An Introduction to RPA
RPA is an emerging technology that is rewriting the story of work; freeing up human resources to prioritize more complex tasks. RPA enables organizations to accelerate their digital transformation efforts and generate a higher return on investment (ROI) from their staff. I’d like you to join me as we familiarize ourselves with RPA and why it matters.
How does your day-to-day work schedule look like? Before diving into deep work, do you have mundane tasks to tick off your to-do list? RPA to the rescue!
RPA stands for Robotic Process Automation; it refers to the software technology used to create and manage software robots running on physical or virtual machines that emulate user behaviour. No, we do not create physical robots(though re-watching The Terminator cyborg gave me some ideas) but instead, create virtual ones… think bots.
Software bots imitate repetitive human tasks such as filling in forms and completing routine analyses and reports. Advanced bots can perform cognitive processes, like holding conversations, chatting and understanding unstructured data, and applying advanced machine learning(ML) models to make complex decisions.
Creating bots/software robots to do the repetitive, high-volume tasks frees humans to focus on prioritized work; innovating, collaborating, creating and making more sales. The business unit gets a boost too: higher productivity and efficiency.
How does RPA imitate human behaviour?
Let’s take an example of populating an Excel sheet with data from a database. RPA can access information through integrations with legacy systems, and front-end applications (through APIs). This allows the automation to have access to data thus enabling it to behave similarly to a human worker, by logging into the database, copying data (through defined queries/asks), and then pasting it to the Excel sheet online.
In the next article, we will look into what can be automated, and the tools used in RPA.
