This article is written as part of the work with KL's Technology Partnership and aimsto pass on learning from Sønderborg to other municipalities that want to get started with automation.
In 2019, Sønderborg Kommune started working with automation, including Robotic Process Automation (RPA), and 4 years later, the municipality has automated more than 13 processes, several of which are end-to-end, i.e. entire sub-processes for an entire core process (See overview of the processes at the end of the article).
Today, the automated processes release over 2 FTEs. But knowledge, processes, awareness and the desire to move forward have also been built up, and Sønderborg Municipality is about to scale up its efforts so that the big gains can be reaped. This will require a great deal, but more on that later.
We caught up with Daniel Balslev Heath and Karen Lise Nyholm Torp, who have been involved from the very beginning and are now the key players in Sønderborg's automation efforts. We asked them: "How do you get started with automating your processes? How do you build expertise in your own organization? How do you find the right processes and how much is it about technology and coding vs. organization and culture?"
At the end of the conversation, we asked for the top five tips and the worst pitfalls. The article is built around these.
