The Advantages of Using RPA in Your Business

If you haven’t heard of RPA you could be missing out. 

In fact, we’re willing to bet our bottom dollar you are. The question is, are you?

RPA - or Robotic Process Automation - is a software particularly useful for organisations both big and small that need segmented parts of their business to work together fluidly. This could be as simple as supply communication barriers between your warehouse staff and your logistics team, or as complex as a bank who needs to ensure top-down compliance is met at every touchpoint. 

For a more in-depth look at what RPA technology is, you can read our earlier article. But in short, RPA technology is a type of software that deploys artificial intelligence to mimic human user actions. So while RPA can go through and pull files, fill out forms, answer basic customer support tickets, and automate basic repetitive tasks, it’s wider application has a much bigger impact on your business. 

What is RPA Technology to Your Business? 

How to measure RPA success in the adoption of this software comes down to three critical factors in business: Time, Team, and Money.

RPA Saves You Time

It’s been a great journey of discovery as we’ve found ourselves exploring RPA in our own company. We are continually seeking new ways for technology to aid us in our work and have since deployed RPA solutions to automate tedious tasks. The results of this have been exciting. It’s liberating to be able to hand off hours of manual data entry, spreadsheet work, and email communications to robots. This is a fast-acting ROI as free hours equals more unhindered time to think critically about complex business problems (and their solutions!) while you let RPA technology handle the manual and repetitive stuff behind the scenes.

We know that these results will also be of great benefit to our clients, not only in the efficiency of our work for them, but we also have plans to help them introduce these technologies into their own businesses.

RPA Liberates Your Team

Do you have staff members in your team that do boring, repetitive tasks every day? You’ve probably found that over time, they lose focus and start making little mistakes. It’s human nature.

In a recent survey, workers said they’re spending more than 40% of their day on digital administrative duties. This includes things like data entry and other repetitive computer tasks that may or may not have been a part of their original job descriptions. 

Nearly three-quarters surveyed said they find these tasks both boring and a poor use of their skills. In fact, the survey revealed 69% of workers said it took focus away from their main job functions, and a staggering 79% said it impacted their daily productivity, inviting in increased opportunities for human error.But besides risking employee productivity, human error can cause a lot more damage - sometimes to the tune of millions. This article details the cost of human error in remuneration packages and how it can undermine the trust of an entire company. When you know your employees dislike it, and you know it’s a financial risk to the business, deploying robots to do the work seems like the best solution. 

• They’re programmed to work round-the-clock, all year long
• Robots don’t require annual leave, don’t get sick and don’t need mental health days (that we know of yet)
• And most importantly, they can work up to 15 times faster and more effectively than humans in repetitive, basic tasks.

Don’t look at it like you’re replacing your staff with robots. Instead, you’ll be liberating your team from the weight of mundane work that has been crushing them since the industrial revolution and instead, frees their minds to work on more engaging and creative problems. 

RPA Will Pay For Itself

We’ve mentioned the Return on Investment from a time-saved perspective, but it’s worth noting that this type of software can also yield a strong financial gain. 

Business owners will save money by slashing overhead and administrative costs simply because RPA can automate or speed up repetitive and manual tasks. For example, one of our clients uses RPA to alleviate her company’s lead generation efforts. Before automating, she was forced to collate and delegate four salesperson’s tasks. After implementing an RPA solution, she not only was able to cast aside this boring work, but the software was able to work 24 hours around the clock, rather than just 8 hours a day, putting more resources into the hands of her salespeople, improving their sales pipeline and consequently boosting their income because of the higher volume of leads. 

Whatever your industry, there are benefits in streamlining your business processes through RPA. 

RPA Will Increase the Value of Your Business

Improving business processes are a great way of increasing the value of a company.

As companies grow they tend to become more complex. More people are involved in day-to-day operations, data is broken up across various systems, and there is more variability in dealing with different facets of the business, particularly managing customers and their expectations.

To grow in a way that is creating a scalable company, these processes should be evaluated and improved. We believe this should always be done with the lens of connecting process initiatives to business value.

Process initiatives that build company value are focused on reducing costs, improving customer experience and sales, reducing risks, and creating a business that’s easier to run.

RPA is proving to be a technology that ticks all these boxes and should be seriously considered to build a scalable and valuable business.