562. Karen Friedenberg: AI Project Case Study

Key takeaways

The Intelligent Automation Center of Excellence is designed to coordinate various automation efforts within the company, advancing beyond initial robotics process automation.
Leveraging both business and IT strengths, the COE must focus on defining its mission and aligning automation strategies with broader organizational goals.
Successful change management is crucial as organizations adopt new technologies, particularly when empowering employees as 'citizen developers'.
The COE will manage incoming automation requests through a structured approach, utilizing established criteria for evaluation and prioritization.
Barriers to success include resource allocation and fear of job displacement, but anticipated benefits span technology deployment and enhanced organizational collaboration.

Summary

Introduction to Intelligent Automation

In the podcast, host Will Bachman welcomes Karen Friedenberg, who discusses the creation of an Intelligent Automation Center of Excellence (COE) for a Fortune 500 medical supply company. Initially, the company aimed to adopt robotics process automation (RPA) to alleviate repetitive tasks, which subsequently evolved into a broader strategy involving intelligent automation, also known as hyper automation. Karen delineates the necessity of defining what intelligent automation means for the organization and how the COE would serve as a resource to communicate and coordinate these efforts across various departments.

Establishing the Center of Excellence

Karen elaborates on the fundamental steps in developing the COE, emphasizing the importance of stakeholder interviews to identify pockets of knowledge and initiatives already in progress throughout the organization. A significant takeaway is the need for the COE to be business-driven rather than technology-led, ensuring alignment with the company's strategic objectives. This section captures the essence of the COE's mission, roles, and competencies as they relate to ongoing advancements in technology.

Managing Change and Governance

As the COE is being designed, Karen points out the critical challenge of change management. A culture shift is required as more technology is placed in the hands of 'citizen developers' — business users empowered to automate processes themselves. The COE must address fears surrounding job displacement and uphold standards during this transformation. Governance is another facet of the COE's responsibilities, ensuring that while innovation is encouraged, adequate checks and risk management practices are in place.

Request Management and Support Structure

The podcast continues to discuss the practicalities of how requests would be submitted to the COE. Karen explains various methods for input, like utilizing Microsoft tools and SharePoint for tracking requests for automation. The COE will assess these requests through set criteria and prioritization metrics, establishing different levels of resource commitment from simple consultations to full-blown project management, depending on the complexity and impact of the requests.

Barriers and Anticipated Benefits

Karen identifies critical barriers to the successful establishment of the COE, including resource management and funding concerns that necessitate a shift in perspectives on existing job roles. The conversation leads to a detailed discussion on the benefits expected from the COE, both through technological applications and the new collaborative working methods introduced among diverse teams within the organization. The COE aims not only to enhance productivity but also to foster a cultural evolution.

Show notes

Show Notes:

Karen Friedenberg discusses a project she worked on to design an Intelligent Automation Center of Excellence for a Fortune 500 medical supply company. The challenge was that the organization was initially looking to leverage robotics process automation (RPA) technology to automate repetitive and manual processes. This led to the development of Intelligent Automation, also known as hyper automation.

Defining the Meaning of Intelligent Automation

The first step in this project was defining Intelligent Automation and defining its meaning. The client wanted to develop a center of excellence to coordinate efforts across the company to take advantage of new technology and benefits quickly and in a coordinated way. The center of excellence would serve various needs and be a resource for the organization. Karen explains that the first step was to identify the pockets within the organization where people were learning about robotics, process automation, AI, and chatbots. She then interviewed stakeholders to understand their strategic imperatives and goals, and a key understanding was to let business lead the way, not the technology.

The second step focused on developing the structure of the Intelligent Automation Center of Excellence (COE), its interaction with other teams, and the roles and competencies of the COE team. The COE team would be responsible for staying on top of the evolving technologies and coordinating efforts to leverage project management and program management capabilities in a coordinated way. One of the great things about new technology is putting it in the hands of the business and users, allowing them to solve problems themselves. However, there were challenges, opportunities, and fear to address, such as change management and fear of the business starting to do this. For example, IT was beginning to fear redundancy in many of their roles. As a solution to these challenges, it was necessary for the COE team to identify their mission, roles, and responsibilities.

The Center of Excellence Explained

The Center of Excellence (COE) is a team that works to identify and prioritize automation candidates in business units. Karen talks about the knockout criteria they use to assess if a process is an automation candidate and if it can be done within existing systems. The COE then uses a box prioritization matrix to assess the impact and effort of each candidate. If it is easier and less risky, it may be a candidate for a citizen developer role. Governance is also a key aspect of the COE's role.

The COE's role involves oversight and sharing best practices. They train and certify citizen developers to use new technology and processes, ensuring proper controls are in place. The SDLC (Software Development Lifecycle) is a model that aims to maintain flexibility and speed while ensuring proper controls.

People submit requests through various methods, such as email, phone, or using shared systems like Leisha shared through SharePoint and Microsoft tools. The COE's role is to ensure that the process is secure and efficient, while also ensuring that the right controls are in place to prevent unauthorized changes to code.

Discussion on the Design Phase of a Project

Karen explains that they are still in the design phase and it has not been fully executed yet. The vision was to analyze incoming requests and determine who gets help. The team is divided into a business lead and an IT lead who would work with business analysts to assess the project's feasibility. The group provide different levels of support, such as a half-hour conversation or a three-month project with a business analyst and consultants.The first step is to train the business unit citizen developer and to provide regular reviews to the client. The team would also provide additional technical, business process, and change management assistance. The goal is to help the client team navigate their blockers and be a centralized source for sharing learnings and best practices across the business.

Integration with The Center of Excellence

The COE is complex and interacts with multiple systems, including project management teams and various departments across the business. The team would also be aware of other projects in the company and work with them to ensure each project is documented and shared within the ecosystem to share information across departments and projects as required. Karen discusses the development of an Intelligent Automation center of excellence and the marketing approach taken to promote the service. The center consists of five people and is being promoted internally through business optimization managers. The company is taking a crawl, walk, run approach, starting small and growing. She explains that some barriers to the center include resourcing, funding, and fear of AI impacting employees' jobs. Organizational change management is crucial in these efforts, as it ensures sustainability and avoids unintended consequences for employees.

The Benefits of a COE

The company anticipates benefits from the center of excellence, such as faster deployment of technologies, reduced manual tasks, and cohesion of information. The technology has tremendous benefits, but the bigger benefit is the new ways of working that can be applied across various parts of the business. The center of excellence also helps in teaching new ways of working and chain collaboration between the business and IT.

Timestamps:

01:02 Designing Intelligent Automation Center of Excellence for a Fortune 500 company

02:22 Establishing an Intelligent Automation Center of Excellence

06:40 Automation and citizen development in a business unit

10:49 Implementing a citizen developer program

14:32 Implementing an Intelligent Automation center of excellence

Links

Website: https://www.piconsult.net/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karen-friedenberg/

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