.
This metric measures how much of the existing automation code can be reused for future processes. Typically, as automation within an organization expands, the development of additional bots becomes more efficient, taking less time and effort since much of the foundational work has already been done.
Practical Application: In many organizations, automation begins with a specific tool set (like SAP). The first bot requires creating the automation logic from the ground up, but subsequent bots can leverage the work already completed, speeding up the process.
Consider attending RPA workshops and practical training sessions when implementing automation in your business.
This metric measures the average cost associated with each error in an automation. It combines the value lost due to downtime and the labor cost required to resolve the issue (Break-Fix Person Hours).
This metric reflects the difference between the initial project budget estimate and the final costs. In RPA development (similar to other software projects), discrepancies often occur due to unforeseen software challenges or scope changes during the development process. An accuracy rate above 70% is generally considered acceptable.
License utilization gauges how effectively the business is utilizing its RPA provider license (e.g., UiPath). For instance, if your UiPath-based bots are running at full capacity but experience 10% downtime or maintenance, your license utilization would be 90%.
The process utilization rate indicates how frequently a given process is integrated into a company's operations. For example, if a bot is active in a process 50% of the time, its utilization rate is 50%.
This metric helps identify which automations are essential to your business and which ones are more auxiliary, guiding decisions on which processes to scale and which to phase out in the future.
Additionally, it serves as a useful measure of implementation success. If, for instance, 30% of employees are reluctant to use a newly implemented automation and continue to perform tasks manually, it highlights an opportunity to enhance bot efficiency.
This metric quantifies the impact of downtime on your expected business value.
To calculate the business value lost during downtime, subtract the recorded downtime from your expected business value over a specific period. This provides insight into how downtime directly affects productivity and overall business performance.
This metric tracks the percentage of tasks successfully handled by the bot within a specific process. A strong RPA success rate is typically considered to be 80% or higher.
While achieving a 99% accuracy rate for an RPA bot is certainly possible, it's important to consider the long-term development costs and weigh them against the actual business value gained from a higher success rate.
Automation uptime refers to the percentage of time that automated processes are operational. It represents the difference between total bot availability and downtime periods (when bots are malfunctioning or unavailable).
The metrics we’ve outlined for measuring RPA success are designed to give you a clearer understanding of your RPA environment. They offer valuable insights into what to measure and how to maintain control over your Robotic Process Automation network.
RPA can be implemented quickly across various industries, including finance, banking, real estate, and more.
These metrics also come in handy when collaborating with an RPA development agency (such as Destan), allowing you to gauge your progress and determine if your business is truly benefiting from RPA implementation.
If you're still uncertain about which metrics to track, don’t worry. As mentioned before, it’s important to avoid trying to measure everything and risk being overwhelmed by data. Feel free to reach out to us.
Our team, comprised of experts from the "Big Four" accounting firms, will evaluate your processes and current RPA setup. We’ll then recommend the most suitable metrics and KPIs to align with your business objectives and needs.
Bart Teodorczuk
RPA Tech Lead at Destan | Expert Automation Consultant specializing in healthcare and finance industries.
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