Essential for organisations to build secure BOT strategy

KUALA LUMPUR, 30 December 2020 - It is essential for an organisation to build a secure Bot strategy prior to embarking on its robotics journey and have the necessary controls embedded to manage risks throughout the implementation lifecycle, according to Deloitte Malaysia.

“With constantly evolving risk and threat to the technology environment, this becomes more crucial, ” said its Risk Advisory executive director Shahariz Abdul Aziz.

To this end, he said the Deloitte RPA Riskframework provides effective risk management and monitoring of six key risk domains.

“Each of these domains would help strengthen security and controls in an RFP environment, ” he said.

He noted that digital technology is well recognised as an important enabler for innovation and that digital transformation brings forth unmatched opportunities and capabilities for growth and value creation.

“Against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic, one such enabler which has seen a proliferation of adoption across numerous industries, is Robotics Process Automation (RPA). This can be in its native form as well as coupled with AI and cognitive solutions (RCA).

“Robots allow businesses to be more responsive, cost effective, compliant and efficient. We are already entering an era where Bots are doing intelligent work while building efficiencies, ” he said.

In Deloitte’s most recent Annual Global RPA Survey, RPA adoption payback was reported to be less than 12 months, with an average 20% of full-time equivalent (FTE) capacity provided by robots.

It also found that 78% of those who had already implemented RPA expect to significantly increase their investment in it over the next three years. — Bernama

“In 2020 alone, the Malaysian Government had allocated over RM550 million to provide Smart Automation matching grants to 1,000 manufacturing and 1,000 services companies, to automate their business processes.

“To encourage the SME sector to further embrace e-commerce, the government has also set aside another RM150mil for Budget 2021 to finance SME’s automation initiatives under the SME Digitalisation Grant Scheme and Automation Grants, ” Shahariz noted.

He said while the investments and adoption rate for RPA is encouraging and it is clear that the technology greatly simplifies and makes lives more efficient, it also opens up new risks to the business environment.

“Organisations should thus focus on managing risks, to ensure sustainability, ” he said. -- Bernama

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of Shahariz Abdul Aziz, Executive Director, Risk Advisory – Financial industry Risk & Regulatory, Deloitte Malaysia.