Robotic Process Automation (RPA): Everything You Need To Know

We all know that in any business, time is money. Almost every organization has many operational areas that perform hundreds of different tasks every day. In this regard, the rapidly growing competition between companies and the massive interest in improving business productivity is becoming more critical than ever. And this is where robotic process automation (RPA) comes into play. Based on various data, the global robotics process automation market was estimated at $1.30 billion in 2019 and could reach around $12 billion by 2027.

RPA technology is changing the way business is done. For example, RPA software robots help minimize the need for human labor to complete specific tasks and achieve a high level of ROI. What’s more, employees spend 10% to 20% of their time on repetitive computer tasks every day, which significantly affects their productivity. But any process can be automated by 60-80% using Robotic Process Automation (RPA) software.

Khrystyna Sarakhman
RPA Analyst

What Is Robotic Process Automation (RPA)?

In a nutshell, RPA is the process of automating processes in your company. Thanks to software robots, you can significantly save your employees’ time on routine tasks and reduce the risk of human error.

Of course, this doesn’t include physical robots. It’s more about software bots that can automate tedious tasks like invoice processing, payroll, purchasing, etc. In other words, RPA simulates human activities and performs duties, allowing your employees to focus on more critical activities, such as interacting with customers or creating strategies to grow your business.

What Processes Can You Automate With RPA?

Let’s consider some of the common processes that are suitable for RPA:

1. Client support

   RPA tools help you transform the way you interact with your customers. This helps to simplify and speed up the application review process.

   Rather than forcing your employees to find information manually, you use RPA to automate each validation of data associated with a customer profile and obtain the required data sets, eliminating the need for an employee to switch between applications.

2. Sales orders

   Trading operations often include entering data into CRM systems, updating ERP reporting and searching for orders, etc.

   RPA can use customer forms for any sales activity by automating tasks such as entering sales orders, invoicing, and more. Moreover, RPA programs help maintain a clean database, improve customer service, and motivate your sales staff for better results.

3. Invoice processing

   Day-to-day invoice processing can be pretty daunting and tiresome. Workers are aware of the hassle involved in dealing with various file formats, inconvenient email attachments, and other time-consuming processes by processing them manually.

   RPA helps to locate files and analyze employee invoices without human intervention quickly.

   In addition, billing is by its nature a rule-based process so that automation will show the status to the client.

4. Hiring employees

   Robotic automation is used to generate and submit job offers automatically. It also triggers automatic workflows when an employee account is created.

   Companies can also use to help the HR team reduce the volume of processed documents by replacing paper copies with electronic filing systems.

How Does RPA Work?

RPA is flexible enough to suit businesses of all sizes, from startups to corporate companies.

Unlike other forms of automation, RPA has good intelligence to decide exactly if a process should happen. It analyzes the submitted data and makes decisions based on the logical parameters set by the developer.

There are two types:

• Programmable bots

  These define the established rules, and the programmers should determine the parameters before a given bot can start working. It involves step-by-step process planning and it can take much longer for more complex tasks.

• Intelligent bots

  These types analyze both historical and current data to understand how employees are performing the process. The robot monitors click mouse movements and actions. After a while, when it has analyzed enough data, the bot will complete the process independently.

Robotic Process Automation Benefits

 

• Modern transformation

  Roughly 60% of world-class CEOs say RPA is one of the most important parts of digital transformation.

  Today RPA adoption is the ideal solution for companies looking to optimize their legacy IT infrastructure to stay competitive.

• Cost savings

  This is the first and one of the crucial benefits of RPA. The big plus is that you don’t have to upgrade or replace existing systems for RPA to work, as it’s software independent. Robots help you eliminate disparate technologies by reliably connecting all software tools, regardless of function and department, in front and back offices.

• Reliable resilience

  The global pandemic has shown us the importance of operational resilience to sustaining businesses in difficult times. Developing a robust digital workforce with RPA implementations can help provide additional layers of different circumstances during “uncertain” times.

• High accuracy

  Despite the digital transformation, employee experience remains essential.

  Based on data from UiPath, Forrester Consulting, about 65% of people believe that RPA is a significant change in work and allows employees to interact more with people and pay more attention to meaningful strategic tasks.

• Total compliance

  Approximately 90% of managers agree that smart automation has exceeded all expectations in its work.

  Over the past year, there has been a significant interest in robotics and artificial intelligence technologies. RPA intelligent automation is already delivering tremendous value to businesses, and pioneers in general services and other administrative institutions have benefited significantly.

• Great Productivity

  Performing repetitive tasks often leads to interruptions in employee work. But reallocating them to tasks in which they use high skills can improve their professional experience and increase productivity. Thus, robotic automation can improve your company’s performance and avoid employee burnout due to tedious work.

• Cheerful employees

  55% of managers say RPA increases employee engagement.

  The bots help employees interact with customers by performing system work and data entry, reducing call processing times, and improving customer experience by 51%.

• Greater scalability

  RPA automation allows you to make large-scale business processes more flexible and adaptable to volatile times and changing conditions. In other words, you can handle any workload faster with an enhanced digital workforce.

How To Use RPA For My Business

• Insurance

  The bots will use intelligent document processing to extract data from claims forms, damage assessments, physician statements and automatically update claims files. In this case, RPA makes it much easier to check coverage and sort the settlement notification requirements and payment. Intelligent analytics built into the RPA platform provides real-time dashboards and insights into claims volume, frequency, severity, status, and timing.

• Banking

  Automation with RPA enables banks and financial companies to transform data-intensive manual transactions while following ever-changing regulatory requirements.

  What’s more, organizations can automate new account settings and streamline data collection from internal and external systems for customer verification, welcome emails, and CRM updates with new data.

• Healthcare

  The current health situation has dramatically accelerated the digital transformation. RPA, together with Artificial Intelligence, performs almost all information-related activities. It retrieves data, categorizes files, and searches for required contact information. Automated robots are also used to register new patients, work with medical records and enter other important data.

• Manufacturing

  Like any other field, the manufacturing industry has many tedious administrative tasks. But reducing the need to do this allows workers to focus on other, more critical work. Thus, office automation provides enormous benefits and helps speed up other processes.

• Public Sector

  RPA, in this case, makes it possible to reduce the time spent by employees on routine, monotonous tasks to provide more time for interaction with the public.

  Moreover, RPA also contributes to better data, thereby triggering more efficient management decisions.

• Life Sciences

  Many life science organizations are already actively using RPA bots to accelerate the delivery of new drugs, gain and expand innovations, and optimize manufacturing operations and supply chains. It also helps increase efficiency, improve workflows and empower your team.

What Should You Know About RPA Pitfalls?

While RPA has many advantages, it also has its dark sides.

• Culture of learning

  RPA helps reduce the need for certain roles, but don’t forget that it also stimulates the growth of new roles to solve more complex tasks. Be ready to improve your culture of learning and innovation as you change positions. Employee training is always essential to a business, as by improving their skills, you can prepare teams for continual shifts in priorities.

• Hard scaling

  Based on Forrester data, 51% of customers say they cannot scale their RPA program due to high costs. according to this research, about 98% people reported that the robots’ logic requires specific scripts. In addition, 78% of business owners say they have difficulties because their RPA programs require more advanced programming skills.

What Are the Features Essential in RPA Technology?

• Transformation of your company

  Automation bots help save time spent on routine tasks, resulting in employees engaging in more critical strategies.

  Using RPA in combination with artificial intelligence (AI) and other technologies makes it possible to automate your organization and processes completely.

• ROI for RPA

  Based on data from this Institute, automated solutions help deliver massive savings of 24% to 35% in labor costs.

  The company can customize its RPA investment for optimal ROI. To maintain the desired level of success, you need to consider and measure metrics throughout your RPA journey.

• Small initial investment

  Robotic automation reduces processing costs by up to 75%. The price of such a solution depends on the number of robots and software components to be deployed. On average, the cost of one bot can reach $5,000 to $15,000. In less than a year, most companies already have a positive ROI and potential cost savings.

• No interruptions in work

  Robotic automation doesn’t require any intervention in production systems and uses existing infrastructure without disrupting the operation of the underlying systems.

• Improved scalability

  RPA center can perform a relatively large number of functions ranging from desktop computers to cloud environments.

• Low code assemblies

  RPA and business process automation contain low code modules that allow you to take full advantage of robotic automation without the need for additional programming languages.

When Should You Use AI and RPA?

You don’t need to use these technologies separately. Their reliability and functionality will be crucial for smooth operation in your company. But let’s consider when we need to use RPA and AI.

Robotic automation provides the following opportunities for your business:

• It helps you work with large amounts of data and automates all your workflows to save time for your employees.
• It replaces human intervention in robot control and provides optimization of unstructured data.
• Employees will have more time to complete other essential business tasks rather than performing repetitive manual tasks.

To automate more complex processes, you will need this awesome RPA + AI combo. It includes:

• Your workflows where you can’t predict results ahead of time, counting your support calls, product settings, etc.
• AI is used for processes that are vastly different from each other and don’t rely on a clear set of rules, such as purchasing decisions, language translation, etc.

Automation Software: Use Cases

• Marketing and lead generation

  As we know, lead generation is one of the most critical marketing components. Your team adds new data from external sources for leads to the CRM system.

  Most modern CRM platforms have built-in data loading tools. However, another part of them requires manual input of information about each new lead. This increases the likelihood of errors.

  When you implement RPA, workers can quickly import any data from their spreadsheets. It gives teams more time to interact with other customers.

• Payment statement

  The ongoing processing of payrolls is an uphill task for the HR team.

  This often requires a considerable amount of data to be entered, which also leads to errors and causes delays in payment.

  By using RPA for HR processes, your employees can automate payment transactions faster, avoid inaccuracies, and check the consistency of employee data across multiple systems.

• Financial and accounting

  Every end of the month and after quarterly periods are stressful times for the finance departments of any company.

  RPA in finance analyzes past and current market trends to make accurate forecasts of the company’s financial condition. In addition, automated bots download monthly sales data and calculate commission fees.

• Recruitment processes

  Your HR department can receive resumes from various platforms, evaluate their value, and eliminate spam using automated robots.

  What’s more, bots keep track of vital hiring processes from 80% to 90%. It includes checking, evaluating, measuring, and adapting. So, this is also one of the great benefits of RPA.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Ready to Take the Next Step with RPA? pwrteams Is Here to Help

The pwrteams certified tech team is well-versed and skilled in robotic process automation services and intelligent bots development. Still, we need to use some foundation to leverage robotic automation for your business. According to our experience, the UiPath platform is the safest and the most effective solution for business processes automation setup. The possibilities of this technology cover all the industries where automation integration makes the most sense. It hosts a lot of ready-made solutions to streamline the automation process.

To get started with the automation technology for your business, we need to carefully analyze your company specifics, current tasks, and challenges to define the ones that take the most time and labor of your employees. Next, we will create a holistic automation strategy to perfectly meet your requirements and help you achieve the following goals.

Our Process of Robotic Automation includes:

• Consulting and Strategy Development

  To develop a robotic solution that will perfectly fit your business needs, we schedule a quick but meaningful interview with your company. It will help us outline the most time-consuming processes that need to be automated as soon as possible.

• Program Implementation

  Being guided by your strategy, we create and implement smart automation perfectly aligned with your requirements, current tasks, and growth vision. Also, our team integrates it with the solutions you currently use.

• Managed Services

  Implementing RPA is only the first step towards innovation and growth. This software needs careful maintenance to make sure the way it works is perfectly aligned with your business goals.

• pwrteams Dedicated Team

  If you already have RPA experts in-house and need to scale in a cost-efficient and agile way, pwrteams can build a remote development team in Eastern Europe. We select the best consultants according to your requirements to work exclusively for you.

Let’s begin your automation journey together!

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