As a business owner, you want your employees to focus on value-added tasks, like sales and serving customers. But the truth is many teams still spend hours on repetitive, administrative tasks that, while necessary, do little to help your bottom line. Robotic process automation (RPA) is a technology that can automate many simple, recurring processes—cutting costs and freeing up business teams to focus on more meaningful activity.
Robotic Process Automation Defined
Despite its name, RPA does not involve robots, at least not in the physical sense. The “bots” created for RPA are software-based and use artificial intelligence (AI) or machine learning (ML) capabilities to handle repetitive tasks.
Unlike advanced AI software, RPA is not designed to mimic the human mind or make decisions. Think of it as a software-powered workhorse that can take on simple but time-intensive workloads, like invoicing, payroll, and basic financial reporting, thus moving them off of your employees’ shoulders.
What Does Robotic Process Automation Software Do?
The ability to work quickly and at scale is critical to grow your company, especially with competitors big and small increasingly operating online. Small and midsize businesses (SMBs) might collect as much data and have similar reporting needs as much larger competitors, but they often lack the staff, resources, or IT infrastructure to handle these tasks manually. RPA can be the great equalizer, allowing software to take over laborious and repetitive tasks. What’s more, RPA bots can do the job faster than human beings while making fewer errors, in most cases.
RPA works by codifying, in software, every rule involved in task-specific decisions. It is then integrated via an application programming interface (API) with whichever software application a human worker would use to perform the task at hand, using the same interface as employees would—but working faster and more predictably.
Intangible Benefits of RPA
Another benefit of RPA is that it usually can be set up and managed by someone without deep IT expertise or coding experience. This is a major advantage for businesses that don’t have a dedicated IT team or budget for new hires.
It’s also worth noting that multiple studies show job satisfaction improves when workers spend less time on rote manual work. Unlike manufacturing and factory environments, where people and robots work together to create a final product, repetitive tasks in an office environment are a housekeeping measure—necessary for a smooth operation, but time-consuming and with minimal impact on a business’s growth or success.
Few employees derive satisfaction from these tasks, so by shifting the load from real people to RPA software, a company stands to drive up morale and engagement across its workforce.
Examples of RPA in Action
Think of the time that goes into locating folders on a hard drive, moving and updating files with simple data, summing up daily sales figures on spreadsheets, and the continuous stream of administrative work that most businesses need to complete each day. That’s where RPA excels. The best uses for robotic automation are rote processes that need to be completed at scale. Here are some prime examples:
- Invoicing and supplier updates. Invoicing is a critical business process, but it is also simple and rules-based, making it a good candidate for RPA. Bots can easily compile and manage your client invoices. The same goes for communicating with your suppliers. Complex supply chain issues may require in-depth conversations and strategizing, but simple updates on the status of an order can be left to automated bots.
- Employee payroll. Manual payroll processes are a major time-drain. Calculating and keeping track of employees’ salaries, overtime, and expenses can be a full-time job depending on the size and complexity of your business. Add to this more complicated payroll structures, like bonuses and commissions, and the complexity only grows. RPA is well-suited to handling most of these payroll operations, with minimal risk of error. For businesses without an in-house finance or HR team, which is the case for many SMBs, taking the burden of payroll off employees who already need to balance a range of tasks can be very helpful.
- Data backups and recovery. Data backup is increasingly important for all businesses, as more aspects of their operations become digital. Even a few hours of downtime can have a detrimental effect on sales, especially during peak periods, such as a retailer suddenly losing all of its customer order data a week before Christmas. RPA is increasingly used to automatically copy crucial online data to backup servers so that businesses can bounce back from downtime quickly and without fear of falling behind on customer expectations. As importantly, data is automatically backed up and stored safely, which helps companies build customer trust and avoid the reputational damage that comes with unexpected data loss.
Avoid Common RPA Pitfalls
Process automation can pay enormous dividends for your business, but it can cause major headaches if not implemented properly. After all, speeding up an ineffective business process will only lead to more inefficiencies and cost implications. Avoid these common RPA pitfalls to ensure your investment in automation delivers on its promise.
- Define your vision. As with any new technology implementation, there is little value in automating processes for automation’s sake. To get the most value from RPA, make sure to set clear goals for your implementation and how these automated processes will integrate with your other business operations.Break down your processes in detail. Ambiguity is the enemy of rules-based RPA. To operate independently, rules-based bots must be programmed to handle every step of the process you want to automate, so be sure to break these down in granular detail before getting started.
- Test extensively. Most RPA bots are binary in their thinking, following simple If/Then programming rules. By contrast, the end users for automated processes are your employees or customers, human beings who each interact differently with your software. Only by testing RPA rules through every step of the user journey can you account for these nuances and ensure your bots will deliver on people’s needs.
How to Get Started with RPA
RPA uptake is on the rise, with solutions taking on more complex tasks over time. The next wave of development is focused on intelligent process automation (IPA), which promises to add layers of intelligence, natural language processing, and advanced machine learning to automated bots.
All of this begs the question of whether RPA is right for your business and how to get started. First, ask yourself the following questions:
- Does your business have repetitive processes that, while necessary, monopolize employees’ time without delivering tangible value for the business?
- What are the financial and time costs of continuing to perform these processes manually?
- Conversely, how much would it cost to replace one or more of these processes with RPA?
Should you decide to move ahead, the next step is to lay out a plan of attack. Clearly define how you expect to use RPA. Then, for each use, break down every step of the workflow that an RPA bot will need to perform to complete the task automatically.
From there, you’re ready to build and test your RPA solution. Make sure to refine it before incorporating the bot in your daily operations. And finally, keep refining your RPA approach over time. Your business strategy, market dynamics, and customers’ behaviors are bound to change, presenting new opportunities to automate and work more efficiently along the way.
This analysis will also be crucial in helping you choose the right RPA vendor. Start by laying out the scope and needs of your automation project. Then research vendors and create a shortlist of those who can meet your requirements for performance, capabilities, and price. If time allows, you can also conduct proofs of concept (POCs) with different solutions to confirm which is best.
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