Role of Business Transition as a PMO in Automation Projects

BPS outsourcing industry has always been heavily dependent on IT, to enable its services and make it more efficient. Automation of voice and back office processes have been around for a long time, be it IVR, web services for voice or OCR, add on applications for back office, macros creation to automate steps of a process (this is the closest we had to the current RPA platform structures), etc.

With the introduction of RPA platforms, a new focus area has been introduced to the field of non-invasive automations, which results in lower implementation cost and faster lead time. RPA delivers some serious savings to the business, in a robust manner.

These non-invasive automations are more business focussed, operations dependent, and do not have a huge IT capex investment. These investments usually fall under the operations budgets and savings in most organisations. The impact on revenues would also be on BPS partners managing outsourced work; primarily these automation offerings are led and delivered by BPS organizations themselves. The automation projects and their approach, are evolving. Automation projects are under the purview of BPS organisations and not under core IT organisations. There is a definitive need for business transition team to play an important role.

For the transition team to play a critical role, would require flexibility from the team, a complete rethinking of approach and evaluation of areas, where contribution can be effectively made.

A one size fits all approach would not work always. Business transitions and automation implementation cannot be done in the same manner. For example, in automation the project delivery approach and execution are led by an IT Project Manager, supported by Quality, Information Security and Infrastructure team members, reporting to the Project Manager, whereas in Business Transition, the transition team leads the project, with a cross functional team, who do not report to the transition team. The Business Transition projects by nature are operational projects with technology as an enabler Vs in IT projects the core focus is technology development / implementation. The methodology also would need some tweaking, since automation projects are hybrid projects with a focus on Operational requirements and direct impact as well as technology led with development playing a key role in the success. Keeping these in mind, a Program Management Office is set up, where the Business Transition team can contribute to the Automation projects and act as a wrapper for the support of delivery teams.

With Hexaware’s DMS (Digital Managed Services) and DMS Lite Go-To-Market offerings, the Transition team is already playing a key supporting role, in successful execution of projects. While the DMS offering has a business transition component in it, which is a known area for business transition team, the automation aspect of it, along with DMS Lite which is a pure automation offering, is where the role has evolved.

Now let’s see with an example, as to how our DMS and DMS lite offerings have been managed/supported by our business transition team. For a large banking client, Hexaware Transition team played a major role in business transition and program management, for the automation project.

As a part of the project, listed down are a few areas, which have been supported by the Business Transition team:

Read how Hexaware delivered 48% savings in the Total Cost of Operations from Day 1 for Payment Investigation process of one of the largest Global Bank through a human-machine collaborative model. Hexaware jointly worked with the client’s business operations and IT stakeholders to draw the Digital Business Transition roadmap, mutually agreeing on the change management process and protocols to address bottlenecks and issues identified during the transition and implementation journey.

The business transition team, acts like a Project Management Office, ensuring smooth transition of the project. Through its strong governance and defined framework, the business transition team forms the back bone for the automation projects.

The automation focus is only going to intensify over the next few years, with additional cognitive focussed technologies and platforms. The above mentioned points are just a few aspects, which need to be put in place from a Program Management and delivery standpoint. The Transition team can play an important role in supporting the success of these initiatives.