RPA improves business performance.
Our customers explore and adopt robotic process automation (RPA) to improve business performance, realize substantial gains, and advance their industry competitive position. Increasingly, our customers also invest in RPA solutions to embark on the journey to intelligent automation (IA). IA combines RPA with machine learning and artificial intelligence to travel from rules-based business processes with structured data, to a world where automation is based on processing and analyzing large amounts of unstructured data informed by a knowledge base (business context and intent).
So what is RPA?
Simply put, RPA is an automation software that emulates and integrates the actions of a human interacting with digital systems to execute a business process.
RPA automates any high-volume, business-rules-driven, repeatable process with structured or semi-structured data. RPA executes actions through application user interfaces (just like a human) and does not require complex and costly integration through application programming interfaces (APIs).
RPA is able to automate business processes that include tasks such as: logging into applications, copying and pasting data, opening emails and attachments, scraping data from the web or applications, making calculations, moving files and folders, and extracting and processing content from documents, PDFs, emails, and forms.
Industries with major back-office operations and large amounts of documents and data are leading the adoption of RPA.
Banking, insurance and financial services
Some of the first, and most avid, adopters of RPA. Automation reduces errors and is a further safeguard in a compliance-driven industry.
Technology and telecommunications
Use RPA to assist in digitizing customer experiences, scaling service efforts, and automating logistics.
Healthcare and pharmaceuticals
Leverage RPA to automate patient and provider record management, patient outreach, and ensure compliance.
Across all industries, RPA is changing core business functions. Departments such as Finance and Accounting; Customer Service; Procurement; Human Resources; Supply Chain; and Enterprise Information Management are all adopters of RPA.
What are the benefits of RPA?
RPA improves business performance and enables business outcomes. In the past, automating simple tasks has resulted in quick cost reduction wins. However, our customers increasingly consider how to drive business value with more sophisticated automation.
RPA benefits include:
- Speed and productivity
- Accuracy and compliance
- Customer experience
- Operating costs
- Scalability and flexibility
- Faster realization of ROI
- Non-intrusive (leverages existing system infrastructure)
RPA challenges
RPA benefits should be considered in the context of known challenges. Stakeholders should align on the net benefits of automation, but also understand how to manage any RPA challenges. Aligning on benefits, challenges, and desired business outcomes will ensure successful RPA adoption.
RPA challenges may include:
- Executive business sponsorship and user adoption
Data quality and processing - Stability and UI changes to underlying business applications
- Business process maturity and complexity
- Business demand for automation
We partner with our customers to create an RPA Center of Excellence that enables a successful automation journey and continuous alignment across stakeholders, business units, and functions.
