What is Robotic Process Automation?

Robotic Process Automation (RPA for short) is a software that is revolutionizing the future of work by performing web-based, repetitive and mundane tasks that take up a lot of valuable time and is not the most enjoyed tasks within an organization. These tasks are carried out by attended or unattended bots that mimic the actions of a team member. The cool part? These bots run 24/7, they don’t take require breaks and they don’t take time off work.

Let's back it up quickly to attended and unattended bots so we hit all the points. There are certain tasks that fit well with as an unattended bot requiring no human responsibility. And an attended bot required some sort of human responsibility but still saves a significant amount of time in completing the task.

All of this means is that there are an incredible number of benefits you can expect with process automation. The top benefits are:

• Supporting a strong life-work balance with your team, allows for increased efficiencies while the bots never stop. Making technology work for your team, not against it.
• More time for strategic and innovative tasks while the routine tasks are taken care of which protects the future of your organization.
• Improved accuracy and quality of the process being carried out which results in a reduction in manual human error.
• Staff shortages are a huge issue right now that most organizations are facing. Without impacting our productivity or customer service (and not burning out our teams), we can keep consistency in performing the tasks across the organization, improve customer satisfaction, decrease labor costs and close the current gap on labor shortages.

Technology has dramatically evolved over the past couple of years and organizations who choose to adopt new modern ways of working, have a true competitive advantage in the marketplace. According to recent predictions by Forrester, they believe that “Companies with advanced automation programs will obliterate—not merely beat—the competition.”

What is an RPA Bot and what can it do?

Bots can be considered as your digital workforce. They mimic a team member working at a computer, they just don’t require real seats. Bots complete an identified process(es) and can act when and how you need it to. Bots are fast, they can also click, use console commands, type, perform data entry and do any web-based tasks a human would do.

A brief look at what bots can do:

• Organize and modify files
• Complete calculations
• Fill in forms
• Collect data from websites
• Query databases
• Use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to extract key data from documents

The goal of automation is to free you and your team from the mundane, time-consuming tasks and allow them to re-focus their energy and creativity on more meaningful responsibilities of their role.

RPA vs. AI

We hate to break the news, but RPA and AI are not the same, however they can be used in combination together. Think of it this way, bots are your workhorse to complete tasks where AI is developing a system to develop its own thought pattern. RPA requires human input to evaluate and tweak a process to ensure the right process is being completed by the bot. Because we’ve all heard the saying ‘garbage in, garbage out’. We don’t want to set up a bot with a poor process from the start.

There are many different use cases for process automation across various industries, functions and supporting various technology within an organization. Below is just a highlight but if you don’t see your industry, function or technology listed, get in touch and we’ll send you information on what you’re after.

• Human Resources
• Information Technology
• Sales and Marketing
• Finance/Accounting
• Insurance Broker & Agent
• Non-Profit
• Healthcare
• Accounting Firms
• Manufacturing

What does winning look like with automation?

We’re glad you asked!

Oh, and did you know that the Gartner team estimated that if they implemented RPA to its full capabilities, they would save upwards of 20,000+ hours in a single year and over $800,000 in savings. Yeah, that’s pretty mind blowing.

• Think about a task that is repetitive and that you find incredibly boring.
• How much time on average does it take you per month?
• What is the impact of that time spent on that process to your other responsibilities – work or home life?
• If you had a bot doing this task, what would be your internal cost savings? Where could you redirect those efforts?

This freedom is possible.