Robotic Process Automation

Have you considered the impact of errors and delays caused by manual tasks in your business? How many extra man-hours does it add to every month? The average salary of a customer service representative in the US is $17.75 per hour.[1] If each employee puts in 1 hour per day taking care of manual errors and delays, you stand to lose approximately $30,000 per month for a modest team of 75.

This is where robotic process automation (RPA) transforms the entire landscape and brings unprecedented efficiency and cost savings. It applies to customer service and other business areas, which we will discuss in the next section.

What is RPA?

RPA uses bots to mimic human actions to fulfil a task. It is a rules-based system that emulates human activities and automates repetitive tasks without needing a break. With RPA, your systems can work round the clock faster, more precisely, and efficiently. Your systems can perform calculations; parse data; search information online; open, move, and copy files; connect with other systems using APIs; and extract unstructured data into a specified format — all without human intervention.

The benefits of RPA

Industries in customer service, accounting, finance, healthcare, human resources, and supply chain management actively use RPA to achieve the following benefits.

Cost savings: RPA drives significant improvements in business processes, thus bringing cost savings.
High accuracy: RPA eliminates errors due to manual intervention and achieves 100% accuracy in all repetitive tasks.
Better compliance: RPA meets customer and legal compliances effectively through greater work accuracy and speed.
Elevated productivity: RPA utilises your workforce in other critical tasks that require human intervention and decision-making, thus boosting productivity.
Scalability and flexibility: RPA provides scalability as businesses can make the RPA system work 24 x 7 to significantly scale-up processes.

How to implement RPA

The RPA journey for companies typically follows these steps:

Discovery: Ask questions internally and externally and reach out to other organisations, partners, and vendors to create an automation vision for your company.
Readiness: Prepare proof of concepts (POC), as well as raise awareness among the top leadership and your teams.
Engagement: Shortlist and engage the vendor and the solution that best fits your needs for digital transformation.
Proof of concepts: Test the business case against the unique needs of your company. Pick a small process to automate and then scale up.
Pilot testing: Place automation in every process and run pilot tests for widespread adoption.
Centre of excellence: Prepare for a full-scale RPA implementation, create standards and best practices, and define tools and templates.
Expansion: Create momentum to deepen the use of RPA in your organisation.
Expansion: Create momentum to deepen the use of RPA in your organisation.
Digital transformation: Make RPA a part of your organisation’s DNA to solve new problems.