A few things about the automation of business processes

What is Business Process Automation (BPA)?

Business Process Automation is also known as digital transformation or business automation. A brief, yet good definition of BPA says that it’s the technology-enabled automation of complex business processes.

Automation of business processes is nothing but the implementation and use of software, information systems, and applications which can easily optimise labour and production resources. BPA allows organisations to go beyond traditional data management. Thanks to it, businesses can use advanced software systems.

What’s the purpose of BPA?

What is the purpose? The biggest aim is to automate repetitive tasks and, as a result, to increase the efficiency and productivity of a company. Business Process Automation can streamline processes for the sake of simplicity. With BPA, it becomes more than easy to carry out digital transformation.

There are many more advantages of BPA, such as increasing service quality and improving service delivery. Considering these advantages, it’s better to proactively pursue BPA as soon as possible, in order to gain the most significant competitive advantage.

What is Robotic Process Automation?

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a form of business process automation. In other words, RPA is software technology which makes it possible to build, deploy, and then manage software robots. What’s important, those robots emulate human actions – they interact with digital systems and software.

Simply saying, a “software bot” or computer software can capture and interpret applications for processes which involve executing transactions, manipulating data, and triggering responses.

Robots and bots use characteristics of humans, which in practice means that they are able to read and understand what’s on the screen. What’s more, completing the right keystrokes is not a problem at all for them. They can easily navigate systems. Identifying and extracting data won’t pose a challenge for them, too.

Which sectors need Business Process Automation the most and why?

This is undeniable that Robotic Process Automation is mostly needed in the finance and banking sectors. Why is that? The thing is that there are many transactions in this kind of sector. Instead of using manual steps, it’s much easier for the customer service rep to launch an automation code. Everything needs to be automated in order to work smoothly and efficiently.

Relying on manual work isn’t a good idea when there’s RPA which can automate business processes and repetitive tasks previously handled by humans. It turns out that working in the banking and finance sectors have never been easier!

What are the three main types of RPA?

There are three major types of RPA – attended automation, unattended automation, and hybrid RPA. What characterises them? In what ways do they differ? Let’s find out.

Attended automation

We’re dealing with attended automation when there’s a bot residing on the user’s machine. The important thing is that the bot is invoked by the user in the vast majority of cases. It’s worth using attended automation in the case of tasks triggered at points which are hard to detect programmatically.

Unattended automation

The next type of RPA is unattended automation, in which data processing tasks are completed in the background. This kind of automation is perfect for back-office employees because it significantly reduces their work. There are a few ways of launching unattended automation, for example by inputting data in a specified location. It can also be launched in the following ways: orchestrator initiated, bot initiated, and specified intervals.

Hybrid RPA

The third type of Robotic Process Automation is hybrid RPA which is a combination of attended and unattended RPA bots. The main purpose of such a combination is to provide automation for both front and back office activities. Thanks to that, end to end automation of each process is possible.

How is Robotic Process Automation (and Business Process Automation in general) beneficial?

One of the biggest advantages of software robots is that they are faster than people. They are consistent. They can easily “work” without interruption, unlike people, who need breaks at work (which is understandable).

RPA is cost-effective

We have already mentioned that bots do not need breaks. In fact, they can operate twenty-four hours a day. They do not need holidays. It’s worth looking at this from a new perspective – they take over (at least partially) manual work from humans. Using robotics can save us money!

RPA ensures the quality and accuracy

With RPA, there’s no risk of human error. RPA is synonymous with accuracy and high quality. Robots are consistent, safe, and reliable. Not only that, they follow all rules, they do not make any mistakes, and they are easy to implement. With Business Process Automation, every little detail of a particular process is recorded. Data can be presented to demonstrate compliance during audits.

RPA is responsible for improved analytics

Thanks to business process automation and RPA, people have access to data from many different sources. Having access to error-free data really improves the quality of analytics. It becomes easier for companies to make business decisions in each business process.

RPA helps to improve productivity of employees

It’s also worth mentioning that making the processes automated provides many benefits for employees. RPA is a big facilitator. Indeed, people can focus on what’s really important. They can concentrate on things that robots cannot do (relationship management, client/customer interaction). And the other way around, robots can do what they excel at. However, we cannot forget that training employees before transitioning to the new automation is a must.

RPA increases customer satisfaction

Using RPA means delivering better quality of work, taking into account that people are responsible for customer/client interaction and robots are responsible for one hundred percent accuracy. This is something that makes clients and customers satisfied with what they receive. And one should remember that customer satisfaction is crucial in every industry. Focusing on operational excellence helps companies exceed customer expectations.

Automate business processes – summary

Without automation, the entire process of work can become quite chaotic. It’s better to avoid this, unless we want to be lost in paperwork, or we want to miss out on some tasks. Automation is a good way to make both employees and customers satisfied. If implementation of automation is successful in one process, it’s worth looking at other processes which can benefit from business process automation.