Considering Robotic Process Automation? 7 Common Questions Answered
By: Michael Burns
Tags: Rpa Tools, Roboticprocessautomation

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is an innovative technology that aims to free up resources within organizations by performing manual and repetitive business tasks, providing new opportunities for businesses to transform and scale. Increasingly, executive interest is being piqued by the return on investment that RPA can offer.

But what exactly is RPA, and how can you use it to transform your business? Every day when Cervello offers RPA services to our clients, we field many common questions — and a few myths. Here’s a list of what we think you should know.

1. What is RPA?

RPA uses software robots to mimic human actions on a user interface (UI) to complete rote, rules-based tasks. These robots perform actions by following a defined set of business rules and criteria. RPA platforms allow developers to design these bots, build the logic that controls them, and deploy them at scale.

What is unique about RPA is its ability to automate on both the application and operating system level. Unlike traditional automation, which can be expensive and time consuming at the application level, RPA enables rapid, comprehensive, and lightweight integration at the UI level.

2. What are the benefits of RPA?

RPA offers a multitude of benefits across industries and use cases, but at a high level, here are the most common benefits our clients have realized:

Multi-application and system automation: RPA can automate processes from the system level to the application level. One RPA bot can achieve what multiple, traditional automation tools could do with complex integrations. RPA can also automate scenarios that might not have been possible with other tools, in a rapid and lightweight manner.

Elimination of human error: Humans are prone to error because they can misinterpret data, process it incorrectly, or become overwhelmed by volume. In contrast, bots only do what they are programmed to do, working 24/7, 365 days a year, with no sick leave or holidays.

Frees people to focus on creative, meaningful tasks: RPA takes the robot out of the human. The type of work RPA excels at doing just happens to be the work that most people don’t want to do. RPA frees people up to focus on innovative, higher-value work, which can lead to a happier, more empowered, and more engaged workforce.

3. What are the biggest myths?

There are no physical bots: The term “bot” might conjure up images of physical machines, but RPA bots are actually software scripts that run on a computer. Furthermore, the actions a bot takes are not tied to a monitor or keyboard. The commands a bot is given are a virtualization of the physical inputs it is mimicking, so it could work on a piece of hardware with no input devices.

Robots will take my job: RPA’s greatest abilities are predominantly mundane, repetitive, and task-oriented. Bots cannot replace humans because they cannot replicate human cognizance, judgment, and creativity. RPA can also create jobs in skilled areas such as design, development, monitoring, and maintenance of their growing digital workforce.

RPA implementation is a big endeavor: RPA projects have much shorter timelines than traditional automation projects and can be designed and deployed in weeks rather than months.

4. What are some RPA use cases?

Bots can interpret characters from handwritten text (OCR), compare images, browse the internet, and follow logical, branching paths. With these capabilities, here are a few RPA use cases:

· Log in to a vendor portal, such as Amazon Vendor Central, pull strategic and operational sales diagnostics data, and clean the data prior to export into your forecasting tool.

· Create new leads or cases in a CRM tool, such as Salesforce.

· Rapidly extract data from ERP tools such as SAP or Oracle, processing the data in Excel and creating a dashboard with a visualization tool, such as Tableau, for downstream business users.

5. Which business functions can benefit from RPA?

RPA is suited to well-defined, repetitive processes or industries that have strong audit and compliance obligations:

HR: Tasks such as onboarding, candidate verification, and benefits administration often require gathering and checking data in multiple systems. Many clients have introduced RPA to protect sensitive or personally identifiable information such as social security numbers, salaries, and protected classes. Compliance plays a big part in shaping HR processes, and bots can enforce compliance, and ensure the entire process is auditable. As regulations and laws continuously evolve, RPA’s quick turnaround also benefits HR organizations looking to quickly adapt to an ever-changing landscape.

IT: IT is responsible for many contained and well-defined processes, such as provisioning user access, downloading and backing up files from a server, or monitoring the status of business applications. These tasks are prime candidates for RPA thanks to their well-defined, repetitive nature. Bots can lend capacity to highly leveraged teams, enabling them to focus on other long term projects.

Finance: Financial services are governed by strict adherence to rules and process. Many of the core tasks of accounting and finance are recording and reporting transactions, processing and approving orders, and ensuring compliance. Similar to the benefits seen in HR, bots can gather and compare data quickly and accurately.

6. Who are the common RPA vendors?

The most common RPA vendors are:

UiPath: Founded in 2005, UiPath was started by two Romanian entrepreneurs, Daniel Dines and Marius Tîrcă, in Bucharest.

Blue Prism: Blue Prism is one of the earliest pioneers in the RPA space. Founded in 2001 by automation experts Alastair Bathgate and David Moss, Blue Prism is headquartered in the UK.

Automation Anywhere: Originally founded as Tethys Solutions in 2003, Automation Anywhere is a San Jose-based RPA company. Automation Anywhere most recently attracted the investment of SoftBank and Salesforce.

These companies offer their own comprehensive platforms, providing certification and training in addition to tools to build and deploy robots. Each platform is constantly evolving and are working toward a road map that incorporates AI and machine learning.

7. What does deployment look like (cost and implementation)?

The cost of RPA varies across platforms, but the average bot costs between $5,000 and $15,000. A single bot is the equivalent of two to three full-time employees, when not accounting for cycle time. One of the biggest advantages of RPA is its quick implementation. Based on your use case, an RPA implementation timeline can look like this:

· 4–6 weeks for simple processes (small number of applications and clicks, simple business rule complexity)

· 6–8 weeks for medium complexity projects (navigating multiple apps and screens, clicking throughout, medium business rule complexity)

· 8–10 weeks for complex processes (remote desktop applications, complicated and nuanced business logic)

Cervello have developed a number of tools and accelerators to expedite an RPA implementation. Our delivery teams can work from proof of concept to production:

Proof of Concept: Rapid automation assessment of business processes to quantify the opportunity and highlight key areas of automation opportunity.

Process Assessment: Identify low complexity and high value business processes across the organization, and subsequent prioritization of ‘low hanging fruit’ that will deliver large ROI.

Implementation: Design, develop and deploy multiple bots to production environments.

Establish: Establish a Robotics Centre of Excellence and operating model, supporting the development of an internal automation capability.

Scale: Support the wide spread standardisation and digitization of business processes organization wide, capturing benefits delivered and integration of intelligent automation capabilities, leveraging AI and ML.

This post was written in collaboration with my colleague Ali Jameel. If you have an interest in discussing anything mentioned here further, feel free to connect on LinkedIn.

About Cervello, a Kearney company

Cervello, a Kearney company is a data and analytics consulting firm and part of Kearney, a leading management consulting firm. We help our leading clients win by offering unique expertise in data and analytics, and in the challenges associated with connecting data. We focus on performance management, customer and supplier relationships, and data monetization and products, serving functions from sales to finance. Our Robotic Process Automation (RPA) expertise allows us to transform back-office functions for our clients, providing streamlined operations, enhanced insights and consistent analytics, enabling better decision making across your organization.