Robotic Process Automation (RPA): Gradual Explanation

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) augments customers’ digital transformation initiatives by automating customer support, and activities at the backend.

What is Hyper Automation vs. Robotic Process Automation Development?

Robotic process automation is a sub-step of hyper-automation which supercharges automation strategy to eliminate mundane tasks, reduce cost, and speed up the overall development process.

It brings a fresh burst of energy to existing initiatives and powers the business with sophisticated technologies like:

• Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
• Artificial Intelligence + Machine Learning
• Business Process Management (BPM) Platforms inclusive of Automation Workflows
• Integration Platforms (iPaaS)
• No/Low-Code Platforms
• Intelligent Document Processing (IDP)
• Process Mapping Tools

The entire process is voluminous, but it debuts more possibilities in 2022. It remains open for exploration. Here’s a cue!

There are many Enterprises in robotic process automation:

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), etc. They work on Machine First Delivery Model (MFDM) that assembles intelligent automation with RPA. Meanwhile, it is pertinent for Business 4.0 transformations. It is the starting point to leverage all forward-thinking enterprises to enhance quality process outcomes, superior customer service, and higher productivity.

What is RPA Software?

RPA programs came to fruition to enable enterprises to automate business processes. It makes employees focus on more important tasks. It helps reduce operating costs and improves business operations.

Robotic Process Automation Robots (RPA Bots) act like humans, may look like humans as well and serve a single point of integration. They are platform agnostic, which implies that they allow applications and software to integrate without dedicated APIs.

Example: If data from a spreadsheet is to be transferred to a customer relationship management system (CRM), the bot can be scripted to do that without human intervention. It will require minimal or no programming expertise.

Building Blocks: What Can Robots/Virtual Assistants Do?

Bots (Short for ‘Robots’) are computer programs that execute operations automatically once programmed. These can copy-paste, calculate, scrape web data, open and move files, extract unstructured data, log into programs, parse emails, and connect to APIs.

Difference: Robots vs. Bots

While robots have a physical body, bots do not have a physical body. Bot computer programs can assimilate with any workflow or interface to facilitate business systems, existing processes, and applications. These are easy to initiate, use, drag-drop, and easy to share, and stop. These can be scheduled, customized, cloned, and shared to execute business processes.

• [Robots] Androids: Look like humans
• [Robots] Cyborgs: Part human
• [Robots] Industrial robots: Fixed on an assembly line
• [Bots] Codebots: Write code based on models
• [Bots] Chatbots: Chat using text and/or speech
• [Bots] Spiders: Read and rank web pages

Process: How Does RPA work?

RPA eliminates repetitive tasks that are low in value and have a major goal for businesses across industries. Although we still do not have as many robots in the real world, virtual assistants suffice the business operating costs and boost productivity. It readily adapts to current technologies. RPA is applicable to any software system, mimics human actions, and does not involve coding changes, which makes it flexible.

Plus Points: What are the benefits of RPA development?

Robots can tirelessly repeat a task, without fatigue, which is a common problem with humans. This gives humans essential time to be creative, innovative and interactive. Aligning robots with humans can make the task enjoyable, and efficient, and reduce overall cost. 

RPA-enabled robots read the screen commands, identify and extract data, navigate systems, and perform a wide range of defined actions in a faster way without taking intermittent breaks.

It increases business productivity, transforms the process, enhances resilience, makes it accurate, improves compliance, and increases employee engagement.

RPA changes with time. It reduces or eradicates repetitive tasks like extracting, copying, inserting, deleting data, moving files and folders, filling forms, submitting captcha, completing the routine analysis, replying to chat messages, learning, mimicking, and executing rules based on business processes.

RPA-based bots can improve service levels as businesses implement RPA software to accomplish routine/rote data entry tasks like employee enrollment data entry, account assignment, document search (pdf), reading XML and JSON, FTP connections, collecting data, tracking inventory status and processing simple customer returns and likewise. It eventually helps human resources refocus on the creative side and enhance customer service.

Which Tools Assist In Robotic Process Automation?

• UiPath
• Automation Anywhere
• Blue Prism
• WorkFusion
• NICE
• EdgeVerve Systems
• Kofax

Why is Robotic Process Automation (RPA) One Of The Fastest-Growing Enterprise Software In 2022?

• Rapid, significant return on investment
• Requires minimal upfront investment
• No disruption to underlying systems
• Low-code build environment
• It is scalable and enterprise-ready

Are RPA and AI the same?

No, both technologies unlock massive possibilities. RPA  imbibes AI processes like machine learning models, character and image recognition, natural language processing (NLP), and image recognition into RPA robots.

Giving AI skills to robots expands their ability to handle cognitive processes:

• Understanding structured and semi-structured data
• Visualizing screens
• Apprehending speech, conversations, and chats

RPA Applications

• RPA for BPO: RPA bots can help the business be competent, lower operating costs, and achieve revenue growth.

• RPA for Financial Services: RPA bots can transform manual and data-intensive operations to meet regulatory requirements.

• RPA for Healthcare: RPA bots improve the patient experience by responding on time, managing revenue, process claims.

• RPA for Insurance: RPA bots facilitate data extraction from a wide array of documents, collect and organize vast data sets, respond to customer requests, and identifying cross-selling opportunities.

• RPA for Life Sciences: AI-enabled RPA bots enable rapid automation to support customer expectations and manage regulatory changes in precision medicine.

• RPA for Manufacturing: RPA bots allow manufacturers to automate back-office and operational processes to increase agility, eliminate wasteful steps, reduce cost, and speed up the overall process. 

• RPA for Healthcare Sector: Robotic Process Automation has a history of being successful at first open-heart surgery (Coronary Angiography) and Liver Transplant in NSW.

• RPA For the Retail Sector: The entire process of the product manufacturing, packaging, shipping, delivery, and sales process often includes many sub-stages like receiving an order, order processing, order fulfillment and additionally, matching the delivery to the purchase order, checking if the products are not damaged, logging received items into the inventory, allocating storage space for goods, notifying the accounts payable department. Moreover, there are tons of other steps like checking the eligibility (pre-shipment credit), the quantum of finance, appraisal and sanction of limits, following up of packing credit advance, liquidation of packing credit advance, overdue packing, packing credit to the supplier, running account facility, receiving goods in a warehouse – the process of delivering, unloading, storing, e-commerce inventory in a fulfillment center or warehouse.

• RPA for Public Sector: Government often faces an aging workforce, new consumer-grade expectations, and budget reductions. Intelligent automation creeps in to reduce this discrepancy between new-fangled and legacy systems.

• RPA for Telecom: Bots (digital workforce) free the teams for customer-facing opportunities and keep the operational cost down.

• RPA For Real Estate: Bots reduce tedious routines, improve client servicing, manage documents, inventory, rule-based processes, accounting, and onboard tenants by generating new tenant applications, checking criminal background, verifying job/income references, accepting or rejecting tenants, reminding them of due payments, manage property portfolios, makes it easy for agents to identify rented or sold properties. It can create business profiles on multiple websites for better visibility and reach to the properties.

What Are The Steps In RPA Development Lifecycle?

RPA lifecycle management is a form of software development that follows a structured approach to successful product creation. Similar to the software development lifecycle it consists of stages in order:

• Development – By using RPA application development tools like OutSystems, Pega, and IBM Watson
• Assessment and Prioritization – To check technical feasibility, the extent of decisions required, the business value that this automation can deliver, the number of hours required to accomplish the task, and manual or automation testing.
• Identification of business processes (Process discovery, tools and technologies, target audience, good candidates for automation)
• Design – It requires mapping dependencies related to automation (if it impacts any person/business)
• Testing + Deployment + Monitoring/Change Management – The application goes through multiple testing stages and the RPA software is continuously monitored for performance.

Text Wrap: How to Build RPA for Your Business?

From ending repetitive tasks to bringing about digital transformation most of the RPA software is platform-independent.

Robots are capable of handling complex orchestration of processes including inventory management, sales forecasting, store planning, ERP, and customer support.

These are the best solution for automating SAP processes, inbuilt libraries and support technologies like Email, Excel, Outlook, Web, UI, and Windows etc.

This illustration about RPA should equip you in understanding how businesses makes you achieve more in less time. Make your business AI-ready; let us induce automation, and elevate performance with intelligent RPA Software. Find Out How!