RPA is touted as one of the most fascinating developments in the field of IT that is bringing revolution across all business sectors. It can bring transformative changes into your organization as well and spur an era of boundless positive growth by simplifying your business processes.
But before embracing it completely, understanding its world and selecting the right business processes to automate is of paramount importance to meet desired business results. As not all business processes are considered good for automation and drive efficiency. This you can understand better with the famous quote of legendary business tycoon Mr. Bill Gates on automation.
The business magnate says, “The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.”
It is therefore essential to understand what business processes are good for automation that will really bring efficiency. Automation experts say that while choosing the processes to automate, you must check whether your business processes contain these important characteristics:
- High in volume
- Repetitive
- Rule-based
- Mature & Stable
- Low exception
- High ROI potential
- Readable inputs
If yes, then consider such business processes as a perfect fit for automation.
To help you solve this conundrum better, here, in this blog, we are listing 12 common business processes that you can automate in your organization using RPA. All listed processes in this blog contain the above shared vital characteristics and if implemented properly can help you take your business to the next level of guaranteed success. But before diving deep into the subject, let’s have a look at the basics of RPA.
What is RPA and why is it popular?
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a leading-edge technology that is invented to simplify business processes by automating highly complex, mundane, and repetitive tasks. This technology is becoming popular with each passing year and is expected to become a $19.53 billion industry by 2027. Mainly due to its widespread business benefits like:
- Boosting Productivity
- Improving Efficiency
- Enhancing Accuracy
- Optimizing Security
- Better Customer Satisfaction
- Scalability & Flexibility
- Cost Reduction
- Better ROI
Business Processes that You Can Automate in Your Organization
1. Website Scraping
Data collection, using websites, is a common business functionality in most industries. Companies research tons of websites and collect relevant data after investing a significant amount of their time and efforts. An RPA bot can help you ease such tasks using advanced automation. RPA can help enterprises to copy specific data from the web and also assist to store such information on a central database or spreadsheet for later retrieval or analysis. All without any human intervention. Great!! Isn’t it??
2. Invoice Processing
Manually doing invoice processing is a complex task as employees need to deal with large file formats that are disparate in nature like a paper copy, email, fax, PDF, MS Word Doc, etc. Here RPA software can be implemented as a rescuer. It can not just deal with all file types with accuracy but also helps in automating data input, error reconciliation, and is even programmed to take certain process decisions based on pre-set business conditions to execute successful invoice processing.
3. Email Processing
Every company receives hundreds, in the case of MNCs, even thousands of emails every day. Checking each email thoroughly, segregating them based on priority and departments, providing precise information, and responding to them on time is really a herculean and mundane task. An RPA software can help you solve all such complexities and assist you in automating a significant part of email operations for timely, efficient, and error-free communication. It can also respond to common queries and transfer critical emails to the concerned team, automatically.
4. Sales Order Work
Nowadays technology is being used heavily to process sales orders. But it is yet to evolve. As data duplication, errors, and low productivity make the existing sales process inefficient. RPA bots could perfectly transform operational sales activities from end to end. Tasks such as sales order data gathering, sales data entry, invoicing, order verification, CRM updation, ERP accounting updation, all can be handled with ease and efficiency. It enables employees to invest their time more on high-value activities i.e. prospecting and generating more business.
5. ERP Data Entry
No matter who you are. A finance executive, HR professional, supply chain expert, IT professional, or belonging to another domain, chances are, there is a good amount of time you are investing in maintaining entries into ERP systems like Oracle, SAP, NetSuite, MS Dynamics, etc. But is it really worth spending time upon, especially when the RPA program can help you complete this task with absolute accuracy while preserving your time and efforts to focus on strategic tasks. Definitely NO. Software bots are made to do such tasks. They reduce errors, update data swiftly, and maintain clean & organized data for better business and compliance results.
6. Web Chat
Integrating chat on a website is becoming popular with each passing year as it provides customers an immediate resolution to their concerns and also provides them with data in real-time. But do we need to run the entire end-to-end chat process under the support of an agent? Not really required. Data collection, providing answers to general queries, guiding visitors to land up to the right resource web pages, providing features, cost, marketing collaterals, etc., can be done more efficiently by an RPA bot. Moreover, it can work 24/7 and is ready to serve customers all the time. Eminent research shows that implementing RPA solutions for web chat helps in creating an excellent customer experience.
7. Payroll Processing
Only HR professionals can explain to you in detail how tedious and time-consuming payroll processing can be. You can thus bring efficiency to HR operations by implementing RPA solutions. It helps in automating redundant and highly rule-based repetitive tasks like managing salaries, overtime, bonuses, raises, wage deductions, commissions, and expenses. Moreover, attendance management with auto-tracking of employees’ hours can also be done without human intervention. According to one report, it is estimated that an enterprise of 50 employees can save at least $20,000/year by implementing RPA for their time and attendance systems.
8. Social Media Handling
In any B2C industry, enterprises often need to deal with thousands of queries over social media accounts. And most of the time, it is observed that those queries are closely linked with an enterprise’s much-promoted service offering. Using RPA, we can automate response handling over social media. By creating a pool of expected questions along with preparing a short, crisp, and precise response, you can streamline this tedious and time-consuming work. As bots enable faster and accurate responses with 24/7 support, customer experience is bound to increase higher.
Remember, this does not limit to just new inquiries but also complaints, faq, etc.
9. Employee Onboarding
Successful RPA implementation reduces paperwork, promotes digital transformation in various aspects of employee onboarding, and thus additionally makes your HR team a lot happier. Using Robotic Process Automation, you can simplify labor-intensive onboarding processes like creating new user accounts, email addresses, profile creations, access rights, mailing lists, IT equipment requests, etc. Enterprises can also automate a significant portion of their training & induction schedule, send out notifications and documentation via email to new joiners.
10. Data Analytics
Just like the quality of data, the quality of meaningful insights is also necessary for business success. Employees often fetch data from various diverse sources, compile them in a structured format, and process using various business intelligence tools to decode hidden insights. Robotic Process Automation empowers you to do the same with robust accuracy, minimum time, and almost zero human efforts. It processes tons of data tirelessly and provides you the required insights to make better business decisions. From Sales, Marketing, Business Forecasting, to Employee Retention, robotic process automation helps you to provide the best vital insights in no time.
11. Customer Service Handling
According to one study, it is revealed that 90% of agents are burdened with menial tasks that can be easily automated. Rather than agents fetching all required details manually along with tracking history, RPA bots can easily simplify this process. They can be programmed to integrate all required customer data in one place leaving the complexity of agents to switch between applications oftenly, validate data automatically, do call segmenting, execute automated query resolution, and feedback processing. All predetermined actions can be handled by bots, rest can be transferred to agents for specialized processing.
12. Data Management
The world is fastly evolving in today’s digital age and big data is playing a crucial role in it. As the volume of data is piling up with each passing day and the adoption of digital solutions is also increasing in various business domains, handling data is becoming complex, time-consuming, and critical. RPA can help enterprises to manage their data without any error and assist in moving ahead in their digital journey without any hassle. From data backup, restoration, to migration, RPA bots can help ease complexities smoothly that are linked with big data management.
Final Words
Regardless of company size, revenue, industry, or region, RPA can prove beneficial for everyone. It can increase the accuracy, speed, and efficiency of your business processes and drive greater business output. But one one thing enterprises should also understand is that RPA bots cannot replace all human tasks. It is the mix of both human capital and machines that can bring prosperity to an organization. Therefore, it is necessary that talent management is balanced properly with AI, for smooth business operations.