The question “What can RPA do for you?” comes up a lot when you say that you implement software robots for RPA solutions.
Sometimes effectively the same question is asked as “Who is RPA for?”
These are natural questions as the general awareness about software robots and the potential usage of RPA is new for many organisations outside of the Global corporations.
The simple answer is that software robots enable a business to get better value from their investment in staff – that deals with the “What”.
For every business that have staff working on computers in an office, they could benefit from software robots delivering automation to improve the value from the staff – that answers the “Who”.
The software robots are best used where the computer activities are:
Software robots provide generic capabilities which is why the “Who is RPA for” has such a broad answer.
What RPA can do is automate the computer activities which removes “Human Errors”, delivers increased “Speed of processing” as robots typically work at 10 times the rate of a person and increases “Processing Capacity” as software robots can work 24 hours a day, seven days a week; Together these drive down operating costs and increase both productivity as well as quality.
Once a process has been automated, nobody ever wants to go back to manual processing. Who would want to return to writing documents on a type writer?
The opportunities for automation using software robots to create Robotic Process Automation (RPA) solutions will vary by company. With software robots able to work with Office products (e.g. Outlook, Excel, Word, PDF), desktop and cloud applications such as Microsoft Dynamics, Sage, Salesforce, SAP, ServiceNow, Oracle, through to green screen mainframes and AS/4000, the opportunities are broad. The answer to “Who is RPA for?” is usually every business.
Please see our list of potential “Use Cases”, some of which might be applicable to your organisation.
The ROI is created from the benefits associated with the costs of performing the work using RPA software robots compared with the cost of completing the activities with staff.
The 3 factors which have the biggest impact on the ROI are:
Automation with RPA software robots can be viewed as delivering:
When embarking on the implementation of RPA software robots, the following tips will help leverage the ROI:
Q: Does it take long to implement RPA?
A: It depends how complex the business process is and the number of variations or errors which need to be handled by the RPA software robots.
Q: How long to get ROI?
A: Typical payback is 6–12 months for processes that have a reasonable volume.
Q: Do people need to watch the RPA software robot working?
A: A good design for the RPA software robot should not require people to watch it working. The results of activity should determine whether there is success or if the outcome needs to be reviewed by a person (aka Human in the Loop – HITL).
Q: Can an RPA software robot do the work of several people?
A: The RPA Software performs can only perform one activity at a time. It usually performs the work faster than a person and can work 24 x 7. This provides the capacity of 4.2 people if they work 40 hours per week. In general, yes, 1 RPA software robot can do the work of several people.
Q: Can the RPA software robot do different tasks?
A: Yes, the RPA software robot can do many different automations. It can only do one task at a time, but could do task A, followed by task B, then task C, etc.
Q: How does an RPA software robot know what to do?
A: RPA software robots can perform tasks according to a schedule and react to “Trigger” events such as email in an inbox, or an item being placed on a queue.
Have more questions? Please see our FAQ Page.
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