On this episode of Bots & Thoughts: The Digital Business Automation Podcast, our host, Jimmy Hewitt, sits down with guest, Reddy Mallidi, Former VP of Global Operations at Autodesk Inc., to discuss the transformative effect that Digital Business Automation can have on a company. During this conversation, Reddy speaks about implementing Digital Business Automation throughout Autodesk, from his visionary period to implementation and everything in between. Reddy gets into topics such as how to get your team behind Digital Business Automation the right way, how to overcome apprehension and staff off disappointment, his virtuous cycle of Digital Business Automation that combines professional development with operational excellence, and so much more. Reddy imparts his knowledge and passion for Digital Business Automation in this episode and you don’t want to miss it!
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Guest Background: Reddy Mallidi, former vp of global operations at autodesk inc
One of the most experienced and accomplished Digital Business Automation leaders in the world
Led Autodesk’s $4 billion global automation operations
Has run global operations for last 3+ years
Team: 550 people
Beginning of role at Autodesk
Lots of processes and the complexity has evolved overtime
As systems become old, people have to deal with tedious, mundane, manual tasks (I.e., copy and paste, importing and exporting, etc.)
CFO was his boss
Supported his Digital Business Automation vision
Began to invest in Digital Business Automation
Started with a small team
Automation at Autodesk:
The automation journey began in 2019
Automated to improve the quality of the employee experience
Automated over 200,000 manual hours
Reddy’s philosophy: How to implement Digital Business Automation into a company
New technologies are messy and complex and different narratives happen, so you need to be careful
Always go slow
Understand that disappointments will happen
You need to have a c-staff sponsorship
Critical! You need your team behind it:
How:
Go smaller
Prove the concept
Show the employees automation isn’t going to take their jobs, it is going to help them spend more time on less tedious, more strategic tasks
Remember we are at the beginning of the technology adoption curve
1. Begin with use cases: How Reddy introduced Digital Business Automation to Autodesk employees
Start with several obvious use cases
Example: Cut and paste across multiple windows, dealing with 15+ different systems
Shadow employees to learn their role and see where automation can help make their jobs better
By automating mundane employee tasks to improve employee experience, you will also improve customer experience
List of use case request became so long and the demand for automation became so high from employees after seeing other use case successes
2. Investment: How Reddy generated excitement around Digital Business Automation
Must invest to be able to take on moreuse cases!
Investing generates enthusiasm throughout the company
Investing allowing Autodesk to create a process team
Collected the ideas people were enthusiastic about
People close to the business and close to the customers know the pain points
Ran ideas through Autodesk’s innovation program, Innovate to Operate
Reddy’s role: channel the positivity and excitement, take the ideas and get the support for them, and get the ROI
3. Prioritization: How Reddy managed the incoming case requests for automation
Created criteria that took ROI into account (i.e., the numbers of hours saved, the risk that it mitigated, customer experience enhanced, employee experience enhanced, etc.)
Assign an ROI score/weight to each case
Determining the ROI: Art & science
Science: quantify possible metrics (i.e., financial, hours saved, etc.)
Art: prioritize what you care about as a company (i.e., employee experience, customer experience, etc.)
The employees who submit cases are given the criteria template
They score the case and explain its importance
Makes the employee think through the idea in detail and in terms of ROI
Employees understand there are limited resources
Employees then present their idea to a steering committee
Benefits:
Allows employee to stand by their idea
Trains employees to learn presentation skills
Improve employee engagement
Aligns employees with the company mission
Employee is recognized
Employee can see their idea become a reality
Leads to more intakes
4. Implementation: How Reddy decided which use cases to implement
Created a Steering Committee that decided which ideas would be implemented based on the ROI criteria template and presentation
Reminder: don’t implement a steering committee too soon
Implement one after you have proven the concept with at least several use cases
You do not want to “over process” too early
Don’t want the bureaucracy present before your employees believe in the Digital Business Automation mission
When people see the first couple successful use cases, more ideas will follow
5. Process Mapping: How Reddy’s team mapped and cleaned their processes
Created a process team: Process experts work closely with business experts (someone who is doing the job day in and day out)
They sit together and map out an entire process
If changes (i.e., new business models, new events, rules change, etc.) happen along the mapping process, they go back and clean the process again
They do not want to automate a process that is bad or inaccurate
Create a “to be” future process
Business expert role: explain how the business works daily
Process expert role: provide process perspective
Cleanup process explained by business expert
Key for process reengineering
Get the process ready for automation
Reddy’s Advice:
Before any automation happens, make sure that your “to be” future process makes sense
Example Autodesk use case: Term changes for customers
Problem: When a customer needed to change terms on a subscription agreement with Autodesk, specialists at the company needed to make the changes manually
Took time to filter through many systems
Customer had to wait for confirmation until the task was completed manually
Solution:
Business analyst team: create the process for any new business model
Mapped from when a customer calls in until the customer gets notified of the change made
Automate: After the process is mapped, Autodesk automated the process in 3 iterations
Determined what steps of the process could be automated
Made sure that the steps that couldn’t be automated were not a hindrance to the automation
Automated the steps in increments
Easiest to most difficult
Automate as many quick wins as possible
Reminder: You do not need to automate the entire process at once
Result: Saved 15,000 manual hours each year
Digital Business Automationjourney:
Next steps: Once small wins start to add up and you generate ROI from Digital Business Automation profits you can…
Invest in more ROI-positive capital machinery
Move from mapping one process to mapping an entire process group or an entire department
Support more complex situations and business cases (versus mundane tasks)
Invest in more advanced automation capabilities
Build Center of Excellence
Invest more in people
Reminder: with Digital Business Automation, you should be able to support growth in the business without taking on additional assets (i.e., people)
Example: Same operations team able to support 2x the business after automating processes in their process map
Digital Business Automation definition:
Reddy: It is an approach,It’s not tool specific It’s not technology specific. It is business driven and you need to have a disciplined approach that shows business value in terms of ROI, customer experience, employee experience, etc.
Automate routine tasks all the way to intelligent tasks
Virtuous cycle that begins with process
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New technologies are messy and complex and different narratives happen, so you need to be careful
Start with several obvious use cases
Must invest to be able to take on more use cases!
Created criteria that took ROI into account (i.e., the numbers of hours saved, the risk that it mitigated, customer experience enhanced, employee experience enhanced, etc.)
Created a Steering Committee
Created a process team: Process experts work closely with business experts (someone who is doing the job day in and day out)
