Robotic process automation (RPA) is a software technology that makes it easy to build software robots to deploy, manage and emulate human actions interacting with digital systems and software. Just like people, software robots can do things like understanding what’s on a screen, completing the right keystrokes, navigating systems, identifying and extracting data, and performing a wide range of defined actions. But software robots can do it faster and more consistently than people, without the need to get up and stretch or take a coffee break.
It’s been quite some time since automation progressed from being a ‘nice-to-have’ or a ‘luxury’ supplement to an integral part of several business processes and software products. During this journey, the capabilities of automation have been augmented greatly. This article looks at how your business can implement RPA to reap the maximum benefits.
How does Robotic Process Automation help your Digital Transformation Strategy?
RPA uses ‘bots,’ which are software agents trained to interact and perform tasks on Windows, Mainframe, Web, Java, and several other legacy applications just like a real person would. These bots interact with the designated application based on a set of pre-defined rules provided by humans.
Processes handled by RPA should be consistent — meaning they occur the same way every time and are data-driven. Furthermore, since these bots work 24/7 and 365 days a year, they are ideally suited for high-volume tasks. For example, the rules prescribed to an RPA tool could be as simple as: ‘Check swipe record of employees and email an attendance report to HR’ or they could be complex with a series of steps.
RPA can also be instructed to perform actions based on certain conditions. For example: ‘If a student’s attendance is less than 60% for a month, send a notification to the student’s email address.’ The bots can be trained through recordings, configuring data sets, or implementing loops for repetition. RPA also allows the development and maintenance of reusable components that can map to multiple bots to perform several actions in parallel, resulting in a quicker turnaround time. RPA tools can also read and write data from and to different data sources based on the results of the processes executed by the bots.
Also Read, ‘Risking’ it With the Next Wave of RPA
How does an RPA framework work at a high level?
Good design is at the heart of the most successful automation. Before beginning development, the developer should know the manual process’s details. Make sure the process design document (PDD) captures the workflow and the keystrokes. When a developer uses the PDD to design an automated solution, it ensures that all automation is done uniformly and orderly.
Assisted Vs. Unassisted Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
Assisted RPA
In this RPA process, the bots are deployed on a desktop. Bots are fed with rules to perform the time-consuming and complex portions of a process, whereas humans assist the bots in performing the relatively simpler parts of the task.
Unassisted RPA
Here, the bots are housed in a centralized server to perform the entirety of a task, such as end-to-end workflows, scheduling of workflows, and many more.
Business Use Cases of Robotic Process Automation
RPA for Patient Registration
In the pandemic era, the number of footfalls in hospitals has shot through the roof. Managing an unimaginably huge volume of patients tracking and storing all of their data is time-consuming, tedious, and prone to error. Inpatient registration is a standard, repetitive and data-driven process. When done by RPA, it will be quicker, with far fewer errors, and result in tremendous savings to hospitals in terms of labor costs.
RPA for Payroll Processing
Processing employee payrolls is another standard, systematic process that most companies do manually every month. It consumes much time to review attendance/swipe records, calculate payable salary and deductions, categorize and store data, create payslips, and trigger emails to each employee. This is an ideal scenario for an RPA implementation as the task is voluminous, consistent, and recurring.
Setting the desired conditions to be the number of hours worked/leaves available, RPA can be fed data regarding the components of the salary for each employee based on employee ID. After the data is processed, the RPA can be configured to mail the payslip to each employee. This reduces processing time costs and increases accuracy.
RPA for Credit Card Application Processing
Several financial institutions are using RPA to process credit card applications, which involves collating information, analyzing the data in the documents submitted, running background checks against available databases, evaluating credit scores, and concluding on whether the card should be issued or not.
RPA acts as a platform to facilitate codeless automated interaction with applications. Without RPA, automating the communication between different systems would require a myriad of connectors to enable AI engines to pull data from, process, and trigger actions to various systems that contain the data needed for processing. On the other hand, RPA can only “do” and cannot “think” independently. Furthermore, its actions are strictly based on the rules defined, and if there are errors in the rules or changes in the process, the RPA is bound to fail.
Also Read, Intelligent Automation and Artificial Intelligence
Robotic Process Automation Services from Payoda
With Robotic Process Automation, Payoda helps clients adapt to the changing digital world and overcome the challenges it brings. As a result, enterprises can improve operational efficiency, increase ROI, and magnify IT solutions with new technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning when using our RPA Services in common business activities.
Contact us, and one of our specialists will get in touch with you to discuss how we can help you succeed with your RPA project.
