| The RWM application was deprecated with Appian 24.1. The application will no longer be updated or pre-installed for new Appian Cloud sites with Appian RPA enabled. RWM will be removed in a future release and we encourage customers to use the Operations Console to manage robots instead. |
After you get started with RWM, your business will need to know if the return on investment (ROI) is meeting your expectations. RWM has multiple metrics and visualizations to help demonstrate ROI and assist you with your automation strategy. This page discusses where to find this information in the solution to answer key questions such as:
We've also described how each value is calculated, so you have full transparency into the data that help you make strategic automation decisions.
At a very basic level, budgeting comes down to two aspects: the amount of money invested vs. the amount of money saved. In the context of automation, the amount of money invested encompasses things such as licensing, infrastructure overhead, and development time. Money saved is measured indirectly, such as reallocation of low value, rote tasks. When an employee doesn't have to spend their time or energy on these tasks, they can focus on tasks with higher impact for the business.
There are many other data points that might influence how you determine a budget. RWM provides this visibility into how much you invested in an automation and how much it saves you over its lifetime. Additionally, RWM collects data to produce an estimate to help you determine the value of future or proposed automations.
It can be tricky to measure and understand the savings an automation provides to your business. However, this is a key piece of understanding whether the automation is worth creating, maintaining, or expanding.
RWM helps you track automation savings in the ROI page of Automation Planner. On the Time Savings tab, you'll see key metrics summarized: automations saving time, total hours saved per month, and total hours saved in the past year.
Time Savings tab on the ROI tab of Automation Planner
The Cost Savings tab shows you automations that save your business money, as well as the total savings for the past month and year.
Cost Savings tab on the ROI tab of Automation Planner
Both tabs show detailed data for each automation in the Automations table. Use the Filters to refine the information shown in the table.
Automations table on the ROI tab of Automation Planner
This information can help you determine which automations are performing well and which might not be proving their worth. These details can help you target automations for further investigation or additional resources. Knowing which automations save you the most money can also help inform decisions about which ones to maintain or expand. This information also helps you determine which one are underperforming, or are possibly no longer needed.
Projections aren't perfect, but as you develop more of them, you can learn lessons to make them more precise. If your projections show that an automation won't provide enough value, you can go back to the drawing board to examine the use case.
When individuals request new automations in RWM, they're asked to provide estimates of the time and money it will cost, as well as how long the automation will be used. RWM uses these estimates to project costs and savings, both in time and money. Reviewers can use this information to ask for additional details to understand the financial impact of an automation. Decision makers can review projected ROI to prioritize some proposed automations over others.
Tip: If you'd like to calculate and visualize the ROI for automations you already have in production, use the Add Existing Automations form on the Dashboard. This is best suited for businesses that used automations before adopting RWM to manage those automations. You'll enter all of the same information that's captured in the New Request form, but bypass the approval and implementation steps of the application.
When you put an automation into production, you want to be sure it will provide value from day one. In the longer term, you may also want to know when the cumulative benefit you're getting from the automation starts to exceed the amount you've invested in its development. RWM uses automation metrics to show you this break-even point.
During the Budget Approval stage of a new Automation Request, the projected break-even point is shown to help give the user a sense of when the automation will switch from costing money to providing value. This date may help you determine the request's priority and whether this particular automation is a worthwhile investment at this time.
You'll see a similar graph on the ROI page. Click the automation in the list to view additional data and graphs. The Projected Break-Even chart shows the time when savings will be larger than costs, indicating the automation is worth the investment. The break-even point is where the Initial capital expenditure and maintenance costs and the Cost Savings lines intersect.
These ROI value calculations are based on data captured throughout the life of an automation. Users provide initial estimates of the time to maintain a new automation during the Automation Request phase. Automation Planner also prompts users to answer a monthly questionnaire to update this data or add new information, ensuring calculations are accurate and current.
The actual RPA costs may fluctuate over time and differ from what was projected before an automation went into production. These values can be updated through the Automation Planner Pending Tasks page, under the Update RPA Costs tab.
You can see a list of automations shown over time, with their respective last updated dates. Only the corresponding automation requestors, business CoE, technical CoE, and system admins can view these automations. Emails are also sent out to remind these users to update these automations. Updating consists of selecting an automation, and viewing the data month to month. This data is prepopulated, so the user can either confirm the data with no changes, or the user can update the values of one or more months. The page also displays which months have already been updated or confirmed with green check marks on the left hand column.
ROI is a complex set of metrics and rarely determined by one dimension. RWM provides multiple calculations to give you a complete picture of the costs and savings related to an automation. This section explains how these values are calculated.
The calculations on the Time Savings tab focus on how much more quickly an automation completes executions than a human being would take to do the equivalent tasks. Some calculations also factor in the time it takes to create and maintain the automations.
Calculations that appear in the top-level graphs:
Calculations that appear in columns of the Automations list:
Additional calculations appear when you select an entry in the Automations in the table:
The calculations on the Cost Savings tab focus on how much money automations save your business. Unless otherwise noted, an automation's cost savings can be calculated as the amount of money a full-time employee (FTE) would be paid to do the same work as the automation, minus the cost of setting up and maintaining the automation.
Calculations that appear in the top-level graphs:
Calculations that appear in columns of the Automations list:
Additional calculations appear when you select an entry in the Automations in the table:
Calculating ROI
