Automating business processes is no longer a novelty. Solutions such as 'Robotic Process Automation' are already taking over specific tasks and are intended to contribute to business efficiency. However, in order to remain competitive, automation must go beyond individual tasks and cover business processes end-to-end. A chain of individual isolated solutions for task automation is not enough - it requires a process-oriented mindset and the corresponding expertise. It therefore makes sense to set up an advisory body for automation and orchestration within the company to support all organizational units and projects with process automation. A competence center or 'Center of Excellence' (CoE) is used for this purpose, with the help of which projects for process orchestration and automation become more successful.

Initiate learning processes

The focus of a CoE is to enable employees throughout the company to automate tasks and processes. To this end, the CoE provides the technologies and the knowledge of how to apply them. Competence centers have a deep insight into many automation projects in the company. They often know the difficulties that other project teams have already encountered and the typical mistakes that are made during design and implementation.
A CoE is therefore able to accelerate the learning process of any project. It ensures that the entire company learns from individual experiences. This results in continuous improvement once the CoE has been established, which helps to drastically increase the implementation speed of new initiatives. A CoE should therefore be involved in all phases of the project life cycle. This begins with the initial preliminary considerations and requirements management, through the selection of suitable automation tools to the design and implementation of the processes.

Helpers and consultants

What exactly a Center of Excellence looks like varies from company to company. Roughly speaking, CoEs can be divided into two categories:

• A centralized CoE is commissioned by the various business units in the company to implement automation projects.
• A decentralized CoE enables the various business units in the company to implement process automation projects independently. To this end, it provides advice, training and instructions.

Sometimes, a competence center in the company starts out centralized, takes on initial automation projects, establishes learnings and best practices, and then switches to a decentralized CoE in order to scale up.
Whether centralized, decentralized or hybrid, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. In some companies, the CoE consists of just a few people who only act as consultants. Others have designed it as a service unit that operates an automation platform internally as a managed service, for example. For all automation projects, the CoE forms the blueprint for standardized implementation throughout the company. Project teams should not have to reinvent the wheel, but should be able to use best practices to focus on the essentials - achieving continuous business value through successful projects.

The five areas of responsibility of a CoE

The exact structure of the tasks of a CoE and their weighting depends heavily on the structure of the company. Depending on the industry and company structure, some tasks may be more or less important. The five basic areas of responsibility of a CoE for process automation include

• Technical Services: The CoE provides the tools needed to model, implement, automate and optimize processes. Examples include solutions for process mining, RPA, an orchestration platform and other accelerators such as preconfigured connectors.
• Planning and implementation: Depending on the structure of the company and the CoE, this can be done directly in the CoE (centralized), by supporting the CoE in a project team (decentralized) or in a hybrid way.
• Knowledge management and training: The CoE collects and shares specialist knowledge and best practices - for example via a knowledge platform - and also offers further training programs or connects users in a community of practice.
• Internal marketing: By using internal marketing tools such as blogs, events and newsletters, the CoE promotes the transition to a process-oriented mindset within the company and demonstrates the successes achieved.
• Governance: The CoE also provides IT governance to standardize and regulate the IT architecture. This can vary from simple advice to strict guidelines by architecture committees.

Acceptance of the CoE

A CoE should be a strategic issue within the company that is given the necessary
resources and is supported by top management. In order to gain company-wide acceptance, it is important that a CoE is familiar with the daily challenges of the specialist departments and the teams it supports, continuously obtains feedback and develops further based on this. In addition, the CoE should be able to demonstrate the added value achieved through automation - this also creates acceptance and trust and the influence and scope of a CoE grows all by itself.

Leon Strauch, Camunda

© Camunda

The author Leon Strauch is Senior Customer Success Manager at Camunda.