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Everything you need to know about RPA!

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is the use of software with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) abilities to handle high-volume, repeatable tasks that required humans to perform.

RPA Bot “Robots” work with your Business Systems and Applications to simplify processes and reduce the administrative burden on employees. RPA Bot “Robots” can log into applications, enter data, calculate and complete tasks and then log out. Currently, practitioners divide RPA technologies into three broad categories: Probots, Knowbots and Chatbots.

• Probots are Bot “Robots” that follow simple, repeatable rules to process data.
• Knowbots are Bot “Robots” that search the internet to gather and store user-specified information.
• Chatbots are virtual agents who can respond to customer queries in real time.

RPA software is not part of an organization’s IT infrastructure. Instead, it sits on top of it, enabling a company to implement the technology quickly and efficiently — all without changing the existing infrastructure and systems. What distinguishes RPA from traditional IT automation is the ability of the RPA software to be aware and adapt to changing circumstances, exceptions and new situations.

Benefits of RPA

Robotic Process Automation technology can help organizations on their digital transformation journeys by doing the following:

• enabling better customer service;
• ensuring business operations and processes comply with regulations and standards;
• allowing processes to be completed much more rapidly;
• providing improved efficiency by digitizing and auditing process data;
• creating cost savings for manual and repetitive tasks; and
• enabling employees to be more productive.

Applications of RPA

Some of the top applications of RPA include the following:

• Customer service: RPA can help companies offer better customer service by automating contact center tasks, including verifying e-signatures, uploading scanned documents and verifying information for automatic approvals or rejections.
• Accounting: Organizations can use RPA for general accounting, operational accounting, transactional reporting and budgeting.
• Financial services: Companies in the financial services industry can use RPA for foreign exchange payments, automating account openings and closings, managing audit requests and processing insurance claims.
• Healthcare: Medical organizations can use RPA for handling patient records, claims, customer support, account management, billing, reporting and analytics.
• Human resources: RPA can automate HR tasks, including on-boarding and off-boarding, updating employee information and time sheet submission processes.
• Supply chain management: RPA can be used for procurement, automating order processing and payments, monitoring inventory levels and tracking shipments.

What to look for in RPA software

When enterprise leaders look for RPA technologies, they should consider a number of things:

• Scalability: Organizations shouldn’t select RPA software that requires them to deploy software robots to desktops or virtualized environments. They should look for RPA platforms that can be centrally managed and scale massively.
• Speed: Enterprises should be able to design and test new robotic processes in a few hours or less, as well as optimize the bots to work quickly.
• Reliability: As companies launch robots to automate hundreds or even thousands of tasks, they should look for tools with built-in monitoring and analytics that enable them to monitor the health of their systems.
• Simplicity: Organizations should look for products that are simple enough that any employee in the business can build and use them to handle various kinds of work, including collecting data and turning content into information that enables leaders to make the best business decisions.
• Intelligence: The best RPA tools can support simple task-based activities, read and write to any data source, and take advantage of more advanced learning to further improve automation.
• Enterprise-class: Companies should look for tools that are built from the ground up for enterprise-grade scalability, reliability and manageability.

RPA Failures

RPA automates a clearly defined process, but most enterprises don’t have clearly defined processes. So they start automating, and either automate the wrong thing or get lost in trying to reverse engineer the process.

One way to avoid RPA failure begins with identifying, optimizing, and prioritizing processes. Business process experts will play a vital role in helping functions and business units identify, analyze and prioritize the tasks and processes to automate.

Contact ABTec Solutions should you need to know more information on the possible solutions that fits your requirements.