The IT landscape is becoming increasingly complex with enterprises finding multi-vendor environments a challenge to manage. MSI provides simplified management and a single point of responsibility for all services and technologies from multiple vendors, from unified service desk to contract management. The service integrator coordinates services and suppliers in a cost-effective way, providing a seamless end-to-end service integration and management to support business functions.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) can help MSI deliver on its promise of better controlled operations and services delivered on time. IT can curate end-to-end processes, remove manual workarounds, reduce time spent on mundane tasks and improve operational efficiency and, ultimately, performance. It uses software interfaces together with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to perform complex procedures.
Steps to improving operational efficiency
Service integrators have the end-to-end visibility and the power to govern an enterprise’s multivendor services. This holistic management style allows enterprises to have clear visibility of their IT infrastructures and rationalize services where necessary. At the same time, MSI providers help enterprises define a strategy for specific business goals and ensure proper enforcement of SLAs. This in turn allows for performance and cost-control improvements.
Service integrators can deliver operational efficiencies that are either human or technology based. For the former, an enterprise can choose a specific area that requires improvement, such as remote network access speeds. The service integrator will perform a root cause analysis, discuss this issue with the enterprise’s service providers and use internal user experience surveys to put together a service improvement plan. The impact of this plan is carefully monitored to ensure it delivers on the improvements that have been set out.
RPA can help on the technology side. One of the major differentiators between RPA and other automation solutions is that it can imitate a human administrator, which enables it to be deployed with existing processes, reducing development time and accelerating operational efficiency goals.
It can help service integrators remodel the way business processes work for enterprises. It enables automated execution at a much lower cost than humans, as well as significantly improving process execution and budgeting.
MSI players like ourselves are in a unique position to utilize RPA as we have 360-degree visibility of the enterprise’s infrastructure thanks to device and application monitoring. A service provider could offer RPA, but it would not be as effective, as it would not benefit the entire ecosystem.
Mining insight with RPA
Manual, error-prone processes can reduce productivity and create disruptions for users. By evaluating the most critical processes and where streamlining can take place, MSI providers can create an RPA framework that best suits an enterprise’s individual needs.
Today, RPA is available at various levels. As we are referring to a broad range of services and types of devices, it depends on what kinds of services are being managed, for example. The more information available on the application, the higher level of RPA an enterprise can access.
At a basic level, RPA correlates data. Although this isn’t done in real-time, this activity allows service integrators to harvest valued information from services and service providers and to coordinate it. The findings can help to highlight where improvements can be made.
By including real-time analysis capabilities on top of data correlations, the service integrator can reduce operational noise that may be coming from incidents that are throwing up a large number of duplicated alerts, for example.
Finally, RPA can provide help to solve efficiency problems more quickly. It correlates and analyzes data to identify what solution to put in place, proposes this solution to human operators, and even implements it without human intervention. Robotic assistants can be programmed to handle cognitive functions such as bots, self-service, predictive analytics and self-healing, which Orange Business is now offering to several customers.
RPA requires enterprises to do their homework
The key business benefits of RPA are quality of service and cost reduction. It can offer up a better quality of service, thanks to its ability to reduce or prevent service degradation. And it can provide significant cost reductions through reduced processing problems, increased efficiencies and lower labor requirements.
Any enterprise planning to go down the MSI route and incorporate RPA, however, needs to carefully choose the right solution. Enterprises need the right MSI player who can work closely with internal IT teams to understand business requirements. They can assist in building a roadmap to leverage RPA and improve overall efficiency.
If you want to implement RPA for communications services, for example, you need a strong service integration package that aligns both services and tools. If you don’t have a single operational framework, you won’t be able to implement RPA properly. Orange Business expertise is unique to the marketplace as a service integrator and communications provider.
RPA is far more than the simple automation of tasks. A well-considered RPA deployment can be a real game changer – identifying previously unconsidered areas of improvement and yielding significant cost savings.
Learn more about our approach to managing multiple suppliers on a single platform with Multisourcing Service Integration and our solution dedicated to international mobility.
Alex helps enterprises to simplify, secure and increase cost efficiency across their ICT operations using Multisourcing Service Integration (MSI). He joined Orange in 2001 and has held positions in strategic marketing, product management, pricing and business development. Previously he was marketing director for cybersecurity, our cloud computing Chief Operating Officer and worked at Orange Labs. Alex has 17 years’ experience in the IT and telecommunications industry. Earlier in his career he launched a startup and sits on the French Tech board in Rennes where he acts as a mentor and pitch trainer to innovative companies. Alex graduated from the EM Lyon in France, the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and the Universidad de Salamanca.