RPA: Robots Are Not Replacing Humans
There’s this phobia in the mind of many that the invention and continuous integration of robots into the IT systems of various (modern) businesses will render humans incompetent and as well, increase unemployment.
Meanwhile, robotic technologies are employed to enhance efficiency and productivity in a work environment through Robotic Process Automation (RPA), thereby enabling humans to focus on prioritized task, work faster, and efficiently.
The integration of automation bots to handle repetitive tasks can slash 60% of the workload, allowing employees to focus more on important tasks
What is Robotic Process Automation (RPA)?
Robotic Process Automation is a software technology that clones human activities to execute basic and repetitive tasks. RPA is a computer software bot that handles tedious, repetitive, and manual tasks that are usually performed by humans such as, reentering data in multiple places, sending a receipt message, confirmation emails, and so on.
The basic concept of RPA is similar to a manufacturing firm that created a special robot to handle a particular portion of their manufacturing operation, that could consume more human effort and time to complete — just that in this scene, there is no physical robot.
Regardless of how good the employees are, an automation bot is more efficient and can multi-task even faster than 3 employees could dare to.
Who Uses RPA
Considering what benefit RPA brings to modern business, automation technology is an undeniable recipe for the survival of modern businesses.
RPA is the bridge to meeting customers’ growing needs and expectations in all industries. Primarily, RPA is recognized for its efficiency and cheapness to operate. These, coupled with increased demand for businesses to improve their services, have made RPA a hotter cake in the business world.
Under here are 3 common industries that are leveraging RPA to improve their operations.
1. Customer Service
Pre-time, customer service has been characterized by live agents responding to customer complaints and requests. Customer service agents would spend excessive amount of time attending to a particular request one at a time while other callers wait in queues.
Integration of RPA bots to customer service systems such as IVRs and Visual IVRs created a possibility for customers to satisfy their intent independently through self-service, while customer support agents focus on a more trivial task.
Customer service automation bots are programmed to execute certain requests or complaints, if it falls outside a pre-determined course of action, such action can then be carried out by humans.
2. Finance & Accounting
The nature of financial and accounting operations is tedious, time-consuming, and error-prone, yet very crucial to the daily functions of an organization. Imagine tasks like Invoice processing and other related tasks in finance and accounting being dependent to be processed manually.
Let’s take Invoice Processing as an instant. This function can be time-wasting when handled manually by humans. An automation bot can receive, read, document, and disseminate relevant data to where it needs to go.
Also, automating all other responsibilities such as data entry and processing can catalyze information delivery to customers compared to when it will be handled manually.
3. Human Resources (Hiring & Onboarding Employees)
Hiring the right candidate for a job role involves series of repetitive rule-based tasks that could take weeks to be completed — from the selection of candidates to screening, to employing qualified applicants.
An automation bot can source for applicants and screen resumes of candidates faster, accurately, and impartially.
And when the HR Team hires employees, RPA bots send out offers to selected candidates.
Also, sending out (rejection) mails to unqualified candidates can be done in a jiffy just after the selection process in the respective hiring stages has been completed.
In Conclusion:
- Robotic Process Automation is an evolving technology that helps (business) organizations to deliver high-value services at a cheap cost.
- Although the popularity of automation has birthed the thought that integration of RPA technology will displace humans in their workspace.
- Just like every other technological innovation, the world has witnessed — Automation is here to make humans work faster and smarter.
The most important fact to take away here is that RPA assures a good turnaround compared to when a task is to be handled by humans.
