The concept of working remotely was already becoming an increasingly popular model across many industries even before the advent of the coronavirus on the world stage. Since the world has witnessed the outspread and impact of the COVID-19 virus on business and everyone's life in general; businesses have switched to remote teams to deal with the impact of the global pandemic. 

The proliferation of ever-evolving communication and collaboration technologies like Skype, Teams, Zoom, etc. has enabled businesses to operate and collaborate remotely effectively. Consequently, people realized that automation is the next step to effective collaboration; whether you are working remotely or in the office.

In the current pandemic situation, since there is no choice, do not let the pandemic go to waste and make the most of this new normal. Forward-thinking enterprises with their fingers firmly on the pulse of the latest technological developments are turning to innovative technology and embracing the digital transformation like never before. 

Automation processes like Robotic Process Automation (RPA), leverages bots for quick and easy automation of repetitive and time-consuming processes. It is just the right technology, offering effortless inroads to boosting work from home productivity without depending too much on IT- support staff and saving valuable time and money.

The idea of writing this blog is to share applications of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to be more productive especially while working remotely.

1.Seamlessly integrating disparate platforms

Robots are being deployed to integrate disparate platforms and applications, either without any coding and no APIs required or low coding, enabling the seamless transmission of business-critical data across enterprises so the right information is always available to the right people when they need it.

2.Extract and migrate data from different sources 

If you want to upgrade your legacy systems, say cloud apps/services, merging separate databases by linking data providers, or simply consolidating your knowledge infrastructure, you need to perform data extraction/migration.

RPA helps very efficiently in data extraction and migration from different sources. RPA solutions ensure that it is error-free, offers high precision and stability of the output to mitigate the legacy decommission risks.

3.Setting up home workstations
Robots are used to automate processes to facilitate remote working, enabling quick and trouble-free registration of new hardware, the setting up of VPN access and the linking of a specific employee ID to the new device's registration numbers.

4.Send automated reminders and consolidate response
Ease your workload and to-do list by automating reminders (weekly/monthly/specific date& time). Leverage automation to get robots to aggregate everyone's updates and send out a summary report or email the following day. 

5.Effective meeting notes

As most teams have moved to remote working; it has become even important than ever to ensure that everyone involved in the meeting is on the same page. Hence, it is important to have meeting notes shared. Especially in the case where people could not be part of the discussion due to time zone difference, personal reasons, or in case someone needs to drop out in the middle of a call. 

In such a scenario, using robots that automatically take the notes (mostly based on speech to text technology) and sends them via email to everyone on the calendar invite will be very helpful in saving the effort and bringing inefficiency.

6.Eliminate meeting conflicts 

When working remotely, there are no causal water cooler chit-chats or informal discussions, hence everyone is scheduling meetings for discussions, which otherwise could have taken place informally in an office set-up. As a result, there are a lot of overlaps that happen. Automation tools/robots use automation to identify conflicts in your Google calendar and send a request to reschedule to the owners of the meeting you can't join due to overlap.

7.Get a list of tasks pending 

Using robots or automation, you can manage your task lists. Those using Jira or similar tools can utilize a robot to help manage a heavy task load/logged issues more quickly and easily. A robot will search within all the Jira projects that you are aligned with. Further, you can apply the filter for specific keywords or issues that have "Open" status, and then you can automate emails with the titles and links at the start of your day.

8.Copy & pasting data and collecting statistical data

RPA can support significantly in copying and pasting data from one system to another, and transferring data between applications. It increases efficiency and diminishes mistakes. It makes you more productive and frees your time for utilizing your higher-value skills like data analysis.

Producing good and clearly structured/organized data, is also something RPA can significantly help with. Automating data collection eliminates many of the human complacencies that contribute to 'bad' data. RPA is controlled by a set of pre-defined rules, which is a benefit in this field.

In absence of automation technology like RPA, a large number of employees in the big and small businesses perform such activities consuming a lot of time and the additional risk of errors.

9.Higher data security

Humans can make mistakes in the manual processes also get distracted from their work. On the other hand, robots cannot be distracted and give their complete focus to the task assigned. It will not allow unauthorized access to the data. It will inherit safety and security infrastructure and follow the guidelines given.

10.Logging Employee Attendance and Employee Hours

Robots help log each remote employee's work schedule and also send them automated reminders to ensure compliance, as well as automatically logging their attendance and work hours.

Robotic process automation finishes repetitive tasks more speedily and accurately than humans, there is no second thought about that. It frees your time to perform higher-level data analysis so you can support your teams/clients better. In case you are not using any automation/RPA solution; its time you find yourself one that suits your needs.