Robotic Process Automation (RPA), The New Power to the People

Introduction

Have you ever been in the situation to say or think that you are too busy to do something? To lose focus, divert attention from a problem? Well, my friend, forgive the bluntness, you have a big problem! But, you are not alone.

Years ago, during the Christmas period and besides my job, I was tasked to hire a new member of our team by February. I had a list of must-have skills and key-words to use while assessing the many many resumes that I have received. I felt I was doing exploration rather than hiring when reading every page. And Yes, me too I said: Sorry, I don’t have time...

My family and friends still remember that year where they received gift cards.

Today, I would use a tool, set-up the right rules and delegate the screening process to the bot. I will then get the best matches in one click saving hours of work and making my tasks easier.

The magic behind this is Robotic Process Automation known as RPA or bots (from robots).

What is RPA

By the mention of the word ‘robots,' I am not referring to the images in Science Fiction movies like "I Robot", "The Matrix" and so on. That’s one of the myths about RPA.

RPA here refers to the technology of configuring computer software or robots to mimic human actions within digital systems to perform business processes. This technology helps organizations to automate repetitive tasks, back office/front office processes, etc.

It works like a human; it captures data and manipulates applications and it is in most of the cases today a rules-based.

This software program can operate on an end user’s PC, mobile device or server-based. It can interact with an in-house application, websites, user portal and so on. It can interpret, and trigger responses then communicate with other systems to perform predefined tasks such as opening emails, completing e-forms, and recording data into a spreadsheet. Now I’m guessing you know why when you fill an e-form at the end there is a small tick box that says, “I’m not a robot.”

According to a Deloitte study “The Robots are Here: meet your digital workforce”, RPA can deliver a potential return on investment (ROI) of between 30 and 200% - and that’s in the first year, under the assumption that you implement it in the right way.

Yet, the moment you want to go a bit further and want it to handle a cognitive decision-making process, you may face the limitations of most of the RPA tools in the market today as the robot will continue to do the tasks the same way it has done it unless we apply other advanced technologies such as AI or Machine Learning to deal with these exceptions.  

What is the impact on consumers?

Have you already been shopping online and tried multiple promo codes, one by one, to avoid overpaying? Have you tried to call a friend to get a code and then when trying it, it said: “Promo code expired”?

Have you already tried to monitor the price of an item until it drops, or a new promotion is available to buy it? Imagine someone can track the price day and night and send you a message when the price drops.

Today, there are smart shopping assistants that help you to save time and money with just a single click by trying to find every working code on the internet and apply the best one to your cart or that will track the prices for you.

From online shopping, flight search, price tracking to advanced online searches we have all witnessed some new tools that can facilitate this, do the manual work and suggest the best outcome saving us hours of effort.

This is a small example of the RPA's impact on consumers. RPA Impacts also Employee And Customer Experiences — And That’s A Big Deal!

                               Source: Cognizant Center for the Future of Work Study

What to Automate?

When I get the question: What activities can be automated?

I generally answer, if it is rule-based with few exceptions and a human can do it, a robot can do it virtually in the same way.

From your customer-service operation to human resources, finance, legal, and procurement, we still have non-value-added work that can be automated. Wherever you have humans doing rule-based transaction processing there is an opportunity for RPA.

Almost any company that has information systems that need to work together is a strong business case for RPA especially if they have identified many repetitive, manual and time-consuming tasks. In this case, we generally refer to server-based robots that can do the activity without any human intervention, generally known as “Unattended RPA”.

A simple example to illustrate this type of automation is this process:

• The robot is triggered upon the reception of an email
• It (should we say he/she? ??) extracts the attachment based on some criteria and then saves the file in a specific location. This is done by leveraging the OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technology
• The robot read the data and convert it into excel document
• The robot logs in the organization web application, goes to a pre-defined tab and fills new forms using the data from excel
• Finally, the robot sends an email to a designated user to confirm the creation of the new record in the system or the failure by listing the errors.

In this example, a robot can do in less than one minute what a person can generally do in about 10-15 minutes.

This use case could generate a quick ROI if the process described is well structured and the PDF format and content are the same.

However, if a part of the process will need the human touch, the automation stills possible and we refer to it as “Attended RPA”.

 Here are a few other examples of automation by field:

• Accounting: firms have used RPA in their operational accounting, general accounting, transactional reporting as well as budgeting.
• Customer Service: RPA bots can be deployed to help in Call Centers to offer better service to customers by automating tasks which include verifying e-signature, verifying the information for automatic approvals or rejections, uploading scanned documents, etc.
• Financial Services: Banks, Insurance companies and so on can use RPAs for account openings and closings, foreign exchange transactions, auditing, processing insurance claims, premium information, detection of fraudulent claims, etc.
• Healthcare: Hospitals and other health facilities can use RPA for patient record handling, claims, customer support, account management, billing, reporting, and analytics.
• Human Resources: HR tasks that include onboarding/offboarding, updating employee information, timesheet submission processes, etc can be automated.
• Supply Chain Management: RPA comes in handy in procurement, automating order processing and payments, monitoring inventory levels and tracking shipments.
• Manufacturing and Retail: RPA can help manufacturing and retail outfits in bills of materials, calculation of sales, computation of commission, etc.
• Travel & Logistics: Travel agencies or logistic firms can use robots in ticketing booking, passenger details, accounting, tracking of cargos, etc.

Few benefits of RPA

Whether it is a small, medium or large organization, all of them are aiming to automate its business processes in a way that it adds value to that manual strategizing. Robotic Process Automation eliminates dull tasks, freeing workers to focus on higher-value work. While also reducing human error and staffing cost by eliminates jobs and creating new ones.

                                                    Source: Capgemini Consulting RPA Study

Any business hoping to compete with others today must embrace robots! Few benefits of RPA are stated below:

• Improve Accuracy and Boost Productivity: While humans work on the productivity of 60% with some margin of errors, our dear RPA work on an error-free productivity level of 100%!
• Reduce Compliance Issues: Once you set the requirement, it continues to work by following the rules.
• Optimal Cost Savings: With RPA deployed, your cost will continue to drop. You save the cost of hiring, training, overtime payment and so on.
• Improved Flexibility: With RPA implementation, a business needed only to deploy virtual workers that imitate human employees to map up the change. With few lines of software code change, the bots continue working.
• Speed: Companies that implemented RPA attest to the increase in productivity due to the speed of operation. RPAs work tirelessly round the clock (i.e., 24 hours), whereas human works an average of 8 hours or so per day and would still need breaks, vacations, leaves, etc. An RPA never sleeps, never takes a break, never goes on vacation and costs relatively lower than an employee.
• Seamless Set-Up: Setting-up the bot does not take much, no need for any expensive installation or system overhaul.
• Fast Detection of Fraud: Robots can detect fraud faster than humans. They can easily do background checks and complex fraud investigations.
• Time-Saving: Robots work faster and on multiple tasks at a time compared to humans; therefore, they save a lot of time and in return money.

RPA pitfalls

Is Robotic Process Automation (RPA) the solution for any digital transformation issue? Is it the perfect solution? We may think Yes based on the market hype. The truth is that RPA is not always the quick fix for every process automation.

As for every project, it’s key to plan carefully the RPA solution and focus on both process, technology and maintenance to avoid magnifying existing problems. In other words, if there are errors in the process, the bots will continue to replicate those errors indefinitely.

 My advice to my customers is that associating automation with a “set it and forget it” can’t be a reality. There are many chances that an RPA project fails if companies are not aware of the RPA pitfalls from the very beginning.

Don’t implement RPA if your process:

• is very complex and/or changes frequently
• involves higher-level cognitive tasks (in the next article we will talk about the hype around Cognitive RPA)
• is not optimized
• is with insignificant business impact and is not cost-effective

Don’t implement RPA if you don’t,

• have a clear strategy
• set-up KPI to measure the automation's success
• have the leadership buy-in and support from the key functions
• plan the maintenance's needs and cost

Before starting any RPA activity, be ready to have the right checklist to define whether RPA is ideal for your operations, and where it will work best. You should start with the use cases that make sense, can optimize the existing process, increase employee and customer satisfaction.

Tackling RPA Security Issues

With the beautiful stories about RPA, we must not be ignorant of the risks associated with deploying robots or automating business operations. The increase in cyber-attacks, RPA introduced new forms of threat that can be leveraged by hackers to access unauthorized systems and exploit vulnerabilities.

Routine procedures such as transfer of files, processing of orders, payroll management, payment verification, etc can be automated and to do this the automation platform requires access to confidential information of staff, customers, vendors, etc. Credit card numbers, financial information, Social Security numbers, etc could be misused by software robots or robotic workflow developers.

These security risk issues exist in the two forms below:

a)      Data Security Issues: This has to do with improper use of confidential personal and corporate data. Implementing companies must work to ensure the full privacy and security of data used by machines.

 b)     Access Security Issues: This relates to unauthorized users' possibility of accessing and using confidential data dealt with by bots. Access to such data must be prevented from employees and hackers.

Here are some ways to tackle RPA security issues that should be around: Integrity, Confidentiality, Traceability and Control:

     (i)           Governance & Product Security: It is important to build an RPA security strategy with clear policies that should be compliant with the company’s security policies. Besides, it is crucial to perform security architecture risk analysis of chosen RPA solutions and include security scanning tools as part of the bot creation/maintenance process.

   (ii)           Prevention of Unauthorised Access: Everyone on an RPA team must not have free access to the data; there must be an assignment of roles (i.e Bot Creator, Tester, Controller, Runner). Assigning roles to RPA members ensures the curtailing of too many accesses to sensitive data and thereby keeping fraudulent activities under check. Password or login credentials must be used by all users and processes to have access to the credential vault. Like this, only specific authorized users may get to the sensitive data area.

  (iii)           Active Directory Integration: This assists in assigning roles by centralizing team credentials for easy management. Active directory integration creates a control center for login credentials. With this, activities of robotic processes can be tracked for ease of direct control over potentially dangerous actions. All of this should be done by making sure that you have auditability on every action done by the robot and control over error-prone manual activities.

  (iv)           Encryption: This complements active directory integration, unlike role-based access which guides against internal security risks, encryption protects the company from external malicious attacks.

    (v)           Others: To further boost RPA security, get protection against malware and viruses, e.g. Trojans, RPA team members should work on scheduled tasks and maintain a clear desk policy.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we are seeing a new evolution taking place and there is no doubt that we are moving to a new world, a world where the business itself is going to be forced to change by a new generation based on AI and algorithms. Automation can be incredibly cost-effective and if implemented correctly you’ll begin seeing ROI in weeks.

There are many great investments in RPA and the fundings have been eye-catching this year. In April, UiPath announced a Series D round for $568 million, led by Coatue, for a valuation of $7 billion. They have also stated that in 24 months, they have grown ARR from $8 million to over $200 million, and valuation from $110 million to $7 billion. Then there was Automation Anywhere, which raised $290 million in a Series B round led by Salesforce Ventures for a valuation of $6.8 billion.

To take this to the next steps, many companies are talking about Cognitive or Intelligent Automation where the bots can mimic the human cognitive functions with a feedback loop to train it and thus it learns over time. This will be one of the pillars of the next disruption: Augmented Intelligence!

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In case you are a robot reading this article, please feel free to like and share it with your other bots’ friends mining the web ??!