Robotic Process Automation
Becoming a fully automated enterprise is easier said than done, traditionally when people hear the buzzword “automation” they think of marketing automation.. While this is certainly a great area to bring efficiency to your business, it leaves 90% of potential automation uses out of the equation. Focusing on your entire workflow will help identify what, where and when to automate.
Let’s Unpack That
The following key concepts help define what robotic process automation is, and how it can be used… after all, what the heck is a robot?
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) – Is technology that helps connect and automate processes between businesses systems that may not be capable or easily connected to complete business transactions, the technology at its core uses scripting to emulate human action. Reducing the amount of manual work needed by humans.
Unattended Robots – Work in the background or on cloud servers to handle long, task heavy processes. These are managed through a central governance tool and can be programmed to operate on schedules, triggers or when other business processes are completed. These robots, while incredibly cool and efficient, take a higher level of governance, testing and management for them to be successful.. The benefits, can be enormous!
Gartner defines the robotic process automation (RPA) market as the market for licensed software platforms used for building scripts to integrate any application via a user interface and a control dashboard or orchestrator. RPA platforms automate repetitive, rule-based, predictable tasks (Gartner, 2022)
Why Choose RPA?
Speed & Accuracy: Tasks are done the same way every time, robots are more accurate than humans and don’t particularly care to take naps!
Robots, not people, will weave together applications, systems, and software— allowing us to totally reimagine processes in the process. (UiPath, 2022)
Greater Productivity: Just-in-time, task based workflows are becoming alternatives to business- application based processes. Today processes are fragmented and require the use of multiple systems, this creates frustration and higher learning curves for new employees. What happens when an employee is sick, or leaves the company?.. You know the drill, business owners must scramble to replace them or call in backup.. not #FUN..
Imagine a world where robots can run these repetitive tasks, work becomes less complex and fragmented so less time is wasted. No more navigating old systems or trying to figure out how to learn new processes for your team. By removing these mundane tasks from your team you are note only increasing the productivity of these employees by allowing them to focus on more important duties that require human decision and emotion, but you are also increasing morale of these employees by allowing them to ditch the work they don’t want or like to do!
By 2024, it’s predicted that 25% of employee-facing app development will be replaced by the codeless development of just-in-time tasks. (IDC, FutureScape: Worldwide Developer and DevOps 2022 Predictions, October 2021.)
Scalability: If you feel that you do not have enough people power to grow your business, you could benefit from robots to help alleviate some of that stress, no business owner enjoys feeling like they are “busting at the seams”, but hiring people in today’s market to relieve that pressure is hard to achieve. With robots, you can enabling the scaling of your business while better controlling the increase of human capital!
Increased Data Security: Because your data is the backbone of your organization, you can’t afford to ignore data security. By utilizing robots and standardized processes you are not only improving efficiency, you are inherently increasing your data security. With less human decision making and processing you reduce the risk of accidental data loss, leaks, or even malicious employee actions.
Why Work With Us?
- We are independent and system agnostic and can offer many options (although we do have preferred partners).
- We have vast experience in multiple business verticals, we have the tools and processes nailed down to ensure we understand your processes.
- We can understand your current applications and determine where
applications can automated, integrated or eliminated. - We know how to build solutions with user roles and segregation of duties, helping you drive business continuity and security.
- We will conduct research to obtain the best supplier options for your project.
- We will build plans that leverage best in class technology and process automation suites, not all tools are created equal.. Usually having the right set of tools is better than one single tool that halfway gets the job done.
What Robotic Process Automation Solution is Right for my Business?
Human Emulation: Most modern RPA tools provide a blend of programmatic integrations in addition to human emulation. Human emulation is most valuable if your business uses multiple systems that don’t “talk” to each other, or can’t be integrated.
Cloud AI: Cloud computing automations are the most efficient (both cost and speed) when it comes to automation, tools like Zapier, Power Automate, Integromat (make.com) and others all provide the ability to pass api calls between services. This type of automation is preferred over human emulation when possible, however, many legacy systems or even modern office applications have limited api connections available.
Attended Automations: If your business has tasks that require human emotion or decision, a blended approach to automation may be the best fit. Coincidentally attended automations generally are more cost effective to deploy.
Unattended Automations: If your business needs long, complex processes automated, this type of automation should be top of mind. These are processes that can be completed generally without human input, or kick off after a human task is completed. These types of automations, generally require more technology resources and are more expensive to implement, but the return on investment is approximately 60% better than attended automations.
AASS Solutions: Sometimes businesses do not have the capability or the desire to manage automations in house, if you fit this bracket you are best served by utilizing our Automations as a Service offerings. This will ensure you get the best value and mix of human in the loop and unattended robots while leveraging our design, development and deployment expertise.
Things to Consider
Picking your RPA software vendor can be a complex and daunting task.
We have conducted analysis on many major programs and software solutions, we are happy to recommend the best fit for your organization. Generally speaking we prefer the below vendors:
- UiPath: With the strongest citizen developer and ease of use capabilities, we find that UiPath has the quickest and most reliable solutions for quick and complex automation programs. Their community is best in class for quick, free automation help as well. Licensing cost is extremely affordable, most small businesses can benefit from their enterprise grade solutions absolutely free!
- Automation Anywhere: An industry leader second to UiPath, their robot building tool is a little more difficult to learn because it is 100% web based, however, their AI center and document reading tools are very easy to learn and implement, licensing cost however makes them less desirable if your business is below 20 employees.
- Microsoft Power Automate Desktop: If your business is already on the Microsoft ecosystem, you might benefit from the native integration to Microsoft’s cloud automation products such as Power Automate (formerly Flow). Licensing includes a free version with limited capabilities, it is not as easy to learn as UiPath but has solid functions and reliability. We find that leveraging UiPath with Microsoft’s cloud solutions is a better fit for moth businesses, but, if your brand loyal Microsoft is a hot contender in this space.