RPA is one process to automate manual, repetitive business tasks involving a number of systems and applications using software bots. RPA is currently one of the most popular Artificial Intelligence application areas as it allows companies with legacy systems to automate their workflows. Companies are excited about RPA solutions because most large non-tech companies still rely on legacy systems a large share of knowledge workers still complete automatable work using numerous systems including some legacy systems.
History of RPA:
There are 3 milestones in the history of Robotic Process Automation (RPA): screen scraping, Business Process Automation and Artificial Intelligence.
The precursors of RPA was simple screen scraping programs built for testing automation. For automation of testing or various other tasks, companies need effective screen scraping solutions.
However, the first screen scraping solutions, such as those that were available in 1990s were too brittle. They needed reprogramming with every small change in the user interface because they relied on component identities in the user interface modules. By late 2000s, early 2010s, the screen scraping solutions relied more on image processing rather than hard coding component names.
Therefore, screen scrapers were able to react to changes in the UX in a much more flexible manner like humans.
Over time, financial institutions working with these screen scrapers were able to automate complex processes. This allowed emerging RPA companies to build business process automation solutions on top of their screen scrapers.
Business process automation (BPA) solutions existed since 1990s and they were already quite mature so there was not that much research needed to bind BPA to screen scrapers.
Finally, with the rise of AI, companies became increasingly aware that machines could surpass humans in simple cognitive tasks like OCR or pattern recognition.
Benefits:
Interest in RPA has increased enormously in recent years. Organisations start to realise manual processes are inefficient, prone to errors and lead to employee and customer dissatisfaction.
With RPA companies can:
- Increase speed of/reduce errors in customer-facing processes to increase customer satisfaction
- Allows employees to focus on greater value-added activities improving both business results and employee satisfaction
- Reduce manual data edits, increasing quality of data, reducing compliance risks and simplifying audits since RPA bots leave digital log files of all their activities.
Organizations can reduce costs and save time by automating manual, rules-based processes that are typically performed by human operators.
Possible activities / tasks of RPA bots
RPA bots can use the system applications like a human user. Bots are capable of these but please note that this is not a comprehensive list. RPA is too flexible for us to specify full list of bot actions
- Launching and using various applications including
- Extract email contents and attachments
- Automatically storing them to repositories or directories
- Fetching data from various sources
- Compiling the data`
- Pass information into multiple systems and processes
- Logging into applications
- Moving files and folders
- Integrating with enterprise tools by
- Connecting to system APIs
- Reading and writing to databases
- Augmenting your data by
- Connecting to system APIs
- Data processing
- Following logical rules such as “if/then” rules
- Making calculations
- Extracting data from documents and attachments
- Inputting data to forms
- Extracting and reformatting data into reports or dashboards
- Merging data from multiple sources
- Copying and pasting data
Identify how RPA can automate your business processes
RPA use cases/application areas
A number of business processes can be automated with RPA. Some examples that exist in almost all industries are:
- Application processing
- Order to cash processes.
- Rules based tasks like underwriting, claims processing.
- Patient management
- Contact centre processes.
- Procure to Pay process
- Data migration and entry
- Scheduled report preparation and distribution
There are also numerous industry (e.g. telecom, financial services) or business function (e.g. marketing, sales) specific processes that can be automated with RPA.
For more details and to understand how Armaniz can help with RPA, please get in touch with one of our experts today.
