Q 545. While calculating cost benefit of RPA, one of the bigger component is the number of bot licenses needed. What is the criteria to decide number of licenses required for an RPA deployment? Illustrate with an example.

 

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The number of bot licenses required for an RPA deployment depends on several factors such as the number of processes to be automated, the complexity of those processes, the frequency of execution, the number of employees involved in the process, and the desired throughput.

To illustrate, let's consider an example of a financial organization that wants to automate its invoice processing system.

Suppose the organization receives 10,000 invoices per month, and the process involves data extraction from invoices, data validation, and invoice payment processing. The process takes an average of 5 minutes per invoice for a human worker. So, it takes around 50000 minutes (833 hours) per month for processing invoices.

Now, if we use an RPA bot that can process an invoice in 1 minute, it would take only 10,000 minutes (167 hours) per month, which is a significant reduction in processing time.

Assuming that the bot works for 8 hours a day, five days a week, and four weeks a month, it can process 9600 invoices per month. Therefore, the organization would need at least two bots to process all 10,000 invoices per month.

However, the organization may also consider other factors such as the scalability of the process, the likelihood of increased volumes of invoices, the risk of bot failures, and the potential impact of human errors on the process.

In conclusion, the number of bot licenses required for an RPA deployment depends on several factors, and organizations must carefully evaluate these factors to determine the optimal number of licenses needed to achieve the desired ROI.

Suresh has explained the most important criteria (volume) along with a few others for deciding the number of bot licenses. His answer has been selected as the best answer.