How RPA Lets Businesses Focus on Core Strengths

Repetitive manual work, pulling valuable resources from both the back and front offices, can slow down even the most efficient personnel groups. Carefully trained teams sooner or later lose interest in data entry, paperwork, and other forms of record-keeping – and move on or retire, soon to be replaced by new teams that must likewise be trained to perform work with limited appeal.

Organizations large and small struggle with this persistent issue, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. Workable solutions now exist, and one of them – Robotic Process Automation (RPA) – lets business generate real value from these obligatory tasks while accomplishing them far more accurately an efficiently, and keeping employees happy at the same time.

RPA can be combined with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to scan real-world documents, enter them electronically in your organizational database, and integrate the insights they contain into a full analysis that encapsulates data from all across your network. These tasks (and many others) can be completed far more quickly and accurately than even the best human operator, while never causing the AI algorithm to tire, complain, lose focus, or demand a raise. The nature of the algorithm also allows for excellent transparency, and processes can be visualized and checked at any point.

Innovations such as RPA sometimes overlap with advances in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), although RPA is designed to adapt to the specific system that each client uses, rather than requiring the client to adapt to a new system. These advantages help explain why RPA represents such a dramatic advantage for labor-intensive, white-collar companies, such as those in the insurance and banking sectors, for instance.

While RPA has generated a reputation for improving the consistency of back-office operations, our experience shows that it is used nearly as often in departments such as marketing and sales. Its considerable flexibility and utility as a tool in an office environment allows for a dramatic reduction in workload wherever it is applied, freeing employees to use their time and talents to draw strategic lessons from available data in order to add value to future efforts.

Indeed, a study conducted among our own clients shows that almost all of organizations that integrate RPA methods have experienced a 50% or greater improvement in efficiency as a direct result of its use. Humans remain necessary for certain checks and diagnostics, as well as to perform meta-analyses of the insights generated by the RPA system. However, improvements will only become even more rapid and dramatic as time goes on, and tech-based operations are streamlined even further.

HR tasks, new vendor (or client) creation within an admin system, sales data entry & calculations, report writing, and other organization-based data processing tasks receive major boosts from RPA tools, which vastly improve the speed and the quality of output. They also provide ample opportunity for adjacent employees to better utilize their own talents, by analyzing this new output and using it to suggest core business enhancements.

Freed from comparatively mundane and time-consuming tasks, these employees could also get to know clients and job candidates better on a personal level, in order to provide higher quality services for them. Auditors benefiting from RPA would be able to investigate their clients more thoroughly within a limited time frame, providing a more complete overall service. Other types of users could use RPA to automatically retrieve market-based data from the web, for performing real-time competitor research or checking stock prices and exchange rates.

The versatility of RPA comes as a result of its ability to be trained and customized. Before implementation begins, ABeam clients can receive a full organizational analysis as part of its end-to-end RPA service. This important step highlights the departments and procedures that are likely to benefit most effectively from RPA, showing the road forward and the benefits that will come from following it. From there, the onboarding process is remarkably easy, fast, and low-risk.

When the optimal RPA tasks are decided on, then the preferred type of RPA system can be determined. Some systems are ideal for a high volume of simple tasks performed by small organizations, while other systems are better at performing a low volume of complex tasks for large organizations. ABeam’s experienced team of consultants can match each client with the ideal system for their needs.

A relatively short period is then needed wherein the RPA system is ‘trained’ to accomplish its new job. This initial investment is modest in terms of time, effort and resources, as licensing issues are handled easily and genuine performance improvements over qualified human operators are typically seen within 2 months of operation.

During the same period, the organization’s human employees can simultaneously be trained to use and adjust to the new system, delegating operations appropriately to the RPA program and then generating added value from its output. Managers can likewise soon move on from oversight of basic processes, and focus instead on matters more directly relevant to the execution of the organization’s core mission. Through an intelligent division of work, where both robotic and human employees perform the types of labor that best suits them, organizations can achieve the full benefits of this “office of the future”.

Based on our own experience, RPA booming started from Service, Manufacturing, and Financial industry 2 years ago in Japan, but RPA is spreading around not only these industries but also all of the industries now. Yet virtually any organization can benefit from the consistent performance improvements made possible by the technical and cultural advances within RPA.

Moreover, if your organization’s competitors are already taking advantage of the improvements offered by RPA, then the clock is already ticking. Fast adoption of this powerful new tool, combined with the right training and implementation, can help your business stay at the forefront of its industry. ABeam’s full-service support lets you use RPA on a trial basis if necessary, while also providing full technical assistance even after operation has begun.

We deliver a helpful initial analysis, to walk you through the possibilities of RPA in the context of your specific business. We also arrange a special workshop prior to implementation, showing how to extract the maximum benefit from the RPA system. This entire pre-purchase offering comes free of charge and with no additional commitment, ensuring that your business can make its RPA-based decision with a complete understanding of the possibilities within reach.

We can also help you decide how your organization can get the most out of RPA, whether through software licenses or special operational servers. For added convenience, we offer ABeam Digital Labor Cloud which is more reasonable price comparing with on-premise license for ASEAN Market as a service designed to facilitate RPA operations in Southeast Asia.

Much attention has been paid to Software as a Service (SaaS) business solutions in today’s economy, and deservedly so. Society is rapidly aging just as the complexity of work is increasing – a combination that results in a shortage of qualified labor across industries. RPA lets advanced software handle many of the most pressing needs for business, freeing up valuable human resources which can then be used to tackle the more advanced problems.

RPA neatly matches the latest technological capabilities with the precise areas where business and society need the most help. By lifting the burden of repetitive, logic-based work that is otherwise weighing down the business world, RPA lets employees realize their true potential – and help their organizations shine more brightly than ever.