Virtually any industry or process – both back-office and front-office processes – fall within the scope of RPA.
As such, the main drivers for applying RPA are neither characterised by the industry nor the process dimension.
Looking at the current applications of RPA, there are two key drivers for companies:
- An inflexible IT situation
- A high process automation potential
Of course, some companies have both drivers as the basis for their RPA initiative.
RPA TO RESOLVE INFLEXIBLE IT SITUATIONS
What qualifies as an inflexible IT situation? In the context of RPA, an inflexible IT situation is typically characterised by one of the following elements:
- A highly heterogeneous IT portfolio – based on best-of-breed IT systems
- Bespoke legacy IT systems
- Limited – or very expensive – resources (regarding both competence and capacity) for developing maintaining the IT systems and their integrations
In these situations, RPA can be used as a solution to problems that are too slow, too difficult or too expensive to resolve using the existing IT setup.
When the business case does not allow for the specification, development, test and deployment of traditional integration and data-manipulation programs, the potential can be realised with robots with little cost and effort, rapidly resulting in positive business outcomes.
As such, RPA can facilitate business units’ access to creating local and ad hoc integrations and automations that may not be feasible for formal integration undertakings from the IT department. A long branch of such low hanging fruit may now be picked via the application of RPA, enabling the businesses to rapidly adapt to new ideas or business needs.
Legacy systems often inhibit integrations and data manipulation available in more modern and open systems. The restriction can be caused by lack of APIs, security models restricting programmatic access to databases, or proprietary data formats.
Alternatively, the issue can simply stem from the approaching end-of-life of the system and the vendor’s reluctance to accommodate requests for changes to systems requiring the allocation of resources better spent working on next-generation product offerings. In such situations, RPA can be a feasible and accommodating integration mechanism available to the organisation.
In France, companies with inflexible IT situations are primarily to be found in the public sector and in private industries traditionally focused on bespoke IT systems such as the transport industry and other service industries.
Case: Generic – Data Loading
When implementing a new IT system, it is generally necessary to load a large amount of data from other systems onto the new system.
RPA can be used to perform these processes extracting data from multiple sources and copying them into the new systems – a time-consuming task when performed manually
Case: Public sector – Master Data Management
RPA robots are often used to ensure that information typed into website forms is easily extracted and loaded onto the relevant systems.
This is used when website visitors subscribe to newsletters, posting, etc., by filling out forms. The robots collect the registered information and load it onto the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system that creates the mailing lists and keeps track of customer activity.
A municipality has used these features to process citizens’ complaints about noise and odours in the city. The complaints are journalised when received, data are extracted and loaded onto the relevant systems, and the case is forwarded to the designated case workers for further processing.
This ensures speedy processing and eases the job of the case workers, as the cases are ready for further action by the morning.
RPA to realise a process Automation potential
All repetitive, high-volume processes currently performed by employees will have a high potential in terms of a high return on investment when automated using RPA.
This could, for example, be front office processes involving requests from consumers or citizens – often found in BtC companies and in public sector organisations – or it could be high-volume back office processes found in larger companies in areas such as finance, HR and IT support. Accounts payable, accounts receivable, holiday administration, salary requests and password reset requests are all processes which, in larger organisations, can benefit from RPA – thereby achieving cost savings in their Shared Service Centres.
Where RPA is implemented with automation as a driver, the benefits are all rooted in the automatization process. The robots work around the clock, resulting in higher capacity and productivity, human resources freed for better utilisation, and processes performed at uniform quality. The more complicated and time-consuming the processes, the larger the outcomes and potential benefits. The larger the volume of processes, the greater the benefits.
Many of the existing processes that are candidates for automation using RPA have already been semi-automated using standard business applications such as ERP systems, financial systems, HR systems, ECM systems, etc. However, although supported by the business applications, the processes are still performed by employees, thus still constituting a high automation potential. Moreover, the ongoing digitalisation of companies and organisations creates a need for automation initiatives. For example, the deployment of the IoT in devices and buildings may trigger high-volume processes which may only be automated using RPA. Security equipment such as cameras and other surveillance devices may trigger events which can be efficiently processed with RPA robots.
Looking forward, data-driven algorithms will also have an advantage in using RPA robots to process high-volume results.
In France, companies with a high automation potential in the front office will typically be BtC companies, companies with highly regulated processes whereas the high potential for automation in back office processes can be found across all medium- and large- sized companies in all industries.
Case: Finance – Customer Support
Running customer support often requires various administrative tasks, such as navigating several systems and updating information manually – tasks that increase time spent on executing calls. RPA has been used to perform these repetitive administrative tasks and to navigate applications, thereby improving efficiency, and reducing time and costs in terms of support resources.
Case: Retail – Administrative Processes
A major retail company has used RPA to improve several processes within finance, logistics and IT. Within finance, a shortterm outcome was the automation of a monthly invoicing process to separate a document and correctly invoice, both internally and externally.
Furthermore, a process handling vendor account statements in various formats within several systems is now continuously managed by virtual workers and listed collectively in one document for balance tracking.
Within logistics, a short-term outcome was automation by a robot logging a container number, searching, and then returning values used to improve lead time and planning.
A long-term outcome within logistics was the automation of the collection of data from various data sources – a time-consuming task to perform manually due to the different allocation rules.
In regard to IT, a short-term outcome of RPA was the implementation of robots to resend electronic invoices when they failed, which required manual input in a system in order to find and resend the invoice.
A long-term outcome was the automation of setting up the Back-Office System and Point of Sales on personal computers in new stores, which otherwise required the IT department to go on-site and set up the systems.
