6 ways you can use robotic process automation (RPA) to boost your business in 2020

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has been at the top of all major lists of technology trends for a couple of years now. As businesses across the board ramp up their digital transformation efforts, the most forward-thinking companies are looking for ways to further use cutting-edge technology to gain an edge over their competitors. 

If you are a CEO or CIO, you’ll no doubt be aware of the rapid growth of RPA as a software solution. You will have heard about its potential to streamline business processes across many departments in multiple industries, saving organisation’s money and improving the efficiency of their back-office operations.  

Automating business processes with robotic process automation

As artificial intelligence and machine-learning technology continues to evolve and improve they are rapidly becoming essential, and affordable, for businesses of all sizes. 

If your company routinely carries out repetitive, data-heavy processes, such as invoicing or form filling – and what business doesn’t? – then we can design an RPA solution to streamline this critical aspect of your business. 

In identifying what processes we can automate, we start by seeking out those workflows that meet the following criteria:

• Is the process manual, repetitive and high volume?
• Is the process rules based?
• Does the process have a low exception rate (ie. a low variation between processes)?
• Are the inputs electronic or machine readable?
• Are the processes and their underlying applications stable?

Every business, no matter its size, can identify at least one business process that satisfies all these requirements. These are the first steps to implementing a full, scalable RPA software solution.  

Although we consider each business individually, there are common processes universal to all organisations that can benefit from RPA, all of which we’ll cover in this blog. They are:

• Invoicing
• Data entry
• Onboarding
• Data extraction
• Reporting 
• Compliance

If your business carries out any of these processes, drop us a line today to see how our RPA solutions can help your business grow. 

RPA for invoicing

We’re starting at the very beginning, with possibly the most important business processes there is – invoicing. It’s the bread and butter of any business. Without the raising of, and timely paying of, invoices, your organisation would grind to a halt.

Accounting was one of the first departments to go digital so, as a result, many finance departments are now running on legacy systems. 

While your business’s financial data may now be in your enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, thanks to digitalisation, it still requires someone in your accounting department to: 

• Identify incoming invoices
• Scan the documents to identify the relevant data (bank account details, invoice amount, due date, etc.)
• Check that data against your records to ensure it is correct and not a duplicate
• Manually enter the data into your ERP system 
• And, finally, pay the invoice by the correct date

If an invoice is missed or the payment amount is incorrect or delayed, it can lead to financial penalties for your business.  

Invoicing lends itself well to automation, due to the fact that the process is heavily digitised already. RPA fits in seamlessly to legacy systems, working alongside existing ERPs to follow a process designed by a human user; RPA software simply replicates a process that already occurs. 

Using RPA for invoicing will mean invoices are automatically detected as soon as they come into your business and all the relevant data is extracted and accurately entered into your ERP system. 

This is essential for invoicing – any errors in processing invoicing data can result in late payment penalties, interest being accrued or bank fees. RPA can automatically calculate the optimum date that each invoice should be paid, and finally make the payment on the required date.  

RPA for data entry 

Data entry has to be one of the most tedious of all business processes. Trying to keep employee sentiment high among staff whose job requires them to repeatedly input high volumes of data, all of which needs to be continually updated, is no easy feat. It’s a never-ending, and thankless, task, which means keeping staff engaged with your business is a real struggle.

Entirely reliant on human input, the volume of data entry tasks that can be performed are limited by the number of working hours in a week, and further reduced by sick days, holiday and other leave, such as maternity. 

Another challenge faced by businesses that require data entry is the reliability of the data inputted. When data is entered by humans, errors are inevitable, no matter how much care the employee takes. And, of course, the more care taken, the slower the process, resulting in less overall data being processed.    

Transforming such a repetitive, high-volume process is what RPA does best. With the ability to work around the clock, RPA removes the limits on how much data can be processed, which means the data that is critical to running your business is available in your ERP system quicker. 

By electronically reading the data, and incapable of tiring, RPA software improves accuracy by 100 per cent. 

If RPA can be used to speed up and improve the accuracy of data entry processes, the employees currently tasked with this job are freed up to perform tasks that have a higher value to the business, improving their wellbeing and increasing revenue.   

RPA for onboarding 

Hiring new employees is essential for business growth, but it’s a long-winded and frustrating process, and one that impacts the whole organisation: 

• IT have to set the new employee up with logins, access and an email address
• Finance have to set them up on payroll
• HR have to ensure they receive the relevant training, healthy and safety information and are introduced to the company, its values and its people.

Done correctly, onboarding is your chance to make a good impression from the start and help your new staff to feel like part of the team, quickly. In a competitive marketplace, building a reputation as a great employer is the key to attracting and retaining the best talent.

With a well thought-out RPA solution, the bureaucracy that goes along with onboarding new staff is considerably reduced. 

RPA automatically generates a job offer letter, sets up a new user profile, collates all the data your organisation already holds on that person – reducing the amount of form filling required – and prepares it ready for their first day. It can also set them up on IT systems and give them the relevant access they need, so that when they arrive at your office on their first day, they are all set up and ready to hit the ground running. 

This has the added benefit of reducing staff workload and freeing up HR professionals to spend time getting to know the new member of staff, introducing them to the company and their new colleagues, and building relationships.  

RPA for data extraction 

Despite most business processes, particularly data-heavy ones, now being digital, business still generates a lot of paper. For data to be entered onto your ERP system it must first be extracted, whether that’s from electronic files or paper documents.    

This is one business area that is wide open to human error and one that must be mindful of privacy concerns. Thoroughly reading the document and then inputting the correct data into the specified field in the ERP system requires attention to detail and care, which takes additional time. 

Used in conjunction with OCR (optical character recognition) software, such as ABBYY FineReader, RPA is able to read electronic PDF files, images and scanned paper documents to extract information and convert it into digital data that it can then automatically input into your ERP system. 

RPA for reporting

Businesses run on reporting. For every department and investment made, CEOs and stakeholders want to see annual, monthly or even weekly reports to ensure their financial projections and ROI is on track. 

For staff, this is a labour-intensive and time-consuming task that requires a regular commitment of hours spent gathering the data, interpreting the results and putting it into a readable format that is accurate and reaches the desks of the relevant parties quickly.   

Being data-driven by its very nature, RPA is well-suited to helping business compile reports. RPA runs in the background, collecting data as soon as it’s available, entering that into a templated report and automatically emailing it to the stakeholders. 

While RPA is running in the background, staff who are currently manually doing this work can use their time to interpret the data instead, giving them a chance to look for patterns and qualitative results that they can use strategically to improve business processes and drive business forward. When employees see that their work has a tangible impact, motivation levels skyrocket.   

RPA for compliance 

Ensuring your organisation stays on top of a myriad of internal and external regulations, which are continually changing, is an increasing burden on business. From GDPR to Customer Due Diligence, every change requires an updating of your policies and systems to make sure the new regulations are being adhered to. 

These changes are often introduced with little lead time and the financial penalties if you fail to comply are heavy, not to mention the hit to your business’s reputation if it’s found to be in breach of regulations.

With the stakes high, both financially and legally, business will be keen to stay on top of the changes and implement them quickly and accurately. RPA is very effective in managing regulatory changes due to its superior ability to perform routine tasks. 

RPA software can be deployed to automatically update company policies and guidelines and notify the relevant parties that will be affected. RPA works faster than humans, without a break, meaning the changes are implemented quickly, thus avoiding penalties.

We have only scraped the surface of the ways organisations can make use of RPA to improve their business processes. Other uses of RPA include, but are not limited to: CRM (customer relationship management) system updating, form filling, sales order processing, payroll, real-time monitoring of competitors’ prices, shipment scheduling, and proof of delivery.

By working with a knowledgeable supplier, who takes the time to understand your specific business challenges and can design a solution bespoke for you, the possibilities for how RPA can transform your business are limitless. Get in touch today for a free consultation to see how RPA can benefit your business.