What is RPA?
The process of automating business operations with the help of robots to reduce human intervention is said to be Robotic Process Automation (RPA).
Robotic process automation (RPA) is an emerging form of clerical process automation technology based on the notion of software robots or artificial intelligence (AI) workers.
If I have to elaborate on each of these terms one by one, then Robotics entities, which mimic human actions are called Robots.
A process is a sequence of steps which lead to meaningful activity. For example, the process of making tea or your favorite dish, etc.
Automation is any process which is done by a robot without human intervention.
So, when we summarize all these terms together, then mimicking human actions to perform a sequence of steps, leading to a meaningful activity, without any human intervention is also known as Robotic Process Automation.
How RPA Works?
This question has always popped on whether RPA uses physical robots or are there actual robots present to automate tasks.
Well, let me tell you that RPA does not replace humans with actual robots. But, there are softwares available in the market which let you configure automation workflows to automate your business operations. According to our experts, the demand for RPA certification training is going to rise by 150% due to the lack of skill set in the market.
Though I have mentioned that RPA is implemented through
software which is nothing but RPA Tools/Vendors, let me tell you a few
guidelines on how to get started with RPA, before we start discussing tools.
How to Get Started With RPA?
You need to follow the below steps, to get started with RPA:
Step 1: Gain extensive knowledge about the history behind RPA. That is, learn all about Traditional Automation.
Step 2: Learn about RPA and the various applications of RPA.
Step 3: Choose the process that you wish to automate and retrospect about the process dependencies. This is a way to make sure that your business doesn’t suffer loss while you are busy automating the task.
Step 4: Gain extensive hands-on experience in RPA Tools, such as UiPath, Blue Prism, and Automation Anywhere.
Applications of RPA
Multinational companies such as Deloitte, Accenture, Capgemini and many more, use Robotic Process Automation in their day-to-day tasks. These companies benefit by using RPA as it provides accurate, reliable, consistent outputs with high productivity rates. So, now let me tell you the top applications of RPA so that you know the various sectors in which RPA can be used.
As you can see in the above image, RPA offers much more than testing. By using it in accounting, financial service, and human resource industries, the pressure on him/her is reduced and can harness his/her talents in a better way. So, RPA is a technology which will make your work easy in a reliable manner.
Rising levels of interest in RPA
As you can see in the graph at the top of post, interest in RPA has grown ~10x in the past 1.5 years. This is no surprise since Fortune 500 CEOs cannot stop talking about it. As John Cryan, CEO of Deutsche Bank said in September 2017:
In our banks, we have people behaving like robots doing mechanical things and tomorrow we’re going to have robots behaving like people.
With so much interest in the topic, consulting companies like BCG, McKinsey and Accenture have integrated RPA into their digitization solutions.
Benefits
No wonder interest in RPA is growing so fast. Manual processes are inefficient, prone to errors and lead to employee dissatisfaction. With RPA, companies can:
- Increase speed/reduce errors in customer-facing processes to increase customer satisfaction.
- Allows employees to focus on higher value-added activities improving both business results and employee satisfaction.
- Reduce manual data edits, increasing quality of data, reducing compliance risks and simplifying audits since RPA bots leave digital log files of all their activities.
Possible activities / tasks of RPA bots:
RPA bots can use the operating system applications like a human user. Bots are capable of these, but please note that this is not a comprehensive list. RPA is too flexible for us to provide a full list of bot actions. Launching and using various applications including:
- Opening emails and attachments.
- Logging into applications.
- Moving files and folders.
- Integrating with enterprise tools by:
- Connecting to system APIs.
- Reading and writing to databases.
- Augmenting your data by:
- Scraping data from the web including social media.
- Data processing.
- Following logical rules such as “if/then” rules.
- Making calculations.
- Extracting data from documents.
- Inputting data to forms.
- Extracting and formatting data into reports or dashboards.
- Merging data from multiple sources.
- Copying and pasting data.
Bots can do these functions on virtualization solutions like Citrix or on Windows environment. Most vendors do not support other OS environments like Mac OS or Linux. This is because most office work is conducted on PCs.
Types of RPA
All RPA tools can be categorized by the functionality they provide in these 3 dimensions:
- Programming options: RPA bots need to be programmed and there are a few ways to program bots which involve trade-offs between complexity of bots and programming time.
- Cognitive capabilities: Programmed bots need to have cognitive capabilities to determine their actions based on inputs they gather from other systems. RPA tools provide a range of cognitive capabilities.
- Usage: Bots serve specific functions. Though most RPA tools can be used to build bots that serve all these functions, some tools are more optimized for attended or unattended automation. While unattended automation is batch-like background processes, in attended automation users, for example customer service reps, invoke bots like invoking macros.
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