Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is one of the most exciting developments in Business Process Management (BPM) in recent history. Some industry experts believe it may be even more transformational than cloud computing. Robotic process automation (RPA) is the use of software with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning capabilities to handle high-volume, repeatable tasks that previously required humans to perform. These tasks can include queries, calculations and maintenance of records and transactions.

RPA technology, sometimes called a software robot or bot, mimics a human worker, logging into applications, entering data, calculating and completing tasks, and logging out.

RPA software isn’t part of an organization’s IT infrastructure. Instead, it sits on top of it, enabling a company to implement the technology quickly and efficiently — all without changing the existing infrastructure and systems.

BENEFITS OF RPA

What is different about the latest wave of RPA is the maturity of both technology as well as the business processes it is applied to. The market for RPA is advancing rapidly—and widespread adoption of robotic automation could radically reshape the BPM marketplace. In my view, this transformation will be driven by a pursuit of five outcomes:

• Cost reduction:Software robots are typically at least one third the price of an offshore FTE.
• Efficiency:RPA can operate 24X7 without breaks provided the underlying core applications are available.
• Accuracy:Human FTEs make data entry mistakes, whereas robots perform the same task the same way every time provided there is no judgment call required while processing transactions.
• Improved audit and regulatory compliance:Robots can provide a detailed audit logs enabling advanced business analytics and improved compliance.
• Ease of change management:Robots preserve application and data integrity by leveraging the existing application presentation layer and re-using existing application logic, databases and validation without deep understanding and re-engineering.

Applications of RPA

Some of the top applications of RPA include:

• Customer service:RPA can help companies offer better customer service by automating contact center tasks, including verifying e-signatures, uploading scanned documents and verifying information for automatic approvals or rejections.
• Accounting:Organizations can use RPA for general accounting, operational accounting, transactional reporting and budgeting.
• Financial services:Companies in the financial services industry can use RPA for foreign exchange payments, automating account openings and closings, managing audit requests and processing insurance claims.
• Healthcare:Medical organizations can use RPA for handling patient records, claims, customer support, account management, billing, reporting and analytics.
• Human resources:RPA can automate HR tasks, including onboarding and offboarding, updating employee information and timesheet submission processes.
• Supply chain management:RPA can be used for procurement, automating order processing and payments, monitoring inventory levels and tracking shipments.

C-level decision-making around RPA

• Though automation software is expected to replace up to 140 million full-time employees worldwide by 2025, many high-quality jobs will be created for those who maintain and improve RPA software.
• When software robots do replace people in the enterprise, C-level executives need to be responsible for ensuring that business outcomes are achieved and new governance policies are met.
• Robotic process automation technology also requires that the CTO/CIO take more of a leadership role and assume accountability for the business outcomes and the risks of deploying RPA tools.
• Additionally, the COO, CIO and chief human resources officer, as well as the relevant C-level executive who owns the process being automated, should all work toward ensuring the availability of an enterprise-grade, secure platform for controlling and operating bots across systems.

Where the robotic process automation market is heading

To sum up: RPA is not new. Without a doubt you and your organization have already been touched by robotic automation in one form or another. However, they say there’s nothing as powerful as an idea whose time has come. And the time for RPA-powered transformation is now.

A Global Market Insights Inc. report expects the RPA market to reach $5 billion by 2024. The increased adoption of RPA technologies by organizations to enhance their capabilities and performance and boost cost savings will reportedly drive the growth of the robotic process automation market most during that time.

Automation will redefine the next phase of digital transformation as it delivers new levels of customer value coming from higher quality and dependability, deeper personalization, faster delivery of products, and greater convenience offerings. Robotic process automation (RPA) is growing at a fast pace with projections from Gartner forecasting that the RPA business will grow 57% over the next year. Here are the major RPA predictions for 2019 that are all set to redefine the new year and the years to come.

1. Rise of Artificial Intelligence into RPA

The Artificial Intelligence (AI) wave is here and RPA is an essential component of that change. As we prepare to welcome the new year, Artificial Intelligence will gain more prominence and RPA will slowly merge with Artificial Intelligence to deliver an integrated business value, and this will propel the rise of the Intelligent Process Automation (IPA). Estimates show that in the coming years, more than 40% of enterprises will create state-of-the-art digital workers by combining AI with their Robotic Process Automation (RPA). Industry estimates show that the RPA market will reach to $1.7 billion in 2019 and $2.9 billion in 2021.

2. Centralisation Dominates Chaos

In the years to come, enterprises will have their automation centers in place which will bring change management, unpredictability, control, auditing, and security issues all together. These trends will raise governance concerns throughout 2019 making enterprises invest in central coordination through automation centers which are designed on the basis of unifying frameworks.

3. Licences Decline and Consultancy Increase

In the coming years, licenses for RPA will decline and this will not be the main revenue driver. As the number of robotic vendors increase, expect more of free trails which will eventually cause a hit on RPA licences. While on the other hand, the RPA industry will see more of consultancy revenues, driven out from core consulting, process documentations and pilot POCs.

4. Domination of Attended Robots

Attended robots that work alongside humans and augment workforce will accelerate past unattended robots in the new year. According to UiPath’s chief evangelist Guy Kirkwood, the ratio of unattended to attended robots is increasing, from the earlier 70:30, to the current levels at 54:46; the industry is witnessing a definite rise of attended robots. This figure is poised to reach at 50:50 when we ring the new year bells as the industry is ready to absorb more attended robots for automation solutions.

5. Public Sector will Embrace RPA

Gone are the days when RPA was the toast of the MNC’s and Private industries. The coming years will see an increasing dominance of RPA into public sector as governments across nationalities have woken up to the value of RPA which is witnessing a significant increase in citizen-centric services.

6. Employee Engagement will Continue

As industries increase their automation footprint, they add more and more employees to the RPA process. This will increase the employee engagement to new heights as more and more industries embrace RPA into their on-going business processes.

7. All Eyes on Unstructured Data

RPA products will continue to focus on unstructured data as information extraction from unstructured data sources gains an upper edge. Unstructured data sources like images, mails become the next information goldmine and organisations don’t want to miss this opportunity. This is making RPA vendors deploy OCR and AI technologies to structure data from invoices or orders in general, and then let a robot automate the process to give an immediate return of investment.

8. Job market will See Changes

Automation technologies have an impact on employment figures, and industry estimates insist that nearly half of jobs will be destroyed with due credit to automation. However, the new trend is that humans and machines will collaborate in many workflows and automation economy will create new jobs in the technology domain as designers, RPA specialists who improve user interfaces of chatbots and process experts will solve business problems.

9. Investment into Centres of Excellence

Experts predict that by the end of 2019, 40% of enterprises will have automation centers in place and will invest in centers of excellence or centralized coordination centers. These automation centers analyse which automation technologies applies to various business problems while driving base practices and technical compatibility and integration.

10. The Rise of Chatbots

 As consumer use of conversational interface continues to grow, Chatbots will be the next wave of RPA. 2019 and the successive years will witness voice and chat-enabled products become a norm into the industry. The rise of chatbots will augment the use of cognitive knowledge engines that focus on the creation and maintenance of a corporate memory with the objective of providing answers to customers and clients.

Are you excited to witness these predictions in the new-year? The reverse countdown has already started!!

Top Benefits of RPA Adoption

One of the top benefits of Robotic Process Automation adoption is it works on the graphic user interface. The Graphic User Interface helps users to interact with the systems more effectively. But in case of tradition systems, they supported only command line user interface in which users had to write a command for every task.

In case of the graphic user interface, you have that privilege to see every command like if you are doing which requires copy command. Then there is a copy tool for copying data. This is one of the advantages of the RPA tools.

We have drafted top benefits of Robotic process automation adoption which also includes business benefits of robotic process automation. Keep the reading on to check the below-listed business benefits of RPA.

1. Enhanced Commercial Outcomes

Robotic Process Automation is responsible for enhancing the commercial outcomes of the companies. It is one of the best advantages of RPA tools. Artificial Intelligence along with Robotic Process Automation helps to decrease few stepping stones. For example, if you are looking for a candidate to work for you in cold calling, selling product etc. then Robotic Process Automation is the best tool to use as it will help you to enhance these activities.

2. Reduced Costs and Operational Risks

Robotic Process Automation is also responsible for reducing the cost of businesses in few manners; such as it can reduce the cost of manpower. Artificial Intelligence applications result in a decrease in errors. But in the case of humans, there are more chances to get errors. In technical terms, it is called operational risks that are reduced by the adoption of RPA. So, both of these are considered the best example of business benefits of robotic process automation.

3. Reduced Paper Use/Waste to Decrease Output Variability

Use of papers is known as e-waste. It is one of the biggest threat to our environment. Robotic Process Automation also helps to decrease e-waste and it’s one of the top business benefits of RPA. It is providing a digital world in which you can communicate via digital medium without harming our environment, as there is no use of paper.

Robotic Process Automation also decreases output variability. Duplicity is one of the reasons to get an inaccurate output. Artificial Intelligence application along with Robotic Process Automation deals with output variability.

Also, digitization helps to save and secure data into many forms. You don’t have to keep track of data as it supports cloud for storage.

4. Improved Employee Engagement with Better Customer Experience

Employee Engagement and Customer Experience are the two aspects which are the most crucial for any businesses. Robotic Process Automation projects are responsible for many activities like the implementation of necessary steps, retrieving data etc. This also includes employee engagement and so Robotic Process Automation increases employee engagement. Customer Experience is also one of the key advantages of RPA which are very much essential for businesses. When it comes to Artificial Intelligence, there are few examples which reflects that customer experience can be improved while using RPA tools.

5. Doesn’t Require New IT Infrastructure

If any enterprise is opting Robotic Process Automation tools, then it is not required to adopt and implement any new IT infrastructure. It is one of the best benefits of robotic process automation adoption. Other automation solutions are not providing these features. This is why Robotic Process Automation is different from others.

New in the world of Robotic Process Automation? Start with an introduction to RPA and Blue Prism.

6. Flexibility and Simplicity

One of the top business benefits of RPA is that you don’t have to write codes. It is not compulsory for anyone to have programming knowledge for learning RPA tools. It also provides flexibility to the users in terms of transferring from any other domain to RPA. You can even transfer any complex process to the machine with some little effort.

7. Analytics and Insights

Robotic Process Automation provides tools to store data so that you can analyze data when you require insight, reporting or organizing tasks. The information stored in RPA tools also helps users to provide various operations in terms of weather reports, timeline etc.

8. Faster Service

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) uses bots to handle queries of users. Tasks can be done in short-term in an accurate and effective manner. There is a high probability of human errors in any given task. To increase quality and accuracy, Robotic Process Automation is the best tool.

9. Well-defined Governance Arrangements

Robotic Process Automation derives enterprises to describe strong authority arrangements about Information Technology submissions. It is due to compelling administrations to decide about the ownership of every product or application which is derived from Robotic Process Automation tools. Foremost to a stronger description of admittance privileges for every submission will eventually be essential for the usage of the exact access in terms of robots for which the access is also like humans.

10. Highly Scalable 

Enterprises or businesses can make alterations established on seasonality as they are capable of scaling up and down their operations. To ensure the need for scalability, Robotic Process Automation plays a vital role.

Also Read: Preparation Guide for Blue Prism Developer Certification Exam

11. Security of Virtual Workforces

When you talk about robotic process automation, then security plays a crucial role. To manage the tasks executed by RPA tools, it is quite easier when compared with the others. They provide security layers to secure data. It is one of the top benefits of RPA.

12. Driving Process Improvement

Robotic Process Automation first requires to perform data analysis task. After analyzing, every process goes for automation. So it is an extra advantage for any process which improves every step which is taken by the user.

13. Enhanced Capability for SLA Scrutiny 

Robotic Process Automation solutions permit the administration to distinguish the development of SLAs in the actual period. Control panel is available for tracking the productivity of computer-generated personnel. It is also responsible for addressing common problematic operations as well as backend operations which will involve tasks from back-office managers.

14. Removes Client’s Pain Points

One of the major benefits of RPA is it removes points which volatiles various terms of enterprise companies. It enhances the experience of users virtually and removes the pain points. If we talk about traditional culture, in a record book, it is not easy to find particular information in a short time span. But with the use of Robotic Process Automation tools, it is quite easy to perform this type of tasks, and even much more complex tasks.

15. Being a Trendsetter 

Robotic Process Automation is the latest technology which is rapidly altering backend operations. It is also empowering better inventions. It also helps human labor to give attention to generating new ideas.

Also Read: Role and Responsibilities of Blue Prism Developer

How Can You Experience the Benefits of RPA?

You can experience various benefits of RPA while using its different tools. It is continuously trying to upgrade it for the human workforce as well as fulfilling their needs. Robotic Process Automation is not going to replace the human workforce as most of the crucial work is still done by humans with machine labor. You still can’t experience work on fully automated production plants with no humans.

Robotic Process Automation permits old-style occupations to ensure more operative human labor with its various tools. As it provides quality, scalability, security, reduced costs and analysis on one platform, it also provides freedom to work independently in various fields such as calling services, selling products etc.

There is a high scope of Robotic Process Automation. Few major fields are replacing with Robotic Process Automation for example data entry, copying, and data extraction. As per a report, in the coming years, there will be thousands of jobs in RPA. Moreover, the growth in the RPA industry is also high. In a simple manner, if there is a computer process involved, then you must experience the benefits of RPA.

Final Words

So, we have tried our best to explain the business benefits of RPA. With the increasing adoption of RPA in businesses and enterprises, the demand for RPA professionals is also increasing. Hope this article will help you to achieve your dreams with career growth in RPA domain.

Whizlabs is aimed to help you in achieving your goals with its online course and practice test series. So, if you are aspired to build a career in RPA Blue Prism as a certified developer, the practice tests for Blue Prism Developer and Blue Prism professional developer will help you reach the goal.

In case you have any query or want to know more about RPA, just put a comment below or write us at Whizlabs Helpdesk. We’ll be happy to respond and resolve your query.