Are your business processes in dire need of optimization? Are you hoping to enhance efficiency but need direction? Robotic process automation is the answer for all your business needs.
According to Grandview Research, the global robotic process automation market size was valued at USD 1.89 billion in 2021, the same is projected to expand at a compound annual growth of 38.2 percent from 2022 to 2030.
The numbers are huge, aren’t they?
Robotic process automation, referred to as RPA, helps businesses save time, increase operational efficiency, and lower expenses.
In this article we will talk about RPA and how it can benefit your business, highlighting its key characteristics of the same.
What is RPA?
Robotic process automation aka RPA is a software technology that eases the process of building, deploying, and managing software robots that emulate human behavior while interacting with software and digital systems.
In simpler words, RPA can be thought of as a digital workforce managed by your business operations team which is faster & more accurate than humans. Similar to humans, this software robot can understand what’s operating on the screen, identify and extract meaningful data and perform a wide range of defined actions.
How is RPA used?
RPA is being leveraged in several industries. From Insurance to retail and hospitality, and not to mention Healthcare RPA can bring many benefits to the business processes.
Talking about business-specific processes, RPA can help automate the majority of operations and reduce human work as follows:
Interpreting the stats and the process that RPA can automate mentioned above, one can easily interpret the growth of RPA use-cases in various industries. And such hype is not possible without some advantages worth mentioning.
Let’s move forward to the next section and understand why should businesses adopt RPA, and what are the key characteristics that make RPA incomparable to other automation tools.
What are the key characteristics of RPA?
The key capabilities of Robotic Process Automation include data entry procedures, data extraction, and static decision-making processes. All of these uses of RPA in business are possible only through its key characteristics which are as mentioned below:
1. User-Interface Interaction:
RPA robots interact similarly to humans on the user interface of the operational systems. Entering information, making cursor jumps, pushing buttons and many other interactions made by RPA are in line with human interaction. Businesses can either directly record the scripts on the system or develop them with developers working on RPA technology.
2. Process Execution:
As mentioned earlier, RPA bots can easily mimic human behavior when it comes to process execution.
3. Data Handling:
RPA robots can easily handle the high volume of data in the process interaction. RPA can transport the data from external sources and even use the data generated from the user interface.
4. Learning Capability:
Advance RPA robots can provide you with an edge by integrating with AI & ML algorithms. These algorithms help the RPA bots absorb and enhance the past learning experience, reducing the need for scripts.
Why should companies adopt RPA?
While streamlining workflows, and making your enterprises more flexible & profitable, robotic process automation also increases employee satisfaction and engagement.
RPA is a non-invasive technology and is being readily integrated to accelerate digital transformation. The numbers in the image above very well depict the cited benefits and how they affect the enterprises.
Advantages of RPA
Here is our list of 7 reasons that would help you access the benefits of RPA for your business:
1. Increase in Productivity
Robots working on the RPA system are focused on specific tasks. For instance, consider the RPA bot as a worker that helps you create a report in 30 minutes, which would otherwise take around 3-4 hours manually. Yes, it might be a bad example to replace the human workforce with robots citing the reason for time conservation. However, this practice would make your workers more productive and reduce costs for your enterprise.
2. Increase Efficiency
The greatest benefit one can mention for RPA is that they never need a break- working 24*7 without taking any sick leaves. Generally, if we go by the numbers, a single RPA bot can handle as much work as five full-time employees. You can consider this as an example of RPA efficiency.
3. Enhanced Accuracy
Justifying the famous quote- “To err is to human”. Since your workforce mostly consists of humans, there is always room for mistakes. The main feature of RPA is its ability to eliminate errors & reduce costs. But this solution requires proper testing, training, implementation, and also governance.
4. Better Security
Robotic process automation works on a micro-level. As robots are assigned only single tasks, the risk of data leakage is very minimum. With a successful implementation of RPA, the data access is well in charge. The greatest myth in RPA implementation is the fear of robots replacing the human workforce in the future. However, successful implementation of RPA is not possible without proper human governance.
5. Boost in Scalability
Robotic process automation offers flexibility to adapt to the volume of the work for a given objective. Robotic automation also supports your enterprise to work on selected requirements of specified processes. Even for smaller businesses, a robotic workforce provides the advantage of evolving with industry demands.
6. Improved Analytics
Robotic process automation technologies allow organizations to gather analytics on task executions. Work volume patterns, show-up time, and error estimation are some of the analytics. Numbers gathered from such analytics can help organizations improve their workflow, and make better decisions at all levels. Also, this data can help enterprises to determine the pitfalls in the organization and streamline business processes.
7. Non-disruptive Automation
Many organizations are having challenges with legacy systems due to the costs and complexity of the IT systems. RPA systems are utilized to increase the lifetime of the legacy systems and automate the daily operations while communicating with IT systems just as humans do. Also, since with robotic process automation the core technology remains the same, implementing the same in your organization is not a complex approach.
This is the Time for the RPA
Enterprises should start considering Robotic process automation to reap all the benefits this valuable tool offers. Apart from saving time and improving processes the tool also benefits your employees and customers.
If you are beginning with this idea of automation, and find it cumbersome to look out for the right RPA tools and partners, we have all the answers. If you have a process, we have the right automation strategy for you.
