RPA – A Three Way Street - Organisation, Employees, and Customers
RPA is transforming industries and businesses. Across the globe, organisations are increasingly turning to Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to improve operational efficiency, productivity, and quality and customer satisfaction.
The demand for RPA is experiencing a remarkable annual growth rate of 60.5% from 2014 to 2020. The market value of RPA is expected to reach USD 5 billion by 2020. One of the prime factors that set RPA apart from other technologies is the timeframe for return on investment which can be as short as 6-9 months. RPA can yield operation cost benefits of up to 45 percent.
With traditional workflow automation tools, a software developer makes a list of the tasks to be automated, by loading it onto the back-end system using internal application programme interfaces (API). RPA, on the other hand, is the technology which allows a software, or in more real terms, a ‘robot’ to emulate and integrate the actions of a human interacting within digital systems to execute a business function.
In a nutshell, RPA is the culmination of the use of software with artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities in order to go through with high volume, more repeatable tasks, which would otherwise require human touch.
The benefits that RPA provides to an employee, organisation and customer go hand-in-hand. It acts as a three way street.
Reduces human intervention - RPA helps an organisation to eliminate human intervention and fast tracks processes with 100% accuracy. In this way, an organisation can save their employees’ time for more important and analytical tasks. Concurrently, employees are able to move onto more logical and intellectually stimulating work, rather than the same mundane tasks. RPA simplifies the process by taking care of redundant tasks, allowing employees and the organisation to venture out into more complex functions.
Increases accuracy and compliance – Accuracy and compliance are two sides of the same coin with regards to RPA. Unlike human, the software program does not get tired and carries out repetitive tasks under the pre-described standard and rules. Being cost effective, RPA provides a high return on investment (ROI) in a short time by saving processing cost of up to 80%. It simplifies the mundane nature of replicated tasks and provides marginal gains on these processes. This increases the overall productivity of an organisation.
Reduces processing time – Processing customer information is a mammoth task for organisations due to the stringent compliance requirements. Companies are required to collect the customer’s data, validate it, compile the data, and update the data in the future. The entire process is time-consuming which requires immense efforts on the part of human resource and patience on the part of the consumer to wait until all the information is processed.
With the implementation of RPA, the entire cycle can be automated with significant benefits and reduced timelines. This reduces the query handling time by 80%.
Simplifies and enhances customer interaction – RPA streamlines processes and organizes tasks into smaller and effective units, which in turn enhances interactions with the customers. As per research, RPA reduces customer response time by 90%. In this fast paced world, neither an organisation nor its customers have the time for complex interactions. Process automation aids customers in their search for quick solutions, while providing the organisation with effective results and returns on their investment in this technology.
RPA is here to stay! In this fast paced world, a competitive advantage is what differentiates one organisation from another. Integrating RPA effectively into an organisation’s framework is something that could potentially take a company to the next level. Automating regular, common-place processes, while allowing employees to focus on more rewarding tasks have a three-fold effect with positive impact reaching to customers, employees and the organisation as a whole.
