16 May What is Robotic Process Automation – And How Does It Work?
“In God we Trust, all others bring data.” – Edwards Deming
Be it for financial accounting, HR management, or manufacturing operations, process automation is delivering a wide range of business benefits. As more enterprises look to automate their complex processes, they are shifting the responsibility from “human” resources to machines.
Short for Robotic Process Automation, RPA technology is delivering process efficiency at lower costs. What is RPA? This is the technology that can build and deploy software robots, which can easily emulate human actions.
The latest market statistics look very encouraging for RPA tools. Statista estimates that the global market for RPA technology will grow to $13 billion by the year 2030 – up from $1.23 billion in 2020. The latest Deloitte survey found that over 90% of RPA users say the technology has met (or exceeded) their expectations.
What is Robotic Process Automation And how does it work?
What is Robotic Process Automation (RPA)?
Simply put, RPA is the technology that can automate repetitive tasks (previously performed by humans). Using this technology, software robots (or “bots”) are created, which can learn and mimic human actions. For example, a chatbot can perform the job of a customer support executive by answering customer queries.
Why do we need RPA bots? RPA bots are more productive than “human” workers, as they perform error-free tasks and are available 24/7 to enterprises. In essence, RPA is at the core of the digital transformation of any business enterprise. Next, let us discuss how RPA technology works.
How does RPA work?
According to an IEE guide, RPA can be defined as a “preconfigured software instance that uses business logic and predefined activity choreography to complete the autonomous execution of a combination of processes, activities, transactions, and tasks.”
To understand deeper, let us explain each of the underlined terms:
- Preconfigured software is an out-of-the-box functionality that does not require programming and can be customized.
- Business logic is about machine algorithms and software code that aligns software with the business objectives.
- A predefined activity choreography is a sequence of steps taken to complete an action.
- Autonomous execution is referred to the completion of tasks by software bots.
Using RPA technology, software bots can perform rule-based repetitive tasks like entering the same information in multiple data fields. Is RPA designed to work with your existing system? Yes, RPA can integrate with existing applications through the backend database system or web services. It can also integrate with frontend (or desktop) applications like ERP and CRM.
Talking of applications, what is RPA technology used for in the real business world? Let us look at some examples.
RPA – Real-world Examples
Here are some real-world examples and use cases of RPA technology that is enabling companies to automate their daily tasks and reduce costs:
- Employee payroll processing
RPA technology is adept at automatically calculating and processing an employee’s payroll. Further, this technology can also credit the employee’s pay by performing the necessary bank transactions. With RPA, monthly payslips are automatically generated in quick time and without any errors.
- Employee screening and hiring
When performed by HR personnel, hiring can be a long and costly process. On the other hand, software bots can easily screen and shortlist candidates based on their submitted resumes and the actual job description. This can save a lot of unproductive HR work, as RPA bots can “source” applicants accurately 24/7 and without any hiring “bias.”
Besides candidate screening, RPA bots can handle most of the “paperwork” needed for a new hire or employee.
- Data transfers or backups
For any data-driven enterprise, the manual process of transferring data from one system to another can be a tedious and time-consuming affair. The same is true for taking manual backups of website data. RPA tools can automate the data transfer process with the right user credentials and source (and destination) systems.
Apart from saving time, this automated process can be completed efficiently without any human errors.
- Customer support
Most customers look for quick and relevant responses to their queries about any brand and product (or service). They are not willing to wait for a long duration to get a response from a “human” customer support agent. RPA-enabled chatbots can immediately “attend” to customers and provide them with self-assistance.
Effectively, chatbots or automated bots reduce the cost of customer service, while elevating customer satisfaction at the same time.
Read, Also – Is Hyperautomation important for your business?
What does RPA mean in terms of business benefits? Next, let’s look at some of them.
RPA – Business Benefits
RPA technology can deliver real-world business benefits. Here are some of the benefits:
- A quick implementation that can drive the digital transformation of any enterprise
- Drives employee satisfaction and motivation by “freeing” them from manual or repetitive daily tasks.
- Major reduction in manual errors thus boosting overall productivity and efficiency
- Process automation can improve cost efficiency across industries
- Scalability that ramps up (or down) workloads and respond efficiently to a spike in demands
Robotic Process Automation – Our Perspective
At NuMantra Technologies, we believe that business data is an integral part of achieving success with Robotic Process Automation (RPA). Many organizations adopt the “flawed” approach of implementing automation without analyzing & optimizing their existing processes.
To leverage the immense capabilities of RPA technology, organizations first need to perform
process mining and knowledge discovery. By gaining insights into transactional data, process mining can be used to detect operational trends and data patterns (process intelligence) from the existing business processes. Effectively, the “success mantra” for RPA implementation is high-quality data and process mining.
As businesses look for effective ways to gain competitive advantage and increase market share, we believe that automation projects will be further driven by defining future business outcomes, enabled by predictive analytics using machine learning/ AI models.
Using the Robotic Process Automation application in combination with ML/AI tools on our Hyperautomation platform, we can implement end-to-end process automation that can:
- Improve business flexibility and agility
- Maximize accuracy from business processes
- Reduce overall business costs
- Optimize the use of available resources
- Enhance insights from new and existing processes
In conclusion
Our business clients have benefited from over 20 years of industry experience in technology consulting and implementation. Do you also want to leverage our RPA expertise? Contact our RPA representative today!
Read, Also – What Is Process Intelligence – And Why Is It Important?
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.