To many, robotic process automation or RPA sounds like a soulless robot is going to take over the entire company. And although it is true that they are software robots in charge of executing certain tasks, it is not true that they do not have a “soul” since their purpose is quite altruistic: they help companies streamline their workflows, maximizing productivity and optimizing time of employee work.
The boredom in employees for doing routine tasks is present in all companies. Sure, no one likes to do the same thing over and over on their job site. In the long run, what this type of environment does is decrease productivity and increase human errors. RPA solutions can be the way to improve the productivity of your business.
For example, imagine that in your company you have a person in charge of handling customer incidents via email and phone calls. Sped 8 hours a day receiving emails and attending to customer incidents by call. Each resource of a company is very valuable so that it is completely dedicated to a routine task and whose procedure is invariable, so it can be perfectly automated with RPA software.
Companies have wanted to completely eradicate this type of environment with the implementation of RPA solutions and even cognitive RPA. “53% of the companies surveyed have already started using RPA (…) if this continues, RPA will have achieved almost universal adoption in the next 5 years,” explained Deloitte, citing a survey they conducted in 2018.
“The benefits of adopting RPA software are significant. Results were seen in less than 12 months, gaining 20% of the full-time equivalent operational capacity provided by robots. RPA continues to meet and exceed expectations in multiple dimensions, including: improved compliance (92%), improved quality / precision (90%), improved productivity (86%), cost reduction (59%) ”, they also detailed in the report.
What processes can be automated using RPA software? The truth, many. All processes that have pre-established steps and that are invariable can be automated. Here we will explain some of the most common problems that RPA solves.
How does RPA solutions work? One of the most productive uses of RPA in companies is when they implement it for customer incident management. “The robot is configured to react to the receipt of new emails in the incident inbox and thus begin its process. It consists of opening the email, opening the attached file, collecting the information from the pdf (converted to text using OCR) and inserting it into an exchange file for systems with SQL-type databases”, explained the MásIngenieros.com portal in this regard.
“Once the file generation process with the PDF information is finished, the robot leaves the exchange file in the assigned file folder and passes the email to the processed incident email folder, waiting for the next incoming email”, they added in the article.
In this way, no person has to receive the emails, open them and read them to later create the incident in the ERP system: the robot created with RPA software is simply in charge of this and thus the employee can dedicate himself to more central and analytical tasks within the business, growing the business while automation helps with routine tasks.
Not only the customer service and incident management area can benefit from RPA tools, but also the finance area. According to a report published by the McKinsey Global Institute, "40% of financial activities can be fully automated and 17% can be highly automated."
Reports are key to evaluating the performance and performance of a company in a given period of time. But the truth be told: it is a very heavy responsibility to do these reports, since the volume of data is so large that human error can easily escape.
"But the combined use of robotic process automation and natural language processing software has proven to be very advantageous when applied by a European bank" reports an article published by the CiGen portal, citing McKinsey.
“After data collection and analysis, the back-office system easily listed KPIs and flagged problem cases with red flags. CFOs invested their cognitive effort in finding optimal solutions to address these unsolved cases, rather than wasting their valuable time on scans and data analysis”, they added in the article.
In these three scenarios, RPA solutions worked perfectly for the companies that implemented them. It is time to lose your fear of technology and take advantage of all the benefits it brings to your day-to-day processes.
How to get started with RPA? At Rootstack, we have been working tirelessly for more than 10 years to create digital solutions for companies around the world. Let's talk about your next project!