RPA capabilities can create the next industrial revolution.

One of the biggest advantages RPA has brought to businesses is the ability to automate dangerous tasks. Our world is driven by technologies and physical robots are gearing up to take charge of repetitive tasks. Industrial welding, deep-sea explorations, disaster response, and mining excavations are some of the tasks that are going to become relaxed. Equivalent to this is RPA is the industrial sector. In short, robotic process automation will automate mundane digital work with the help of software robots or bots.

Let's take the example of a customer service organization. Customer service executives are responsible for creating reports concerning customer experience and grievances. Traditionally, they would copy data from CRM systems, paste it into a word template report, convert that into a PDF file, and email that to the superior in charge. RPA can completely automate this cycle, freeing up employees' time to do something more productive.  Additionally, RPA bots will do the job error-free and work round the clock.

The Power of Automation

What can be automated? Any repetitive, technology-depend task can be automated, be it tedious copy-pasting to complex tasks like identifying customer dissatisfaction and escalating the issue to a human worker, and other front and back-office tasks.

Generally speaking, tasks are being automated without catching people's attention. The auto-fill option that pops up whenever you have to sign in or fill a form is also a sign of RPA. In the same way, this technology can also automate processes that require humans to interact with applications like CRM, accounting, ERP, and supply chain systems and databases.

Digital transformation is at the top of every CEO's mind as they witness technologies deliver real benefits like fewer errors, improved productivity, and reduced costs. By creating a workforce that is a combination of humans and machines, organizations can ensure maximum productivity across domains. Bots will take care of repetitive work and humans will work on tasks that require creativity, intuition, and judgment. This is a win-win formula.

From a technical point of view, RPA refers to recording the way humans work. An RPA bot is programmed in such a way that it can imitate the way a human worker will perform the task perfectly. But this technology comes with limitations. There are situations where bots need humans to make critical decisions. For instance, when a chatbot detects an unhappy customer, human intervention is required. This is possible with attended bots that are designed to work in collaboration with humans.  When this bot encounters an issue, it notifies the user prompting them to the next steps. In an industry like insurance, thousands of claims are needed to process quickly and accurately, maintaining compliance. Here, an attended RPA bot is the right solution to put to work.

Making Work, Smart!

Artificial intelligence is by far the most disruptive technology in this era. When AI meets RPA, new automation abilities are created. Cognitive automation is one of those capabilities that can enable bots to process unstructured data, thanks to ML and AI. This is significant because most of the data in this world are unstructured. An employee is exposed to several emails, chats, website content, sheets, and other forms of data. Ordinary bots cannot make sense of this data, but AI-powered bots will be able to look at a bill and extract information related to payment because it understands pattern recognition, like humans.

These RPA capabilities will help organizations innovate and make lives better. A recent study conducted by the University of London showed that worked in organizations, who had been augmented with bots and not replaced, scored 33% higher on rating their workplace. This tells that RPA bots take over repetitive tasks, free up workers, and give them time to develop their skills elsewhere, boosting employee morale.