How to Find and Hire a Great RPA Consultant?

What is an RPA consultancy all about?

Like most companies, yours as well relies on certain tasks and processes that don’t always require a specialist’s attention. Some of these can probably easily be automated, making them faster, cheaper, and less prone to making mistakes. Robotic Process Automation is one of the technologies that can help you with just that.

If you have a strong team of developers (preferably: automation developers) in your company – that’s great. You have probably conducted some process audits, built your first automation, and maybe even set up a Center of Excellence.However, if you are just at the beginning of the process automation road, you probably feel a bit lost and confused about what should you automate, how to start, and if this type of technical solution is even suitable for your company.

If that’s the case, RPA consultancy is a great way to begin!

What RPA services do RPA consultants provide?

Who are RPA consultants? These are seasoned RPA development experts, who combine technical knowledge (coding, tools) with business expertise.

They are able to look at your company as a whole, map processes, analyze them and identify the biggest automation opportunities: ones that will bring you the biggest ROI, unlock the fastest growth potential or remove the most painful bottlenecks in your process.

RPA consultants provide a wide range of services to fill the role and carry out the responsibilities which include but are not limited to:

• Using RPA software, assisting in the resolution of challenges that emerge in day-to-day activities keeping in mind that automation is not done for the sake of automation. Automation is done to make our lives easier. Hence, if automating a task will somehow introduce more complexity or workload, then the conventional way of doing it is the optimum setup for now.
• Understanding, analyzing, and documenting all current business processes that are business-as-usual at the client’s side.
• Establishing an overall automation strategy for the client by creating several operational models for assessment.
• Determining the technical infrastructure needed for the implementation of the agreed-upon automation solutions.
• Providing training for the personnel and assisting in the creation of an “RPA-friendly” workplace in which each team member seeks out more automation possibilities to contribute to the company’s transition & overall continuous growth and development.
• Creating and documenting test scenarios and processes to achieve the optimum setup. Leading PoCs (Proof of Concepts) whenever a new solution is assessed to make sure it’s technically feasible and would provide the benefits needed.
• Educating our clients on how to design, operate, and maintain automation systems to enable the success of the RPA adoption strategy.
• Auditing your current automation RPA setup (bots, licenses, etc.) and proposing improvements. Ensuring legal and regulatory compliance before deploying to the production environment to avoid any complications down the road.

How to choose the right RPA consultant (RPA consultancy’s criteria)?

It’s not optimal to just hire the first RPA consultant that comes your way! Consultants need to be qualified to lead such roles, that’s why we’re showing here the best-in-class criteria needed in an RPA consultant.

Your future RPA consultants should have a track record of successful project implementation with real tangible deliverables. Make sure to check their current/previous places of work. For example, there are several consulting companies hiring and training RPA developers that have a rigid reputation, such as the “Big Four” club members: PwC, EY, Deloitte & Accenture.

If you consider hiring a consultant who has experience working for one of these companies, this is a strong indicator of her/his expertise.

Let’s take a look at other must-haves while choosing the right RPA consultant:

1. Project delivered/success stories

A track record that is tangible and measurable to actually assess the outcome of previously delivered projects is necessary before hiring a consultant to make sure they’re a good fit for the role and have successful cases in their portfolio.

2. Opinions, testimonials

Having feedback & reviews from former clients is really useful in such a case. There are several platforms that have this capability like Clutch and Upwork.

3. Knowledge

Technologies they know about and tools they used in previous projects are ordered according to skill level from expert to beginner.Education and technical background are necessary for filling such a critical role.

4. Business background and business-first principle

Technical skills are crucial for the role but you can’t only rely on them. A business sense and/or experience are also needed to make sure that the delivered project achieves its business outcome.

5. Hiring cost:

Hiring consultants can have various costs depending on the region (i.e., consultants from Central-East Europe charge less than their counterparts from the US and/or Western Europe while providing top-quality as the CEE region is famous for its amazing developers, after all)

6. Company culture fit

Consultants should be comfortable working in such an environment & atmosphere without feeling like outliers.

7. Working within the right time zones

I.e., Middle East time zones are much more convenient to be working with European time zones, etc.

8. Partnerships, certifications

Consultants are preferably certified from well-known institutions (i.e., RPA Consultant UiPath who is a UiPath silver partner/UiPath certified)

9. Industry Knowledge

Consultants shall have an overall good level of knowledge of your industry (i.e., telecom, banking, healthcare, etc.) as well as its challenges and its most popular solutions.

10. Legal landscape knowledge

This is necessary to avoid any legal complications down the road.

Where to find the RPA consultancy best fit?

There are several ways to find the best-in-class consultants in your area which include:

Online Freelancers’ platforms (Upwork, Fiverr, Freelancer)

They have been booming for the past decade as they provide relatively cheap and fast options but there’s the risk of low quality.

Big Consulting Firms (EY, Deloitte, etc.)

Almost guaranteed quality but it’s also very expensive for SMEs and rather targeted at bigger companies/corporates.

Classic software development agencies

Sometimes software development agencies have RPA in their offer where they can outsource the RPA-related projects to an external consultant due to their missing expertise in the domain while trying to keep up with the competition providing such services.

RPA consulting companies and agencies

Considered to be the best pick since they are specialized in RPA and can provide an individual consulting approach to small and big players. They are usually equipped with experience and the business knowledge needed to achieve such an outcome. (Yes, these are the kind of experts we hire at Flobotics).

Reach out to us for our best-in-class RPA Consultants!

Looking for RPA consultants? Get in touch with us.

We provide RPA consultants who are sourced from the “Big Four” of consulting and have the necessary skills, experience, and business knowledge in working with clients from various industries. That being said, we’re confident they will focus on providing you with a top technological solution and improving your ROI.

Let’s schedule a call and discuss the opportunities that RPA opens to your business!