Robotics, processes, and automation used in the same phrase scare people, Arnold Achwarzenegger and Terminator films have a lot to answer for! When our minds pitch man against machine, the future may look a little scary, but I can safely report that robotic process automation is unlikely to take over the world in a business context.
Robotic process automation(RPA) is primarily used for routine business operations and uses a programmed system to execute activities with or without human intervention, usually known as attended or unattended.
It's best explained with an example.
- An employee receives 10 spreadsheets daily from various sister companies reporting daily sales figures in their email account.
- She has to save each file on her network drive every day.
- She extracts all data from 10 daily reports and copies data into her master sales table
- She emails the Sales Manager daily
How'd a robot help?
A computer may follow the above actions, freeing the employee. The robot would extract emails automatically, copy files to the network, extract data, and populate the master spreadsheet before emailing the manager. Once programmed, the robot would complete this task much faster than the employee and without errors, the performance of the robots can be monitored in real-time.
8 Reasons why Robotic Process Automation(RPA) is good for business.
Here are my top 8 reasons why Robotic Process Automation(RPA) is good:
Precise data entry
Sometimes, when keying data into computer displays, robots will make mistakes!
There is no downtime
Robots need not break, they can run 24/7 , 365 days a year if required
Upgrade staff
Robots won't replace staff, they free staff from repetitive tasks, focusing on more considerate work
Better efficiency
Rapid introduction
When built and trained, robots can be deployed in weeks or even days
Simple Scale
You can start tiny, check the product and scale to suit your business
Any time to prepare
You don't need to train a robot, it's programmed to do more and more tasks.
They don't stop
They just continue-unless someone intervenes or there's a schedule.
Robotic Process Automation(RPA) use cases
While there is no exhaustive list of applications where Robotic Process Automation(RPA) could be deployed, here are some areas you might want to consider:
- Automate processes data
- Extracting details from emails and other records
- Automatically build cases in the CRM
- Extract, interpret, manipulate data
- Chat other automated networks, including legacy
