What is RPA and Why should your organization leverage RPA?

What is RPA and Why should your organization leverage RPA?

What is RPA and Why should your organization leverage RPA

Overview

The 21st century was looked forward to be poised by robots replacing the human workforce, right from household chores to organizational work. And for the most part this prophecy seems true, but with the ongoing advancements in the technological field, it feels like we’re barely scratching the surface here. The door to what the future holds in the robotic world might not be completely open now but robots do play a vital role in the present world. Advancements in Robotic Process Automation are being utilised by forward looking organizations to automate the mundane process, for instance, extracting data out of documents, while utilising human resources for higher priority tasks, the end result of which is a delightful working experience. This is just one of the many gains extracted by leveraging RPA,with more of these discussed further. Now, the response to the blog topic ‘What is RPA and Why should your organization leverage RPA?’

What is RPA:

RPA enables creation of robots (hence the term Robotic Process Automation) that can be trained to mimic the repetitive computer-based tasks performed by humans. A set of instructions can be defined for these bots to perform.
“RPA is an advanced form of business process automation that is able to record tasks performed by a human on their computer, then perform those same tasks without human intervention. Essentially, it is a virtual robot copycat.” – Marcel Shaw, federal systems engineer at Ivanti.
One vital point to be clarified here is that RPA is not AI. RPA can be certified as a form of AI but unlike AI, RPA does not have the ability to accustom itself to any changes to the process it’s been used for. AI is designed to replicate human thinking, RPA not. A more advanced form of RPA termed as IPA, short for, Intelligent Process Automation combines RPA with AI to handle tasks more intelligently by studying and recognizing patterns of workflow, and any change in the workflow is dealt with by AI so the process keeps running smoothly without any intervention.
Now that we have understood what RPA is, here’s why visionary organizations are incorporating it and you should too.

Why RPA:

There’s a long list of benefits that advocate for the question “Why RPA?”
Traditional business units such as the likes of HR, customer service are exposed to data-severe, rule-based and monotonous work. Specific industries such as Insurance and Financial services also suffer from similar issues. These are just few of the many sectors and RPA can be utilised just about any and everywhere when there’s repetitive processes involved.

Key benefits of incorporating RPA

1. Rapid Implementation:

Bots in RPA can be incorporated and trained to handle organizational tasks. The same process when it involves humans, requires hiring and training of human resources which is time consuming.

2. Scale down human errors:

Achieve highest level accuracy in all business processes where RPA bots are indulged. Also, RPA bots can work for much longer than humans ever could thereby significantly cutting down the time required to complete a process.

3. Delighted Customer Experience:

Freeing up and deploying valuable resources to the front-line processes, results in elevating the customer experience through better interactions.

4. No disruption to existing IT infrastructure:

Probably the biggest advantage of utilizing RPA is the fact that it does not demand to replace your current systems and makes use of the system in place just like a human employee could.

5. Enhanced security for Enterprise Data:

RPA’s ability to integrate with multiple applications results in enhanced security for enterprise data. These integrations make sure that client’s apps are not modified by robots in any way.

6. Improved Analytics:

RPA facilitates the collection of data about the tasks executed which can be used for analytical purposes. Workflows, errors are some of the factors that can be collected and analysed for betterment of the process.

7. Zero down-time:

Bots in RPA can operate round-the-clock, 24*7, without any breaks at 100 percent capacity, which eliminates down-time resulting in an exponential increase in organizational productivity.

8. Forever availability:

As opposed to humans, bots would never quit their job, find the job done to be hard or get bored of the repetitive tasks. This availability would only lead to enhanced productivity for organizational advantage.

9. Enterprise-grade security:

Sure you trust your employees with sensitive data but most frauds happen internally due to exposure of sensitive data in the wrong hands. Bots, on the other hand, do not understand the significance of data and treat all data with equal level of concern for high security thus allowing for tightened security of the organizational data handled.

10. Less dependency on the IT department:

Maintenance and updates of the bots is a job for your RPA service provider to handle which takes the burden off of your local IT department, thus diminishing dependency as well allowing them to work towards other high priority tasks.

The above mentioned benefits are some of the key points answering the question ‘Why RPA?’. Post implementation, RPA would change the face of the process workflow of your organization setting you on the digital transformation journey with a head-start. You can check out more about RPA here or connect with us for a more detailed and organization-specific explanation of the benefits and to implement RPA in your business process.