How would you explain the implementation of Robotic Process Automation to staff in an office, well to para phrase L'Oreal - "Because you're worth it".

Some employees are fearful that the introduction of Software Robots will mean job losses but despite the articles in the media suggesting this, the reality is that jobs change and staff are able to contribute more to the business.

Any employer will tell you that staff are valuable asset. The introduction of RPA is because staff are worth it. 

The office environment is totally people driven. Getting the best from people cannot be trying to get them to work like Robots doing mundane repetitive tasks.

Automation in a factory is standard, automation in the warehouse is regularly found but what about automation in the office?

In construction of a factory, automation is built into the design. Machinery is assembled to perform the tasks required. With many items of equipment being programmable and controlled by software it can be a question of judgement as to which elements to call “Robots”. Similarly, newly constructed warehouses are being created that have high levels of automation with robots / machines moving the goods during entry and retrieval to the storage arrangements. The number of people involved in the operation of both factories and warehouse are small in comparison to the volume of goods being handled.

The office environment is totally people driven. The office is where the company functions of Finance, HR, Legal, Sales, Marketing, IT, etc. are delivered. Although offices vary in shape and size, is there automation?

Jack Ma the founder of AliBaba made the news recently with his support for 996 work ethic. Twelve hours a day for six days a week. I suspect that there are many people in small businesses who recognise those hours.

Is it really necessary for people to work at that level in order to succeed?

In business operations robots are used on manufacturing production lines and found moving goods around warehouses. Such automated solutions are often working 24 hours a day in order to justify the high capital costs involved in creating the facilities.

In office environments, the use of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) sometimes together with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) provides the ability to create “Digital Workers” (also known as Software Robots).

For many the “Why Automate” is taken as a given, the main question becomes “When” should automation be implemented.

Although it is possible to automate in many situations, it is only going to be effective and worthwhile to automate “When”:

• Process being automated is stable
• There is a foreseeable volume of usage of the process into the future
• There is a need to improve the quality of the processing by reducing errors and improving consistency
• There is a desire to improve the speed with which each item is processed

At the start of the day there is a pile of work to do. Well actually, for many there is no paper, it is normally a lot of emails in an Inbox, or a list in a spreadsheet, or a set of tasks in a workflow application.

By the end of the day, after lots of activity on the computer, tasks have been completed and you can go home satisfied that the activities have been achieved. The next day will be similar and fairly predictable.