Have you come across repetitive and boring manual tasks in your organizations? These routine tasks are dreary and uninteresting for the employees. Such mundane work can be easily managed by RPA which can improve business processes and gain resilience in tough times.
Humans are prone to errors. Doing a repetitive job increases the chances of error. It will improve productivity and reduce the time of execution of the job.
But before we take a deep dive into it, let us understand what RPA is.
Robotic Process Automation is a technological solution to build, deploy and manage software robots that mimic human interaction with software and other digital systems. This process has a significant effect on business. It reduces the time of execution of a task and of deploying a service or product.
Like humans, software robots can understand what is on a screen, acknowledge keystrokes, navigate between software and systems, extract data, schedule jobs, and many more such actions. However, robots do it in a much faster and accurate way than humans.
The time saved can be utilized in more complex tasks which require reasoning, decision-making, emotional intelligence, and client interaction.
How RPA transforms a business?
A McKinsey survey in 2019 stated that at least 1/3rd of the activities could be automated in about 60% of the organizations.
Robotic automation changes the way of doing work. Software robots save people from repetitive and lower-value work such as logging into systems and applications, moving files and folders, extracting and copying data, filling up forms, and completing routines analyses and reports.
Humans are free to concentrate their energy on innovating and creating new solutions, collaborating, and interacting with customers. Organizations will see higher productivity and efficiency. No wonder it is changing the story of work. According to the Forrester prediction guide, 30% of organizations will shift their focus on quality by improving planning and automation.
RPA can be used in finance, healthcare, manufacturing, IT, compliance, legal, customer service, and operations. It is widely applicable and acceptable. That is the reason the overall RPA market will reach $379.87 million by 2027.
The Pandemic Impact on RPA
Recession due to pandemic has led to an increase in interest in RPA. In 2nd year of the pandemic, RPA has seen 19.8% growth regardless of sluggishness in businesses. According to Gartner, 90% of global organizations will implement RPA by 2022. In 2024, RPA implementation will increase threefold in large organizations.
AI-based RPA: A thing of future
The combination of RPA with AI unlocks massive potential for enterprises. RPA can leverage advanced AI skills such as machine learning (ML), natural language processing (NLP), character and image recognition. Equipping robots with AI skills expands their capabilities. Then, they can understand documents, visualize screens in a better way, comprehend speech, and carry out conversations. Forrester’s predictions say one-quarter of all RPA solutions will incorporate advanced AI solutions such as ML by end of 2021.
Business benefits of RPA
It streamlines workflows between humans and technology, making organizations more profitable, flexible, and responsive. Here are the key benefits of RPA
- Improved business processes: It introduces flexibility in the business. In current Covid-19 times, where people are limited on the floors. RPA possess the intelligence to adapt changing environment and circumstances. They can handle critical communication, update files and folders so that employees can receive the recent information.
- Reduced costs & Increased profit: It curtails the overhead costs on the operation. Creating, deploying, and managing robots are cheaper than employees. It reduces errors, saving the cost required to rectify the mistakes when made. RPA saves approx 30% of the operating cost. Not only it saves your bucks, but it also adds to your revenue. The table below shows the increase in demand and yearly revenue generated by RPA.
| 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | |
| Revenue ($M) | 1,411.1 | 1,579.5 | 1,888.1 |
| Growth (%) | 62.93 | 11.94 | 19.53 |
Worldwide RPA Software Revenue (Millions of U.S. Dollars)
Source: Gartner (September 2020)
- Empower Workforce & improved productivity: When robots take up the dreary tasks, it improves work satisfaction in employees. It also frees them to perform meaningful tasks and upskill them. With a proficient workforce, companies cater better to the needs and demands of the customer.
- Better decision-making & analytics: Enterprises can gather data about volume patterns, cycle times, and errors for analytical purposes using RPA. These data will help in creating comprehensive insights. Robots can collect data from areas unachievable for humans. Using RPA, a company can make better decisions; determine gaps in the existing process. In this manner, RPA also helps enterprises to attain compliance with industry standards.
Gartner estimates Global RPA revenue will rise to $1.89 billion in 2021. In a nutshell, we can say that RPA is no longer an added value to the business; it has evolved as a business imperative.
Reach out to us to share your thoughts on RPA at contact.us@virtuetechinc.com.
