Today, organizations are leveraging on the power of RPA to enable and accelerate digital transformation.
Professor Leslie Willcocks of the London School of Economics described robotic process automation (RPA) as taking the robot out of the human. We, at TeBS, feel that RPA is the process of getting work done in the quickest, most inexpensive and accurate way possible.
In RPA, robots are programmed to follow the standard operating procedure based on rules and controlled frameworks.
The average knowledge worker on a back office process is estimated to take on several hours of repetitive, routine tasks. These uninteresting tasks often drain workers of their energy and motivation to work hard. RPA software can release workers from the mundaneness of such everyday work life. Moreover, dull and repetitive jobs often increase the chances of human oversights. Incorporating RPA in the business environment can largely eliminate these issues, while consequently, ensuring a positive return on investment (ROI).
Below are three ways in which RPA can bring a positive change to your organization.
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Offloading High-Volume Mundane Tasks onto Robots
We all know of that dreaded data-entry job where workers painstakingly feed scores of information into computer databases. Just like record-keeping jobs, there are several other jobs, within every industry, that are repetitive and rule-based. Researchers at Florida State University found that dull, unstimulating work environments have had a detrimental effect on the average worker’s cognitive health. On the contrary, taking up new, challenging tasks and picking up specialized skills were examples of activities that strengthened workers’ cognitive performance.
RPA will not only free workers off the mind-numbing monotony of the getting through the day, it can also carry out the same tasks in a much more efficient way. Robots make almost no errors and with a 24/7 work cycle, backlogs will no longer be a concern. Today, RPA is capable of more than just filling databases with bits of information. Visual recognition, speech translation and excellent data processing capabilities are just a few traits that explain the recent hype around the technology!
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Specialized Training and Improved Internal Processes Boost Morale and Productivity
The offloading of dreary administrative tasks onto robots also means that existing employees have a lot more time to spare. Organizations can, in fact, rely on fewer employees, focused on more complex and specialized tasks. Money can be invested in training employees of jobs that require case-specific consideration and a higher level of reasoning.
Another point to note is that tedious internal processes do not only affect employees directly involved in the process. They also have an impact on the organization, as a whole. Take human resources (HR) for example: Considering the nature of bureaucracy, nothing is more frustrating that feeding the same information repeatedly across various platforms and for various entities – the government, internal records, specific departments, and of course, the insurers.
RPA solves this dilemma by streamlining HR through the organized consolidation of data and employee information into one platform. A custom-built robot, designed to actualize the essential onboarding processes, can ensure the personalized and smooth integration of employees. This will, consequently, reduce the burden of HR professionals, allowing them to invest their time on result-driven work, like market research.
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Quality Service Enhances Customer Experience
Unlike humans, who may skip a process step, or not be consistent in the processing of a transaction, an RPA robot performs tasks without bias or any variation.
In addition to empowering your employees with training and opportunities to grow professionally, RPA also allows employees to focus on delivering the desired customer experience. In today’s world, customer satisfaction is of utmost importance in ensuring a consistent revenue. In the B2B world, there is an immense demand for businesses that deliver continuous value. RPA can therefore, support the customer-facing team so as to offer greater value through personalized service.
This demonstrates how RPA essentially empowers employees within the organization in order to drive productivity and build a positive brand image.
How does RPA ensure ROI?
First, rather than paying workers monthly salaries while taking into consideration the cost of human errors, organizations can invest in a robot that ensures quick and accurate results. Second, the cost saved from having to pay fewer salaries can be put into research or employee training. Investing in employees thus, improves quality of services dispensed as well as higher employee morale. With fewer robot-like responsibilities, job satisfaction and thus, productivity is bound to improve!
In figuring out whether your organization can benefit from RPA, you must ask yourself a few question. How many of your employees carry out repetitive tasks on a daily basis? Have you lost clients over human errors made by your employees? Do your employees lack enthusiasm and the drive to grow with the business? These questions will help you determine if RPA can bring your organization substantial returns on investment (ROI).