7 factors affecting the total cost of RPA cloud deployment
RPA cloud deployment has many potential benefits, including cost savings, easy expansion, increased productivity and efficiency, and so on. So how much does RPA cloud deployment cost?
Studies have shown that the implementation of cloud infrastructure can significantly reduce the total cost of ownership (TCO) in the range of 21%-27%.
The following will be the 7 major factors affecting the TCO of RPA cloud deployment.
1. Evaluating and consulting
this factor includes the cost of choosing a suitable RPA supplier, and the cost of studying the company's conventional processes to find a process worthy of automation. If the company needs to hire a third-party service provider for this, then the fees paid by the consultant should also be taken into consideration. For the Center of Excellence (CoE) model, it will include the time and effort of SMEs and analysts to identify process opportunities. Companies can save costs by automating the process, which can also make deployment faster and more accurate.
2. Software ordering.
This factor includes the cost of purchasing the core components (such as controllers and designers) of the RPA solution. In addition, consider adding high availability/disaster recovery components to help ensure the cost of business continuity. It can be integrated with RPA solutions in cloud deployments.
3. Infrastructure settings
Calculate the cost of setting up the system, including desktops, servers and virtual machines. The type of deployment will have a big impact on this cost. If the company chooses cloud deployment, it can save capital expenditures such as hardware. Companies should also consider the operating systems supported by RPA vendors. If the RPA vendor’s platform only supports Windows, and the company’s existing computers are running on MAC or Linux, it is also necessary to estimate the cost of migrating to Windows.
4. Development and deployment
This factor refers to the costs associated with the development, configuration and movement of software robots from concept to production. The cost varies depending on the development method. For example, the cost of owning internal development resources may be lower than the cost of hiring a third-party service provider. If the development platform is highly user-friendly, such as a simple drag-and-drop user interface, internal resources may also include business users who have become developers.
Consider how easy it is to integrate the solution with existing applications. Do I need to configure the integration, or can I use the solution right away? Can companies reuse these robot programs and code snippets? These points can have a huge impact on your development time and related costs.
5.
All other components needed to supplement the automation project with add-ons will fall into this category. Depending on project requirements, it may differ from intelligent document processing solutions, analysis platforms (to track robots, performance, and ROI), and process discovery tools. Consider the number of vendors to deal with here, because if their solutions have not been integrated, they may need to spend more on deployment and maintenance.
6. Training
If the company chooses RPA automation, it needs to train employees for specific solutions. The availability of online training courses (webinars, on-demand materials or supplier training platforms) and the documentation provided by the supplier will make training easier. If the solution is intuitive and requires minimal technical knowledge to help, then business users can get it faster.
7. Maintenance and support
The solution should be operated with minimal maintenance. IT should not spend a lot of time on installation and upgrades. The browser-based solution (RPA) will simplify the work of the IT department, especially in the post-epidemic era. However, like any other IT product, the company's RPA solution still requires maintenance support. Before finalizing the solution, you need to evaluate the support, availability, and cost of the supplier or service provider.