It appeared that TECHSERV relied significantly on a regimented approach to project management. Do you believe that there was anything else the management team could have done to guarantee success?

a) answer the question just like you can speak about it for 5 minutes

b) creatively develop your answers.

best presentation most creative, engaging, use of tools, etc. {tools PPT, pollev, Flipgrid, padlet, Microsoft poll, videos}

Strategic Planning Meeting In the 2017 financial year-end strategic planning meeting, TECHSERV 1 senior leadership noted that this was the year of benchmarks for the environment, operations, content, and management. Management is required to bridge employee success to performance. The company pioneered design thinking in implementations. The TECHSERV senior leadership team explained how robotics process automation (RPA) rollouts have improved efficiency, effectiveness, and productivity in 2017. Cost, efficiency, accuracy, and time. The company piloted and implemented RPA projects to meet performance benchmarks. TECHSERV wanted to find RPA project resources, tools, and methods within weeks. After the test implementations earlier in 2017, senior leaders realized they needed to meet with the project team to get more information and decide how to move digital technologies like cognitive tools and blockchain forward. Thus, senior leadership wanted to know what problems the project team expected when deploying RPA in future sites. History: TECHSERV TECHSERV sells laptops, printers, and computer accessories like keyboards, headphones, cases, routers, and more. "Refusing the existing quo" was the platform. The company innovates through goods, people, and processes. "Create technology that improves everyone's lives." Technology management helped the company value certain technologies as assets that could provide it a competitive edge. Technology management involved planning, designing, implementing, and controlling automated operations. RPA was included in the present plan to enhance corporate innovation, profitability, and competitive advantage. Reducing expenses, cycle times, processing times, and efficiency would increase profitability. The company had won various honors for its service and operations. For instance, the Communication Award for excellence and distinction and the Runner-up Culture Creation Award. The senior leadership team valued these accolades and sought global recognition for its activities. Digital technology and reinvention kept the corporation ahead. Automation contributed. The cloud, process robots, and factory floor dashboards signaled obstacles in intelligent automation, which drove the digital finance agenda. The organization focused on strategic planning with annual coding and programming for teams with infrastructure to support projects and programs for strategy implementation. RPA implementations offered correctness, audit trail, consistency, flexibility, location agnostic (geographically independent), low-risk and noninvasive technology, productivity, reliability (24/7 availability), and employee retention. In 2017, the Finance business unit piloted RPA in Spain and China. (Countries have been modified to protect case site anonymity.) Rule-based processes, security checks, scalability and demand expansion, and audit trails for compliance reporting and monitoring were automated. As the company moved toward intelligent automation, these repeated automation operations may have caused problems. What are the firm's geographical RPA implementation concerns and challenges? Finance RPA Pilots Ann Anderson managed TECHSERV's Finance business section, which ensured corporate efficiency. Financial activities included finance, accounting, tax, and treasury. Accounting, internal controls, banking, financing, and government reporting were business functions. "Digitalize experience by allowing tools and processes that speed their employees' ability to envisage the future, motivate the team, and make it happen" was the Finance Department's goal. The Finance business unit piloted rollouts in Spain and China, automating invoicing using rule-based processes and machine language for data processing and analysis. Innovation drove company value and future possibilities in the Finance business segment. Thus, the company's strategic plan incorporated RPA as a key to digital technology's future development, including cloud intelligence automation, process robots, visualization, cognitive computing, advanced analytics, and Blockchain. RPA implementation required senior leadership and staff to collaborate. How Can We Compete? Can We Learn RPA? Ann Anderson worried if the Finance business unit had enough data to justify implementing RPA. Her Finance Research Staff, managed by April Harris, researched RPA's benefits and other firms' RPA programs. This research would help Ann Anderson and Finance decide if RPA would maintain a competitive edge. April and the Research Staff stated that RPA was a new wave of computer software that could handle sales and financial transactions, consolidate and report data, communicate with other systems, and monitor processes. 2 Thus, RPA aimed to take existing processes, maybe modify them, and automate work packages to create new jobs, reduce costs, improve quality, and boost productivity. 3 Automating full-time personnel processes reduced costs. Customer response and 24-h process capabilities boosted efficiency. RPA installations save costs, improve service quality, increase compliance reporting, and decrease delivery times, according to the Research Team. Based on their limited RPA research, TECHSERV expected the benefit metrics and measurements in Table 1. The Finance study crew highlighted that O2 and OpusCapita Group used RPA, supporting the choice to launch RPA initiatives. 5 O2 focused on modernizing back-office procedures by removing some and optimizing others while managing expenses to stay competitive in the mobile communications business. To prove idea, the company ran two high-volume, low-complexity pilot tests. After that, the company hired a vendor to implement and develop the project. The research staff also found that OpusCapita Group provides financial services to clients and automates purchase-to-pay and order-to-cash financial procedures utilizing RPA. The company used RPA in four steps: analytic workshop, process assessment, business case proposal, and execution. OpusCapita created process libraries with specific robot instructions for implementation. RPA to automate business operations was confirmed by O2 and OpusCapita Group information. RPA boosted human resources, compliance, and reporting, according to the Finance and TECHSERV business units. Automating manual operations freed up resources to learn RPA and other higher-order activities and provided 24/7 support. Auditable reports or logs are compliance benefits. Automation also supports real-time data analyses. Despite these operational, human resource, compliance, and reporting benefits, TECHSERV worried about the difficulty of installing and integrating this technology. Many industries saw RPA success, although 30%-50% of initiatives stalled, were rethought, or were abandoned in 2017. The research also taught the company that methodology and internal-external collaboration were essential for success. The Finance business unit found no full-time or part-time workers with the skills to deploy this upcoming technology after consulting with Human Resources. How would they be learned? Based on the project management strategy, the Finance business unit agreed the project team should answer this question. Enter Startup Management The Project Management Institute's five process groups coordinated Spain and China's project management (2017). 6 Starting, planning, executing, monitoring, and closing were these process groups. To empower staff to spend more time interpreting data, understanding business needs, and driving more predictive outcomes, the implementation focused on automation. Starting Process and RPA Skills The initial phase included feasibility, proof of concept, and risk identification. The project team set the scope, authorized the project start, and developed the project charter to document the business case and resource allocation, including human capital, equipment, and software (Project Management Institute, 2017). Finance gave the project team RPA skill set decisions. The project team hired external consultants with RPA skills to lead and advise on the deployment since RPA was an emerging technology and no one in the business had led or been involved in RPA initiatives. The external consultants led the project team and resolved issues, removed impediments, and reviewed outputs daily. Project managers, lean six sigma quality professionals, software developers, IT employees, and RPA technical solution architects collaborated with external consultants. Waves 1 and 2 involved the local controllership and tax executive business sponsors. After the first trial, only the company's internal resources, local controllership, and tax executives implemented the initiative. After internal resources were taught and grasped the technical issues and obstacles from the first pilot, the external consultants were unfamiliar with performing the second pilot. Successful pilots required system and network connectivity, Microsoft Office applications including Outlook, Excel, and Internet Explorer, Kryon (RPA software), FlexCard, and PDF. Table 2 lists RPA pilot gear and software. The integration of hardware and software tools is critical for RPA pilot projects and future pilot RPA locations due to concerns and challenges. What potential issues and obstacles should the project team detect and mitigate? Would software and hardware integration points cause these problems? Feasibility Study The feasibility study defined the project's goals and motivations (Project Management Institute, 2017). The feasibility research includes business case preparation, technical resource identification, high-level project scheduling, ROI estimation, and feasibility report creation. April Harris and her Finance business unit deployed RPA and piloted it in Spain and China after the feasibility assessment. Due of human workers' manual and repetitive duties, Spain's tax sector was chosen for the RPA experiment. Pilot projects used two tax sub-processes. The initial RPA procedure evaluated third-party invoice data before loading it into the Spain Tax System. All invoice transactions were authenticated on the local government website because the Spain Tax System is the source system for all tax transactions. Before storing the invoice in the company's tax system, RPA validated the invoice amount and access key on the government website. RPA problems were noticed and emailed to the third-party vendor. The second RPA sub-process validated customer return data before shipping. This sub-process validated product return invoices with dead-on-arrival numbers. Proof-of-Concept The project team performed the proof of concept after the feasibility research. The current state, target future state, functional design document, targeted design, and deployment plan were reviewed in this phase. The project team documented proof of concept activities and timeframes. (See Table 3 for proof of concept details.) Project RisksProblems If RPA affected business, the project team, lead by external consultants, wondered what might happen. This possibility necessitated identifying other deployment concerns. Risks included a lack of staff buy-in to retool, robots not performing as intended, not managing automation-related changes including personnel retooling, unclear new roles, and RPA implications not being communicated. 7 The pilot's interruption and external threats to intranet security from new software and hardware security solutions were further hazards. These risks were utilized to detect future RPA deployment concerns and establish risk mitigation methods. The project team tested operations in a separate environment before going live with the pilot sites to mitigate interruption. The project team also recognized the necessity for security breach-trained IT specialists and engineers to protect against external threats during and after installations. Preparations After beginning, the project team finalized the scope and discussed and documented tasks and activities during planning (Project Management Institute, 2017). Deep dive seminars covered project situations, exceptions, and IT sizing. The company also created a change management plan, a process design document with the solution architect, a "to be" process map, a technical design document, and a unit testing strategy and plan. execution During execution, the project team coordinated resources and managed project goals (Project Management Institute, 2017). TECHSERV's IT and Development Team coded using Process Design and Technical Design documents and integrated other systems. RPA was implemented using Kryon Systems' Leo tool. The password vault stored user credentials, and MS Access, Scripts, and Macros were employed. Enterprise interfaces were developed during development. These high-level interfaces include BOE (robot) tool, WRT (Web Retrieval Tool), SharePoint, SML file, and SAP (Systems, Applications, and Product) systems. TECHSERV business team members and project IT staff built user acceptance test cases and performed user acceptance and environmental testing. Testing guarantees that the new automated software and systems operate together. System integration tests followed to ensure proper integration into other systems. Developers documented and resolved system integration and user acceptance testing issues. After fixing the testing concerns, Finance business owners approved the code for production. The team authorized the project after a code review before go-live. The code was transferred to production after sign-off and announced company-wide. Process Management The project team, supervised by external consultants, spent much time monitoring and supervising. This involved revising the project strategy and communicating project status and performance. Daily meetings occurred throughout the project. Microsoft Office programs (Outlook, Excel, Word, etc.) were also used to manage the project and resolve issues. The project team managed behaviors, attitudes, and motives as well as technical issues during monitoring and closing. Communication and problem-solving required these soft skills. ClosingWhat Did the Project Team Learn? The project team ensured that tasks and activities were completed as scheduled, assessed project performance, and documented lessons learned during the closing phase. This period also completed RPA project maintenance and support. To evaluate project performance, the team deployed a project retrospective customer survey in the enterprise. The project team also met in a conference room to discuss pilot rollout obstacles, issues, and hazards. Table 4 summarizes the lessons acquired. TECHSERV: Progress and Reflections In 2017, the Finance business unit executed tax, reporting, and services programs after the experimental rollouts. The Finance Department completed 26 tax, reporting, and services initiatives. These projects resulted in 108 Finance robots, 110 RPA projects, regional finance innovation, and robotics engineering laboratories, an internship program, rigorous governance, IT engagement, compliance assessment, business continuity, and a culture of innovation. Rollouts lowered cost, cycle, processing time, and efficiency. Table 5 shows 2017 RPA implementation outcomes. TECHSERV's senior leadership team examined their RPA achievements and what set them apart in 2018. This thought reminded them of their original strategic approachto implement an all-encompassing solution with end-to-end processes and a design thinking focus. The organization's pilot rollouts comprised validations, templates, regular tax updates into the local tax system, report extraction, and invoice posting. Another important RPA implementation strategy was collaboration between internal and external teams to coordinate processes, automate numerous applications, and reduce human work for an end-to-end solution. Future Geographic RPA RolloutsIssues and Challenges TECHSERV's senior leadership worried about risks, difficulties, and obstacles as RPA deployments expanded regionally and interacted with other finance processes and services like invoicing. How could they address identified risks, concerns, and challenges? Would these concerns and challenges be limited to the beginning phase's high-level risk and Table 2's hardware and software? RPA: robotics process automation; FTE: full-time employee. Senior management also wanted to discuss RPA's aftermath. New cognitive automation tools and digital technologies have to be embraced and maybe integrated with automation technology. Six intelligent automation trends were propelling digital finance. Cloud, process robots, visualization, cognitive tools, sophisticated analytics, and Blockchain were six intelligent automation trends. "What do you recommend after installing RPA at all geographical sites?" the leadership asked the project team. The project team analyzed the six intelligent trends identified by the leadership and opted to employ cognitive technologies to make RPA robots smarter for digital technology and invoicing. How might this "smartness" speed up billing and customer service? The TECHSERV leadership also saw cloud and blockchain technology as ways to make cross-board payments cheaper and faster. Organizations that exchange money for goods and services employ this new technology. 8 TECHSERV would use cloud and blockchain for future products. How should the company connect blockchain and RPA?