The ideal operating format has always been a thorn in the side of any director in the area. Many issues contribute to this:
- too many employees,
- fewer employees,
- industry turnover,
- low productivity,
- process bottlenecks,
- excessive idle time,
- runtime errors
And many other things. Aiming at simplifying the management of all this, some innovations have become part of companies’ day-to-day activities.
RPA (Robotic Process Automation) technology is one of the tools of this transformation. It represents one of the major advances corporate routines have had recently: automation.
As the Theory of Industry 4.0 narrates, automation is one of the fundamental pillars, and it has gained notoriety on the factory floor – but it is already present in all other segments, such as services and retail; it has invaded offices and even public offices.
Thanks to its importance, it boosted the redefinition of a corporate culture focused on repetitively overwhelming people and processes while reducing costs and facilitating the execution of tasks.
According to Gartner, an average of 30% of today’s operating costs will be wiped out of history just because of the adoption of automation and redesign of operating models. Quite an impact!
But what is behind RPA Technology? See the post and know everything.
Get to know Robotic Process Automation and understand how this technology can improve efficiency in your company.
What Is RPA?
RPA is the acronym for Robotic Process Automation, which means Robotic Process Automation. But these are not those humanoid robots that we see in the movies – but software that, through RPA technology, is capable of processing transactions, sending notifications, billing, sending emails (or a sequence of them) and communicating with other applications.
We can describe RPA Technology as a robot in a software format that performs automatic tasks so that people are free for more noble and strategic tasks, such as decision-making and others that require human intelligence.
How Does Technology Work?
The basis of RPA – as the name implies – is Robotics itself. This way, the RPA software is commanded by codes and algorithms that execute functions and tasks according to a pre-aligned script. This happens on the front end of the code, without changing the back end, without errors and human intervention: everything is 100% automated and works independently and autonomously, differentiating itself from the operation of other types of automation.
RPA vs AI: Are They The Same Thing?
Despite being very similar, the two technologies are different. RPA is fully focused on performing repetitive and automatic tasks from pre-structured scripts. It follows step-by-step, like a mathematical equation.
This process should not depend on interpreting contexts, being 100% in an operational and execution bias. With this, you guarantee that the execution of a given task will be complete as expected, without interference from the interpretation of patterns by technology such as AI.
It’s very simple: you command, RPA obeys, and it does it exactly how you taught it.
In any case, some specific operation demands even greater autonomy from RPA. In this case, it is entirely possible to integrate it with AI solutions that can support it to encompass independent decision-making.
What Are The Advantages Of Adopting RPA In Companies?
There are many benefits to adopting RPA technology in your company. However, we can highlight 3 main ones that are the essence of the others. Look:
- Optimizes the execution of tasks: all automatic activities will be done much faster than if a human performed them. This happens due to factors such as fatigue, which affect humans who perform repetitive tasks (since such tasks were made for machines).
- Increases employee productivity: following the same rationale as the topic above, once you direct your teams’ humans to more complex tasks, leaving automatic tasks in the hands of RPA software, you motivate your employees and engage them in challenges that are really up to the human mind.
- Reduction in operating costs: By directing humans to more complex tasks and optimizing the performance of repetitive tasks, you reduce operating costs. RPA technology – with its speed and accuracy – prevents you from making the mistake of inflating your operation to handle automated tasks.
The Positive Impact Of Reducing Manual Workload
It is important to recognize that RPA plays a very important role in diluting the burden on employees. Once robots take over automatic tasks, humans can have more autonomy to focus on what matters: activities in which they cannot be replaced.
On the other hand, if the employees win, then the company wins. In addition to leveraging productivity and the happiness and satisfaction indicators of your “internal customer”, RPA also helps you give agility and accuracy to a time-consuming process. This means more results in less time.
What Are The Markets That Can Rely On This Technology?
There is an endless list of areas that can benefit from RPA Technology. Services for other companies are the main target audience that can take many advantages by betting on innovation. Check out some of these segments:
Customer relationship management: in tasks within CRMs, the management systems for this area. These activities are linked to these tools and support sending notifications and cadences of prospecting contacts, for example.
Internal management of employees: tasks such as updating employee and customer profiles, for example, are repetitive tasks and can be easily replicated by RPA software by consolidating a script.
People management and recruitment: in tasks such as managing a resume bank, for example, an activity that demands effort to carry out and no reasoning, on the other hand, just identification of key characteristics.
After-sales management: in tasks such as invoicing and processing orders placed, debt collection and making records of feeding history. All of these are automatic activities that can leave the hand of a human for an RPA technology to perform from a pre-elaborated script.
Among the main tools on the market is Power Automate, a Microsoft solution with great success stories in our project office.
Also Read: AI In Manufacturing – From Science Fiction To Reality: Robotics In The Smart Factory
