The industrial revolution enables manufacturing industries across the world to release human resources by employing automated machines, the production and manufacture of products or materials have been evolved into a highly efficient and productive process by replacing the large scale of repetitive and manually intensive tasks with robotic machinery.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has taken this concept to further automate a series of repeatable business processes by developing robotic automation software platform that allows digitalized workforce to interact with humans, simulate their behavior, and perform various actions just like they do. Intelligent RPA is not a straightforward technology deployment, it is about the transformation of business and operating models.
“By 2020, 90% of medium to large enterprises would implement RPA solution into at least one process.” - Gartner Report
1. What is RPA | From Informatization to Digital Transformation
Robotic Process Automation (RPA), also known as the Inossem Digital Workforce, is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered technology that enabled enterprises to digitize and automate its business operations. Essentially, RPA is a practice of process improvement and technology enablement, it applies a series of user interface (UI) and a configurable platform to design, deploy, and execute scripts that automate manually performed routine processes.
In the technical context, the term robotic refers to the anthropomorphic feature of RPA, where a computer software is configured to operate existing applications in the same way that humans do. The established digital system integrates those human behavior and automatically executes business processes, that enables enterprises to optimize the speed and scale of existing workflow. Thu, more value-added activities could be performed by releasing resources and improving efficiency with automation. The deployment of digital workforce, the reallocation of resources, and the integration of processes, is transforming how enterprises manage and conduct business, and eventually contribute to its digitalization and intelligence.
“By 2021, it is estimated that there will be more than 4 million robots doing office and administrative work as well as sales and other related tasks.” - Forrester Research
2. How is RPA Different | The Rationale and Paradigm
2.1 Rationale
- Configurable – connect to the system APIs
- Non-intrusive – no disruption to the underlying system
- Replicable – duplicate human operated processes
- Extensible – collaborate with any application
- Cognitive – integrating with AI technologies
The architecture of RPA starts with a configurable platform designed by proficient developers, this script executing engine connects to the system APIs and operates on the basis of existing software foundation. With the non-invasive feature of this technology, the software is deployed with no disruption and zero integration to the underlying system architecture. The anthropomorphic behavior of RPA software interact with the existing applications within the user interface, emulate human actions to duplicate the process in a virtualized environment. The technical basis of RPA offers extensible performance that enables interactions with any application to complete cross-functional workflow across multiple applications through integrated configuration. At present, the development of RPA has evolved into an AI-oriented cognitive phase, by integrating AI technologies such as machine learning, optical character recognition (OCR) and natural language processing (NLP), the technology of RPA has made several breakthroughs. In an AI-powered future, the continuous process improvements of digitalization and intelligence is anticipated with enhanced RPA capabilities and comprehensive enterprise solutions.
It is predicted that the investment in intelligent automation is accelerating, compared with the valuation of $12.4 billion today, the overall spending is estimated to reach $232 billion by 2025. - KPMG Research Study
2.2 Paradigm
The forms of RPA are diversified regarding to its deployed environment, employed processes, and service provider, etc., while the underlying architecture of RPA is not complex. The paradigm of RPA comes with three components, each of them performs separate yet crucial functions, with coordination, the scheme reaches its full potential of finding the right automation solution to optimize business processes.
- The Designer
The configuration platform provides the functions for operators to design customized scripts within a visualized environment. Thus, the business process is standardized into scripts that ready for uploading to the server.
- The Coordinator
The centralized server provides a platform that manage, control, monitor and coordinate the operation of automation. Such that different scripts and multiple workforce could be hosted and governed virtually by the coordinator.
- The Performer
The automated workforce is deployed by the centralized server in accordance with the customized scripts to execute a series of tasks while interacting with human actions. Thereby providing the optimization of efficiency.
3. How Does RPA Work | Industry-Specific & Function-Based Solutions
The deployment of RPA has significant potential for driving organizational transformation, business optimization and gaining competitive advantage. In practice, the adoption of RPA techniques integrates applications at the UI level, interacting with human actions, eliminating manual errors, optimizing processes and releasing employees’ capabilities. While the technology continuous to develop and evolve, as a market, RPA remain relatively small as its potential have not yet been fully understood or exploited. The challenge for both the prospective business users and the service providers is, what processes are relevant to RPA, and how does RPA solution operate to scale and deliver value for the business.
Essentially, RPA is applicable in any industry, the scenario that comprise high volume, rules-driven, manually intensive and repetitive tasks might be found in any industry and business. The function-based scenario such as the administration office, finance and accounting center, IT department, and operation-related functions exist in almost all organizations, while the applicability and effectiveness of RPA might vary according to the industry-specific process. Among all these instances, financial industry has shown a highly mature adoption of RPA technology, particularly within the F&A scenario. The substantial amount of data processing workflow and heavy reliance on people when dealing with account payable, receivable and general ledger indicates a great potential of automation solutions for financial industry.
Although the value of RPA regarding the function-based process might be varied across industries, the opportunities for those businesses to optimize process with industry-specific solutions are expected. That is, the scalability and flexibility of RPA software enable a variety of customized solutions that have great potential for easing the industry pressure points, such as the order processing and inventory checking processes in manufacturing, or the billing and reports automation processes in healthcare industry. The adoption potential of RPA across industry and function remain significant, the function-based and industry-specific solutions might be applicable and effective for any industry and users to achieve benefits of RPA.
4. What are the Benefits of RPA | Another Step Forward in the Business Evolution
The payback was reported at less than 12 months, with an average of 20% of full-time equivalent capacity provided by robots. RPA continues to meet and exceed expectations across multiple dimensions. - Deloitte Global RPA Survey
The benefits of RPA adoption are significant and multidimensional, the faster enterprises realize this potential, the faster they could generate competitive advantages for businesses. For years, businesses have been automating for efficiency and profitability, releasing human resources from repetitive tasks, accelerating operational processes, streamlining workflows, seeking for productivity and cost reduction. In addition, RPA offers a series of technical benefits with superior scalability and flexibility, the software could integrate into almost any application system and expand its deployment instantly while the business growing, such that it enables customized solutions for specific needs within the organization. Accordingly, the benefits of RPA might be perceived differently by executives with diverse expectations with regard to the value chain of their businesses. For financial services, the benefits of improved compliance and risk management might be realized with the accuracy of execution and the elimination of manual error. For consumer discretionary, RPA could be an approach to enhance customer experience and upgrade service quality. For manufacturing, the benefits such as speeded delivery and scaled production might be found by optimizing supply chain.
However, following the advancement of technologies and the increasingly competitive business environment, executives are starting to expect beyond operational and economic dimensions of benefits. Apart from delivering rapid ROI while improving speed and saving cost, the technology enablement of intelligence automation comes with further business possibility that has an insightful impact on how enterprises would operate and transform to confront the forthcoming challenges. From the strategic perspective, RPA performs as the approach to comprehensively capture data, derive insightful analysis, manage knowledge, predict industry trend, add managerial capacity, stimulate innovation, and ultimately enable digital and organizational transformation.
