#5 Interviewing RPA Industry Leaders and Practitioners – Nandan Mullakara

Nandan Mullakara is CEO of Innomatiq, an Automation Consulting firm that is helping organizations to discover, develop and deploy Automation with Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Artificial Intelligence (AI).

He is also part of a non-profit initiative -A3 Labs, which is empowering people to excel in the age of AI and Automation.

Through the automation of business and IT processes, Nandan has helped organizations identify and deliver Automation solutions. His specialty is in helping clients discover the possibilities with RPA & AI, pilot the implementation, manage the change and lay the right foundations to scale.

Outside of work, He is an avid runner and has run the Chicago and Dallas marathons. He can also be seen exploring new Gadgets, Apps and automating his house.

Small Talk

Sharath Raju:
We would like to know about your Automation journey?

Nandan Mullakara:

I personally started on the current RPA-AI Automation journey around 4 years back.

My job was to Transition and Transform enterprises at Fujitsu North America (FNA). It is a fancy term for bringing in outsourced clients into our fold (Transition) and improve the client functions (Transform). We started using RPA Automation as a lever to transform client functions that we took over.

To me, the RPA technology made a lot of business sense especially combined with upcoming technologies like AI. So, I applied for an internal job posting to Head RPA consulting and moved into that position where I enabled the Fujitsu Digital Workforce offering. The offering used RPA and cognitive capabilities to enable Digital Labor for enterprises.

Right now, I am on my own advising customers on Intelligent Automation. I also have a non-profit demystifying RPA & AI, helping people up skill on these emerging technologies.

More about me here: https://nandan.info/about-nandan-mullakara/

Sharath Raju:
What is the biggest mistake that we end up doing while adopting RPA?

Nandan Mullakara:

Someone told me recently, “All the problems are people related”. I agree.

In RPA, the biggest mistake I think is not considering the cultural resistance from people.

We have real benefits but people at all levels fear job loss and its impacts.  ISG found in its recent European RPA adoption survey that 33 percent thought “organisational resistance to change” was the main hindrance.

Humanizing your bots will also help a lot in addressing the barrier of cultural resistance. When we started introducing bots to our HR group, they instinctively named it “Bob”. We were not even thinking that way. HR knew that humanizing the bots helps combat cultural resistance to this new Digital Workforce.

We should have a way of Humanizing the bots and Communicating the benefits effectively so that employees look forward to their Digital Assistants.

Sharath Raju:
How do you measure RPA success and what are the key factors that contribute to it?

Nandan Mullakara:

I like to go by User adoption – is the user using the bots you made and are they satisfied?

Most users are asking – WIIFM – “What’s In It For Me?”  We should be anticipating our User needs and ensuring best experiences with regular feedback

Sharath Raju:
How important is analytics in RPA?

Nandan Mullakara:

Analytics within RPA helps us keep track of our Bots on various levels. The RPA vendors have enhanced their insights and is quite useful now.

Here are some of the metrics I like to track:

Financial:

– Average annual cost savings

– Three-year return on investment (ROI)

Operational:

– Productivity gain: # of monthly hours saved

– Average completion time (in secs)

Business:

– User Satisfaction

– End Customer Satisfaction