Impact of RPA on the BPO Industry [Infographic]

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) in the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry is the changemaker that is drastically transforming office processes. After the success of RPA in a variety of sectors and industries, BPO businesses around the world are taking up RPA initiatives to improve their efficiencies.

RPA in BPO replaces repetitive tasks which directly results in higher resource productivity. And probably this is the single most important reason for which you must read this article up till the end as we share with you key insights about how RPA can help your BPO business.

The fact is that many businesses, including BPOs, are looking into alternatives to labor arbitrage. If you are a BPO business leader then you know that BPO automation through RPA not only complements your core competencies of delivering efficiency to your clients, but also it blends well with your business model and helps you improve productivity.

But before we share with you some key insights into how you can leverage RPA in your BPO business, let’s quickly understand what RPA is in the first place.

Also Read: How BPO Leaders Can Use Automation to Improve Market Share?

What is Robotic Process Automation (RPA)?

RPA is a type of business process automation technology based on simple pre-defined rules or on artificial intelligence which carries out tasks that are repetitive. So, to understand it in the simplest words, instead of delegating tasks to humans, the tasks are given to software robots.

Before the advent of RPA, more work meant more workers needed to do the tasks and more opportunities. However, now, RPA has completely altered the equation which results in disproportionate work output when compared with the human resource input.

RPA and Humans in the BPO Industry

These figurative ‘robots’ of the RPA are best suited for repetitive rule-based tasks. Surely, RPA is evolving to get smarter with the help of artificial intelligence as well.

One of the greatest advantages of RPA in BPO is that RPA can handle more business operations or transactions with fewer errors especially on repetitive monotonous jobs like copying and pasting.

What you as a business owner needs to know is that those who embrace the benefits of RPA or any transformative technology will have more business while those who choose not to innovate in their BPO processes would lose out and falter.

There are different types of BPOs, for example:

• Front office BPO
• Back office BPO
• Offshore BPO
• Near Shore BPO
• Domestic BPO

Irrespective of which kind of BPO you lead, the use cases of RPA in BPO are numerous.

Even if your BPO operations work was further outsourced, it still meant that more people would be doing the work (and you would still be paying for it). This also means that human errors etc. remain in the picture.

On the other hand, RPA can assist BPO providers like you in speeding up and providing great new services to clients at a much lesser cost as you are employing sophisticated technology with far greater processing power than humans.

But let’s deep dive into the benefits and capabilities of RPA in BPO industry.

Benefits that Strengthen the Case of RPA in BPO

Let us share with you what are the four pillars that strengthen the case of RPA for the BPO industry.

So, if you are a BPO business leader, this infographic will quickly summarize the benefits of RPA for you.

1. Cost Savings – Robots are roughly one-third the cost of offshore full-time employees and one-fifth the cost of onshore full-time employees.

2. Operational Availability – Software robots are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, which increases productivity.

3. Output Accuracy – Accuracy improves as human intervention is reduced and human errors are eliminated.

4. Compliance – RPA is programmed to adhere to standard operating procedures with no interruptions in productivity.

Advantages of RPA in BPO Tasks

Now that you know the premise of why you should think about RPA for your BPO business, let us share with you the exact capabilities of RPA that will fit into your BPO business.

1. Massive cost control

The main objective of any business is profit- and value-maximization. And the logic is simple:

• Lesser operating costs mean more profit.
• More time to allocate to customer service means more value.

Based on the study by the Institute of Robotic Process Automation, the use of RPA reduces operating costs by 25 to 50%. RPA software allows BPO companies like yours and your clients to achieve economies of scale.

It is favorable if the employees are engaged in work with less effort and more analytical thinking and laborious repetitive work will be given to robots.

2. Seamless automated information exchange

In a data-driven world, data integrity is critical and is on the top of mind for businesses worldwide.

Creating information highways between systems to gather information and insights can be time-consuming and error-prone if done manually.

RPA can assist BPO in automating these information highways which will result in saving time and better serve their clients.

This means, more data, and correct data are always available on-demand.

3. Offer differentiated and standout solutions

Your clients want service providers who are adaptable to increasing business requirements, one-of-a-kind, and innovative.

They will view you favorably if you embrace new technological shifts such as RPA and automation and are up to date on current trends to better serve them.

4. Leaner and a more accurate workforce

With RPA in BPO, the work is completed at a faster rate and with fewer errors even with minimal human intervention. This results in a smaller workforce providing greater accuracy while saving time and money. It was shown that deploying offshore full-time employees costs three times as much as RPA.

5. Exceptional consistency in the process

RPA contributes to process consistency. RPA aids in the homogenization of the experience. RPA has no match in its human counterparts when executing repetitive processes that require a precision of a high level that even the most competent employee cannot match.

6. Pilots, investments, and works projects

Recently, as per a Gartner report, 8 of the top 15 specialist organizations have marked or are planning to incorporate RPA into their procedures, frameworks, and infrastructure setup.

BPOs must consider incorporating RPA into their setups in order to keep up and stay relevant. RPA can become a crucial part of any innovation-driven project or pilot project where the process is to be automated to test out the results of the proposed project.

Final Thoughts – RPA Adoption in the BPO Industry

In today’s volatile and uncertain business environment, business leaders like are most likely under increasing pressure to reduce costs while increasing output. RPA can assist BPO businesses in not only rationalizing the costs but also optimizing process efficiencies.

Using robotic process automation in a call center or BPO business would help facilitate the integration of different systems which will help the agents keep track of the progress on any specific problem without having to monitor all the applications.

As explained in the article above, clearly the benefits derived from RPA in BPO would be tremendous. Thus, robotic process automation in customer services will alleviate the workload on administrative and back-office work.

How do you get started with automation?