For any Robotic process automation projects, there are a few components:
Hardware, Software, Project Implementation, and Training
For Project implementation, generally there the following areas:
- Business process analysis – to understand the process of the organization
- Business process redesign to enable automation
- The architecture of the modules
- Create the scripts using designers
- Unit testing of the modules
- Documentation
- Production train testing
- Fine-tuning for exceptions
Training:
- Software function training
- Project design training – to understand how the developer implement the scripts
Software:
- Designer – to designer for scripting
- Robots – the run time engine to run the scripts
- Control tower – to manage the robots and allocate jobs for the robots – including scheduling
- All other software licenses required to run the robot
Hardware:
- Server for the control towers
- Server to host the virtual machines for the robots
- Network infrastructure
In terms of costings, Project implementation will be calculated in man-days, for software, it will be licensed. Different vendors will have different model for robotic process automation software pricing. Some of the software pricing will be based on host, login names, transactions.
It can be a combination of all of the above.
For the man-day rate, it depends on the vendor. Generally, one man-day is about 8 hours. It also depends on the experience and the seniority of the developers. So it does not mean that cheaper man-day is better. If a developer can finish a job in 1 day, even it his rate is higher, it will still be cheaper than having a cheaper man-day rate and the developer takes 5 days.
Written by: Christopher Lim
