7 Questions to Ask Before Beginning Your Oracle RPA Journey
The automation revolution is making a significant impression on businesses all over the world. Many industries worldwide are rapidly adopting Robotic Process Automation (RPA) (including manufacturing, healthcare, retail, financial services, transportation services) as it enables cost-savings, greater productivity, accuracy, and provides better customer experiences and satisfaction.
RPA proves most beneficial on desktop based complex data entry applications, such as Oracle EBS and those systems developed using Oracle Forms. Many organizations worldwide currently use these applications as their mission-critical, back-office systems, having based their entire day-to-day operations around them. Oracle systems have the power to drive businesses for years to come. Unfortunately, they do not support the next generation business needs of the end users who operate them. As new user experiences, business efficiencies, and digital trends become the norm, Oracle EBS users want to modernize their applications as well. Due to the complex nature of Oracle EBS, these organizations are now struggling with challenges, such as lack of planning and design, scope creep, and exploding budgets – all of which negatively impact the ROI of digital transformation.
Oracle systems users quickly discover how difficult this technology is to modernize and automate. While there are many automation tools available, none of the leading automation solutions successfully and efficiently record and automate Oracle applications. Standard RPA methods successfully automate the majority of client-side technologies and applications, providing many organizations with efficient, stable, and fast results. However, these solutions are not sensitive to the unique challenges of Oracle systems. In order to ensure full ROI from Oracle RPA, one needs to seek out an automation tool that works seamlessly with Oracle’s quirks and customizations, to create a stable and smooth automation.
To help find a compatible RPA solution, we have created a specialized checklist of features to ensure these key components will be supported by one’s RPA vendor of choice. We suggest making sure that these factors are all covered by any potential solution to allow for an efficient, stable and easily maintainable RPA plan.
The key factors to validate are:
- Rapid development – Can your RPA solution create automation processes quickly using a recording toolbar?
- Robust to UI changes– Is your solution robust to client-side changes and modifications/customizations?
- Immune to EBS version changes – Are flows unaffected when field names are changed due to upgrades or patches?
- Automatic support for pop-ups and error messages – Does your tool support dynamic pop-ups and error messages automatically out of the box?
- Oracle Aware– Does it support any custom Oracle EBS workflow and automate any personalization or Form component out-of-the-box, without custom programming?
- Concurrent flows– Can your tool support headless “no-client-activated” concurrent automations?
- Low-code input Form development environment – Can your tool create rapid, attended RPA forms without development?
These factors are critical in ensuring the success of one’s Oracle RPA strategy, and we’re seeing it time and again as companies come looking for assistance after complications arise in their Oracle automation journey. One example of this is Worthington Industries, a large manufacturing company with over 60 warehouses across the United States. After beginning their RPA journey and automating several business flows with a leading RPA vendor, they soon encountered instability and failures when it came to their Oracle EBS workflows. After such a significant investment in their RPA strategy, they were encountering unstable and unreliable bots that often got stuck without warning. To alleviate the problem, Worthington employed a specialized Oracle RPA solution that plugged-into their existing RPA orchestrator. This allowed them to automate their Oracle applications successfully, bringing immediate value and ROI. Using a specialized Oracle RPA plug-in saved them over 200 hours of development time and continues to save them 75 hours of data entry a month.
It is no secret that RPA is the key to helping businesses gain and keep momentum, especially as they attempt to adjust to the “new normal” following the Covid19 pandemic. The global RPA market size is steadily growing, expected to rise to $13.74 billion by 2028. However, it’s clear that Oracle legacy systems require specialized automation features in order to ensure smooth and stable automations and to achieve ultimate ROI. By implementing an RPA tool that protects and works efficiently with your Oracle applications, there is no doubt that automation can help take your business to the next level.
