• Darius Heisig, Vice President of Sales in EMEA at Kofax


• 12.07.2016 12:15 pm
undisclosed

Robots are changing the way we live and work. From those built with human characteristics to automation software, robots are becoming more common in businesses around the world. Organisations are beginning to recognise their potential to increase profit without increasing headcount. Now the march of the robots has made its way to the back office.

The challenge

Despite advances in technology, most organisations still invest huge sums employing staff to manually process information. Although companies may once have turned to business process outsourcing, the rising cost of labour, alongside a host of other factors, means companies are increasingly looking for alternatives to moving work overseas.

Today we work in a far more complex business environment, with a growing use of mobile devices and more customer and partner communication channels. The increasing number of ways in which we interact and do business means companies now use more systems - both modern and legacy - and access more sources of data than ever before. Organisations are now faced with the challenge of connecting these systems so that information flows smoothly through the company.

Imagine, for example, a large manufacturing company with an equally large set of systems and portals - internal and external. Although, the company relies on being able to neatly connect lots of different touch points, the reality is that, due to their complexity, all these internal systems are likely never fully connected. That’s why people have had to fill the gaps, repeating manual tasks like data entry and looking up customer information. This can lead to mass inefficiencies and errors which can, in turn, negatively impact levels of customer service and, eventually, the speed at which the company grows. It’s not much fun for the employee either.

A study by PMG IT showed that 98 percent of companies view the automation of business processes as vital to driving results. However, according to the Cognizant Center for the Future of Work, only 25-40 percent of organisations today are automating their workflow. Currently, the majority of companies employ workers to manually copy and paste data between multiple systems. Moreover, this data must then be checked for accuracy. Today, the challenge for organisations is to find a more efficient, accurate and affordable solution. And that’s where robots come in.

What is Robotic Process Automation?

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a way to automate repetitive transactional business tasks. RPA software enables companies to configure a ‘robot’ to capture and validate data, process transactions and communicate information across its different IT systems. These include desktop applications like Microsoft Excel, legacy systems, as well as web portals and web sites. The robot connects and interacts with these systems just like a user would in order to automate large volumes of data-centric, rule-based tasks.

Once an organisation has identified the business activities it wants to automate, robots can be deployed significantly faster than the time it would take developers to write code for each process. This rapid deployment increases a company’s agility by enabling it to alter processes quickly as the needs of the business change.

Robots are also typically a ninth of the cost of a full-time employee in an onshore location such as the UK. What’s more, automating processes using RPA also enables organisations to better understand and measure the success of a process. And unlike humans who need continued investment in training, robots learn the process once and keep working 24/7. This makes RPA the most cost efficient way of reducing back office inefficiencies.

The benefits of RPA are much more than just cost savings. Other advantages include lower error rates, reduced risk and higher productivity. RPA can also improve staff engagement by enabling employees to focus on higher-value tasks. And it can increase speed to the extent that tasks such as processing an online consumer loan application can be reduced from several days to minutes or even seconds. In a client driven industry, transaction speed can be the difference between retaining and losing a customer. In this way, RPA enables organisations to improve the customer experience and grow their business without increasing their headcount.

Given the abundance of customer data, RPA is particularly useful in industries like banking, insurance, manufacturing and logistics. According to one industry expert, banks can realise productivity gains of 25-50 percent across thousands of processes. Everything from scheduling a mortgage to invoicing the customer involves data that needs processing.

One large US bank has already deployed 50 robots to automate a variety of tasks, such as packaging up loan documents for auditing and review. Performing just like a human employee, the robot can also correct discrepancies between the bank’s enterprise content management and loan origination systems. And since switching from humans to robots, the bank’s consumer lending group has had to spend less time on audits and quality control reviews. This not only saves the bank cost but gives auditors more confidence in their operations.

What’s next?

The future looks bright for RPA. From loan officers to accounts receivable directors, there is huge potential for RPA to speed up a variety of processes, solve business challenges and deliver return on investment. As a non-invasive technology, RPA can also increase operating agility since companies don’t need to reengineer their business processes. Robots are easy to design without coding which means they can be deployed and maintained by a small set of IT professionals rather than a team of developers. Best practices for taking on RPA involve ensuring the company is self-sufficient with the software and capable of developing, deploying, and maintaining the robots. With Kofax Kapow, for example, companies can quickly build automated software robots to handle any repetitive, data-centric task, from any data source. Everything from copying data from one system to another to processing incoming email requests can be automated. So a task that may have required hundreds of employees can be carried out with robots and integrated into an organisation’s existing business processes.

Embracing RPA is not just about reducing cost, it’s about creating an advantage by digitising business processes to drive productivity and responsiveness. With RPA, companies can eliminate manual tasks and enable employees to take on higher value roles, becoming experts who resolve issues that technology cannot. Just as in the manufacturing world, physical robots undertake many of the repetitive tasks once performed by humans, RPA has the potential to revolutionise the way we think about and administer business processes.