There is a growing, disruptive trend in the way work gets done. If you can leverage this trend, it will create big savings on labor and managed services costs.
Traditionally, many manufacturers would outsource to foreign labor in order to save money. But now with Robotic Process Automation (RPA), outsourcing overseas is quickly becoming a thing of the past, as companies switch from manual labor to digital labor for transactional activities.
RPA is the use of technology to perform often repetitive tasks. An automatic email reply is an example of RPA in its simplest form. Take this concept and cast it over every process in an enterprise and you’ll see how automation could easily improve business processes across verticals.
RPA works by using programmed software, based on your specific inputs. Essentially the software or “bot” is automatically capturing data and reacting to triggered events & responses within your systems. Today RPA is having a large impact on financial services, healthcare, retail, and human resources.
In highly regulated industries, the cost of compliance continues to climb. Utilizing RPA can drastically reduce these costs and make compliance fast, cheap, and easy. RPA is essentially software or “bots”. These bots are becoming preferred over manual labor for efficiency, accuracy, and for being less difficult to manage… no vacation days, no sick days -- just consistent work.
If you have employees who are doing repetitive and often tedious tasks, it's time to automate for everyone’s sake. Your employees will be happier, being freed up to work on more important tasks, and your bottom line will certainly increase.
RPA is a great way to get started on the road to machine learning and AI. If you haven’t already begun utilizing these technologies, RPA is a big step in the right direction.
Utilizing RPA will save on labor and staffing costs. Software bots are low-cost and easy to configure, often requiring little to no coding or custom software. RPA solutions are widely available off-the-shelf for a laundry list of enterprise needs.
Scale quickly and cheaply with bots. RPA can give your company the breathing room it needs by automating the simplest tasks and by providing your important employees the chance to go after bigger fish.
Another fantastic aspect of RPA is the ability to bolster simple automation with more robust technologies. Companies can add-on the latest in machine learning and speech recognition to their bots.
According to Gartner, by 2020 automation and AI will reduce employee requirements in business shared-service centers by 65%. Most major enterprises are already utilizing some simple form or RPA across their organization, from sales to HR or accounting.
Although RPA should do a lot of good for any enterprise, it does have a few major drawbacks. The most significant is reducing human capital. Essentially, RPA will eliminate enough tasks that it may also eliminate jobs. This will save your company on labor costs, but it may actually increase costs in less tangible ways. Many CIOs have refrained from implementing RPA due to this and risk of bot failure according to McKinsey & Company.
RPA is beginning to be faster than humans and often more scalable. Bots work tirelessly 24 hours a day from any location. They make fewer errors which reduces liability and risks. If you have workers dedicating lots of time on tedious tasks like filling out forms, receiving and filing applications, or even reading emails -- RPA will fix that and free up your team for better tasks.