Automatization is playing a crucial role in the digitization of business processes. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is an emerging technology that promises streamlined enterprise operations and reduced costs. Therefore, business departments from customer service, via HR to finance in many industries have started to implement RPA systems to automate repetitive back-office tasks. This post summarizes the key points, benefits and use cases of RPA.

What is RPA?

As repetitive, monotonous activities are increasingly performed by robots in the manufacturing industry, software robots are taking over these types of routine tasks in the office. Such tasks include reading an e-mail or form, opening an attachment, pasting data from a file into an application, checking that a form has been completed, sending a reply message, performing calculations, and so on.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is the implementation of standardizable processes with software robots. These software robots can replace people in administrative jobs. It is a software technology that makes it easy to build, deploy, and manage these bots that emulate human actions by interacting with digital systems.

Why you should consider RPA for your business

Software robots can do the routine work faster and more consistently than people, without the need to get up and stretch or take a coffee break. Automating repetitive and simple tasks frees up capacity, allowing resources to be reallocated to more complex, value-added activities. Robotic process automation eliminates human errors and reduces lead times to even zero, all of which improves the customer experience.

Among others, RPA can process legal documents, review and approve template contracts. Machine learning algorithms can use, for example, image recognition, which allows you to identify patterns in written agreements. Industry experience shows that using these technologies can reduce hundreds of thousands of hours per year to just a few hours, resulting in extremely large cost savings and significantly faster customer service.

Benefits

Let’s see the business benefits of RPA in a bit more detail:

• Customer satisfaction: By relieving your customer-service workers of forms and tabulations, you give them more time to focus on customer support. As a result, the customer experience improves, as well as the ability to meet the requirements of service-level agreements.
• Productivity: When compared to humans, software robots can finish tasks five times faster. They also work around the clock. Tasks will be completed faster, allowing for more work to be done. Higher productivity can cut costs while enabling more rapid growth.
• Accuracy: Robots are 100 percent accurate, 100 percent consistent, and 100 percent policy compliant. The more work you delegate to robots, the fewer human errors you will encounter and the more time you will save from fixing such errors. Eliminating minor errors that humans make can have a huge influence on your cost base and customer satisfaction levels.
• Resource utilization: Offloading routine work to robots frees up your people to focus on tasks that provide more value to your company. Furthermore, a robotic workforce is completely scalable, allowing firms to respond to peaks or pauses in demand. That is beneficial to customer service and reduces the HR’s headache.
• More value-added jobs: RPA will almost surely alter your labor equation, but it does not necessarily mean that you will be reducing full-time equivalents. Many regular, mundane jobs for which your human labor is overqualified will be removed from their workload. This gives them more time to work on higher-value projects.
• ROI (Return On Investment): When you turn on your robotic workforce, you will begin to witness rapid ROI, with operational costs dropping quickly. While some IT investments need you to wait months or years before seeing a ROI, RPA can provide you with a return on investment in as little as a few weeks.
• Reduced staffing challenges: Staffing is never easy, especially in areas of your business where demand is uneven, activity levels are unpredictable, and turnover is high. Robots, unlike human labor, can be scaled up and down very quickly. They can be installed fast and at a lower cost. Having the proper level of staff at the right moment is much easier.

‍

Real-life examples

Telecommunications

A large telecommunication provider has a plethora of customers who perform millions of transactions a day. The chance of human error in processing these transactions was therefore relatively high. The implementation of Robotic Process Automation simplified the execution of these high-volume, repetitive, and rule-based operations, such as data recording, billing, and order processing. By automating time-consuming processes, RPA freed up employees enabling them to change roles which deliver higher value.

Utilities

In another scenario, an oil-and-gas multinational handles 15,000 change-of-address requests every month. Robots came to the rescue. RPA bots now handle the creation of new accounts in the CRM system and the average time for a change request has dropped from 11 minutes to just one.

Finance

In a banking scenario, a bank’s existing customer is interested in obtaining financing for her first home. She can easily go online, investigate rates and begin her journey with the bank’s information chatbot or by calling in to speak with a bank associate, and chooses to start with the bot. This bot can determine the cause for her inquiry and authenticate who she is.

It can build an inquiry profile by pulling together information on her various accounts and checking her credit score, which provides it with information on payment history, length of time she has had credit accounts, the amount of usage and any negative marks on her credit. The bot can then present her with a link to a pre-populated form to start the loan application process.

Outlook

RPA bots and intelligent automation solutions have recently become critical for survival and growth. Organizations must adjust to the scenario that arises during and after the pandemic. RPA will open new doors for any business and generate new potential to your organization to provide a superior and tailored client experience.

If you want to learn more real world examples of RPA, register for our next webinar.