July 10, 2020
Robotics, Processes, and Automation used in the same phrase strikes fear into to people, Arnold Achwarzenegger and the Termintaor films have a lot to answer for! When our minds race off pitching man against machine the future can look a bit scary, however I can safely report that robotic process automation today, in a business context, is unlikely to take over the world.
Robotic Process Automation(RPA) explained
Robotic process automation(RPA) is predominantly used for repetitive business processes and utilises a software robot to perform tasks with or without human supervision, commonly referred to as attended or unattended.
This is best explained with an example.
- An employee receives 10 spreadsheets every day into her email account from different sister companies reporting daily sale figures.
- She has to save each file to a folder on her network drive every day
- She then extracts all the data from 10 daily reports and copies the data into her master sales spreadsheet
- She emails the report to the Sales Manager daily
How would a robot help?
All of the steps above could be completed by a robot, freeing up the employee. The robot would automatically extract the emails, copy the files to the network, extract data and populate the master spreadsheet before emailing the manager. Once programmed the robot would complete this task much quicker than the employee and with no errors, the robots performance can be monitored real time.
8 Reasons why Robotic Process Automation(RPA) is good for business
Here are my top 8 reasons why Robotic Process Automation(RPA) is good for business:
- Accurate Data Entry
Staff can often make mistakes when keying data into digital screens, robots do not!
- No Down-Time
Robots do not need to take breaks, they can run 24/7, 365 days a year if required
- Fee up staff
Robots will not replace staff, they free staff up from repetitive tasks, focusing them on more considerative work
- Increased Productivity
- Fast Implementation
Once ths software is installed and configured, Robots can be deployed in weeks or even days
- Easy To Scale
You can can start small, test the technology and scale at a pace that suits your business
- No Training Time
You do not need to train a robot, it is programmed to do a set of tasks over and over again.
- They don't quit
They just keep going - unless someone intervenes or there's a schedule
Robotic Process Automation(RPA) use cases
Whilst there is no exhaustive list of use cases for where Robotic Process Automation(RPA) could be deployed, here are some areas you might like to consider:
- Automate input processes
- To extract data from emails and other documents
- To automatically create cases in your CRM system
- To extract, interpret and manipulate data
- To communicate with other digital systems including legacy
Would you like to learn more about Robotic Process Automation and how it could work for your business? Do you need help gathering requirements or with product selection? Get in touch with the team and we will be happy to chat through ideas with you.