Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is the fastest-growing automation technology. According to a leading analyst Gartner, RPA market forecast to grow at double-digit rates through 2024 despite economic pressures from COVID-19. Gartner also says, Global robotic process automation (RPA) software revenue is projected to reach $1.89 billion in 2021, an increase of 19.5% from 2020.
Businesses are increasingly relying on RPA to streamline their operations and reduce costs. RPA allows businesses to automate highly manual and repetitive tasks that consume a significant amount of human effort and time. With RPA, businesses can free up their human workforce and leverage their intelligence and unique abilities for innovation and other high-value outcomes. Let us better understand what is RPA, and how businesses can make the most of RPA in alignment with their business automation goals.
What is RPA?
RPA is a technology that uses software robots (bots) to perform work by mimicking human actions through the user interface of any system. Multiple systems can be involved in each business process that is automated without any need for integration or changes to the underlying system. This helps businesses to kick-start their automation journey cost-effectively.
RPA works best for some of the most common and repetitive rules-based business processes such as:
- Data extraction and data entry
- Data migration and validation
- Logging into any application
- Formatting excel sheets
- Updating database
- Moving files and folders
- Opening email and attachments
- Performing complex calculations
RPA Bots can do these tasks the same way every time, without any need for breaks. The Bots can be easily scaled up as per business needs to perform multiple tasks. Adoption of RPA is growing rapidly across industries, including banking and finance, healthcare, manufacturing, insurance, and life sciences. Some of the cross-industry use cases of RPA include invoice processing, payroll management, accounting reconciliation, and employee on-boarding.
What are the applications of RPA across industries?
RPA in banking and financial services:
Banks and financial institutions are the early adopters of smart technologies. They already offer full-service web portals and real-time account information. RPA implementation can further help them in automating a range of tasks such as loan processing, anti-money-laundering, customer request processing, account opening and know-your-customer (KYC), account closure, card activation, and audits, etc. RPA can help in delivering more consistent services at a lower cost while improving regulatory compliance.
RPA in Insurance:
RPA helps insurers automate high-volume and unstructured processes with ease. The insurance sector has been overwhelmed with obsolete models, discrete legacy systems, and paper-intensive processes. RPA can be leveraged to automate time-intensive and manual processes such as customer onboarding, claims processing, policy management, underwriting, regulatory compliance, and client servicing. RPA can significantly help insurers in reducing process timelines and lower costs.
RPA in Healthcare:
The healthcare industry suffers from an overload of data-intensive processes. Healthcare businesses need to increase efficiency while lowering operational costs and improving patient care. Healthcare professionals can leverage RPA to improve front-office support, enhance data confidentiality, and connect inflexible systems. Appointment scheduling, insurance claims processing, revenue cycle management, report automation, and patients’ record management are some of the RPA-eligible processes. With RPA, healthcare businesses can cut the process complexity and eliminate redundancies.
RPA in Manufacturing:
Forward-thinking manufacturing organizations are using RPA to improve operational agility, process quality and efficiency, and overall business growth. RPA allows manufacturers to upgrade their production processes and business functions, achieving significant labor relief. Procurement, inventory management, streamlining customer communication are some of the key areas where RPA can be applied successfully. Enhanced process visibility, real-time auditing, better decision making are some of the key benefits of RPA in manufacturing.
RPA in Lifesciences:
Many organizations in the life sciences field have started leveraging RPA technology to expedite the delivery of new drugs, improve pharmacovigilance, streamline manufacturing operations, and enhance supply chain management, to significantly improve business outcomes. RPA can help life science organizations to improve efficiency, modernize workflow, and build a happier workforce.
The automation possibilities are endless. Now that we have covered the basics of what RPA is and its application across different industries, let us look at the benefits of RPA.
The following infographic highlights some of the key benefits of RPA such as rapid return on investment (RoI), one hundred percent accuracy, enhanced productivity, complete reliability, better compliance with audit trail and operational agility. Moreover, RPA tools are quick to implement and deliver consistent output with identical processes.
Future of RPA
Though there are several benefits of RPA, the scope of automation is still limited. Industry analysts agree that companies cannot rely on RPA alone to realize enterprise-grade automation goals. It is time to move beyond automation silos and embrace Hyperautomation. Hyperautomation combines multiple technologies to achieve more than what is possible with RPA alone. Starting with RPA at the core, hyperautomation adds a range of complementary technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, business process management, and other advanced automation tools.
The future of RPA lies in the use of such complementary technologies alongside RPA to deliver more effective automation at scale. The orchestration of work between humans, RPA Bots, and algorithms will become more crucial than ever to achieve successful digital transformation.
Conclusion:
RPA is one of the most used automation technologies to not only reduce operational costs, but to operate with agility, speed, and improved process efficiency.
