RPA: An essential tool for a truly efficient enterprise
Robotic process automation (RPA) is becoming increasingly common in enterprises as a means to become more efficient and agile enterprise. RPA, in simple terms, is about automating basic, repeatable, and monotonous tasks. It can make customers’ experiences richer by letting you serve them quicker and in a more responsive and responsible manner.
Introduction
It is no surprise that businesses worldwide are undergoing a phenomenal phase of rapid evolution. Many successful companies today are forced to reinvent themselves in a hyper-competitive landscape to stay ahead of their competition.
Though winning competitive advantage and your customer’s loyalty does seem overwhelming, it is not the end of the road, rather an interesting beginning. This changing atmosphere along with the shifts in customer needs together with digital disruption can all be harnessed to your business advantage by automating key processes – an approach that positively correlates with operational excellence that we all know as Robotic Process Automation (RPA).
RPA, simply put is the use of software bots to automate highly repetitive, routine tasks normally performed by knowledge workers with an aim to maximize operational efficiency.
Why automate?
Manual interventions and legacy-based systems don’t meet the objective of scaling to the rapid developments in the industry and customer expectations. Having flexible processes with automation has hence become the need of the day to stay ahead in the industry you serve in.
Having all the critical information right from the single customer profile such as behavioural data, transactional history, and metrics all unified under a single platform through automation tools is a simple and straightforward way to get started on this path.
Cloud-based automation tools make it possible to access data from any location or device shifting the control in your hands. Centralized and automated process flow makes it easier for information to be accessed by key stakeholders on the fly.
Here are some compelling reasons to automate business processes:
- Streamlines processes and standardizes operations
- Gives greater control over business-critical operations
- Enhances customer experience
- Faster turnaround times and a reduction in costs
- Brings clarity in existing process and addresses gaps
- Continuous process improvement
- Factors that can indicate the need for automation include:
- High-volume of tasks with frequent intervention
- Multiple people required to execute tasks
- Time-sensitive nature of tasks
- Significant impact on other processes and systems
Welcome to the Automation-First era!
‘Automation-First’ is an approach and a mindset which moves beyond traditional operational strategies by keeping automation at its nucleus, while integrating it with other aspects like people, technologies, processes and so on.
Today, the technologies such as Cloud computing, Artificial Intelligence and IoT – the defacto platforms fuelling digital transformations have become a means for enterprises to function in a more agile and efficient way. These disruptive technologies are seamlessly blending ‘Automation’ with our day-to-day activities changing the way we think and strategize. Automating critical processes using these underlying technologies can make customers’ experiences richer as a result of sophisticated and responsive processes within business functions.
An Automation-First mindset also highlights the immediate need to democratize cutting-edge technologies such as RPA, and AI making organization-wide democratization programs more imperative. How can then enterprises democratize RPA to stay relevant in the digital-first world becomes the next question.
Democratize RPA for augmented human workforce
Democratization is the first step in creating an automation culture in your organization. It’s a win-win for both employees and enterprises for the simple fact that the more automation becomes accessible, employees would spend more time on valuable tasks and elevate to higher roles. Enterprises would eliminate human errors from the processes and become much more efficient. Democratization of automation, therefore, is the very process of making it accessible to each and every employee for it to work efficiently at all levels.
For any growing organization to be collaborative, sharing of diverse frameworks, technologies and processes become challenging yet critical. As businesses grow and expand to newer geographies, it becomes difficult for leaders to have visibility into every detail of the organization. Involving employees in the decision-making process becomes important and necessary.
When employees are equipped to look from an ‘Automation First’ mindset with access to automation tools like smart bots, they not only start to see the anomalies in their daily operations, they can even come up with the best ways to resolve them swiftly. Making automation skills and tools easily accessible to all within the system can enhance their personal and professional growth. This positively impacts the organization’s digital transformation journey and also the customer experience.
The very idea of democratizing RPA is offering automation tools and making bots available to all. When a bot is within their access, they can thrive together as an organization by:
Tackling a process that is repetitive or rules-based, with bots to be able to automate it entirely or where needed.
Freeing their staff from repetitive and monotonous tasks and instead focus on high-value work that requires human empathy and intervention for complex issues.
Getting work done fastest, and in the most accurate way possible and increase throughput.
How can enterprises democratize RPA?
Some of the top leaders in the RPA realm have been consistently highlighting the importance of democratization – the reason why the world’s most disruptive companies are adopting the Automation-First mindset.
When RPA is equally distributed within the business and teams equipped with necessary skills, it significantly impacts and enhances the employee experience about their role. In the coming years, democratization will be the key to successful automation programs and will be imperative for capitalizing the business opportunities in the digital world.
Here are three simple steps organizations can follow for successful RPA democratization:
(1) Start your first step with making RPA education available to all the employees
By offering access to RPA software and tools, you empower them to try out automation use cases on their own. This also increases the affinity towards automation for those who are new. By creating a culture of automation, you give control in their hands to drive automation across various hubs snowballing into organization-wide support for innovation.
(2) Right selection of processes and tools
The decision of going down the path of automation is one thing, whereas selecting the right process (link to blog Identify the process to automate before you embark on the RPA journey) and suitable tool to implement RPA is another. Whether it is a high-value process like payroll management or high-volume process like customer contact center, the decision will be based on every organization’s business priorities and challenges.
(3) Organizational involvement
Clear leadership from the top-down is absolutely essential to initiate any automation program. Employee involvement at a grass-root level can further strengthen their role in the program’s success.
Additionally, forming a shared community or common forums where employees can share their experiences, challenges and ideas on how bots can make their work easier and better leads to quick adoption.
Recognizing the champions of automation is another way to encourage awareness and implementation of best practices and use cases.
Kanerika’s approach for successful RPA
At Kanerika , we approach RPA not as an afterthought but as a precursor for the start of your digital transformation journey. We believe RPA should be considered right from the planning stage of the digital transformation journey and should be part of the overall automation strategy. Kanerika delivers scalable and sustainable automation solutions to help its clients eliminate monotonous tasks and free up their employees for higher value work. Our RPA solutions help streamline operations and reduce costs by automating tedious rules-based processes.
We are networked with some of the leading technology partners and data experts to ensure we provide each one with top-notch personalized services to derive the maximum possible value from automation initiatives.
Conclusion
An Automation-First mindset isn’t something a company can just declare to its employees. Putting Automation-First as a strategy on the agenda across the board requires leadership from the top-down and takes involvement from the bottom-up. The important step here is to curb inefficiency and get up to speed for scaling automation. Meanwhile, every employee needs to be given automation opportunities to drive automation through their roles.
In spite of the many benefits that RPA offers, practically making it accessible for employees and organizations involves challenges related to implementation time and costs. Successful adoption of RPA will require a lot of contemplation and clarity on the business and a thorough examination of all the key parameters mentioned above.
Given the advantages of low investment, modular implementation and immediate productivity gains, RPA is here to stay and will be the starting and a compelling reason to push organizations towards digital transformation.
