Transforming Business Efficiency: The Power of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and AI Integration
Every business wants the same thing: to grow and scale. But as these businesses scale, they deal with many different issues. They oftentimes involve a variety of disparate products.We see things such as spreadsheets that are going to maintain the day-to-day basis of the business, where different information is captured and tracked by the different business users. We see databases that contain the actual functional business data that is necessary for the business to run smoothly, that is maintained and comprised of the information from these applications.
We see emails that include a variety of unstructured requests, such as individuals asking for operations done to their account. And we see the business applications themselves that the business runs on. These applications that have existed for many, many years and they make the structure of what the business uses to be successful.
The Disconnected Digital Ecosystem
Now, the problem with all of these different applications is that they’re essentially a form of digital tape and glue. They all connect not very well together and require a lot of manual effort.
So because of this, we see employees that are getting very bogged down with a lot of different issues related to that. We see our employees are being stuck in very time-consuming tasks where they have to spend a significant amount of time doing these repetitive tasks that ultimately aren’t very valuable for them. It’s not using the employees’ brain powers for what it’s meant to be.
These repetitive tasks suck up a tremendous amount of time and ultimately aren’t a very good effort, aren’t a good usage of the employees. And then ultimately it’s going to lead to a lot of unsatisfaction with the employees as well. Those employees are doing things that they just don’t find enjoyable and frustrating.
Introducing Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
That’s where RPA steps in. Robotic process automation is a system of using software robots to execute those tedious, painful business and IT tasks that are really bogging down those employees.
RPA’s Integration with Artificial Intelligence
Now, the robotic process automation infuses artificial intelligence with capabilities of integrating and interfacing with applications in a low code manner to take those desired actions.
So let’s go to an example. Acme Corporation has been successful for 20 years. We’ve seen them manufacturing a tremendous amount of widgets that have ultimately been selling extremely well recently. The increase in demand and supply is great for the company, but they just are dealing with issues related to the problems we mentioned earlier.
RPA Solutions for Acme Company
We see things such as the finance and sales teams dealing with a tremendous amount of requests for users who might want to purchase a product, invoices, actions, things of that nature flowing in through email that the team just can’t work through fast enough. We see the operations team is dealing with a tremendous amount of painful issues where they’re moving data from one system to the next. Essentially a swivel-chair operation where they have a legacy application that the business is running on and they have to cut-and-paste or copy information from that application to a spreadsheet or to the business components that cause a tremendous amount of pain. There’s mis-types and missed strokes with the keyboard, users entered the wrong information or typed the wrong values into the wrong user accounts. We see that the IT team is dealing with a lot of pain related to the operations and sales team, who might mis-enter that information. When that information flows along, it requires the IT team to actually go in and update the databases behind the scenes.
Benefits of RPA Implementation
So our IT team is getting involved in a tremendous amount of business processes, which they really shouldn’t be doing. And ultimately that’s requiring a lot more employees that are sucking up a lot of resources, a lot of education, and ultimately just seats that can’t be filled because there’s such a high demand for the business. So we’re dealing with a tremendous amount of people who need to be hired.
Conclusion
So how can Acme Company deal with these problems? Acme Company is able to grow and scale because they’re able to deal with these business processes that we talked about with RPA. Now, with Robotic Process Automation (RPA), we can take each of these different components and resolve their issues. So the sales and finance team that was stuck doing a lot of manual processing of emails, having to read and understand what they are, who they’re asking for, and creating a tremendous inbox delay, we’re able to automate those and use our RPA’s core capabilities with artificial intelligence. Reading the subject lines of the email, understanding what the user is asking for, and taking those actions automatically. So we’re able to process those, understand and read the subject line, and take those actions. Now, our operations team that is being used to deal with different applications, swiveling data back and forth between a spreadsheet and a core functional business application, we no longer have to worry about those users making any mistakes or moving the data over improperly. Or even just having to go through the steps of entering the data of simply form entry. Because when we have these applications that are going to process the different components and we’re able to infuse it with AI and RPA, we’re able to actually automate these components. We no longer have to worry about entering that information, and because our bot is able to do the copying and pasting for us. Then we have our IT team. Our IT team is able to focus on their core competencies of making the business run fast and clean because they don’t have to worry about fixing these business errors. Our IT team is working at 100% efficiency because they don’t have to deal with going into these other systems. We know that the information is always going to be accurate based on what the form is saying. We don’t have to worry about any operations or sales and finance mis-typing. Now with these pieces, we’re able to see that RPA is able to resolve all of these issues with the business. We’re able to see the previous state where the business is getting bogged down by the infusion of this digital tape and glue of applications communicating with each other. We’re able to see an example of where RPA is able to understand and build out the process of Acme Company. We’re able to see the benefits of applying robotic process automation to those pieces, and how we can infuse it with AI to allow us to get it done faster, cleanly and more efficiently.
I hope this article has been informative for you, and I’d like to thank you for viewing.
