What makes Robotic Process Automation popular?

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is software technology that is used to automate manual tasks in a business process that a person would otherwise perform on a computer.

An RPA software robot is able to simulate the human activity of reading from a computer screen, typing on the keyboard, moving and clicking a mouse.

RPA is popular with pragmatic business leaders for a number of factors including:

• RPA delivers a good ROI, with benefits appearing in weeks
• RPA can be implemented without changing other IT systems
• RPA can be run alongside people / or run overnight
• RPA can reduce pressure on staff
• RPA is the practical solution to leverage AI technology
• RPA delivers accuracy which removes human errors
• RPA consistency improves compliance levels
• RPA delivers more data “Privacy” as data is not seen as much by humans (i.e. No Gossip)
• RPA takes the Robotic tasks out of the human activity

RPA is suited to any task that requires repetitive activity where the information source is available digitally and the result required is digital.

By performing a sequence of tasks, a whole business process can be automated.

It is about enabling people to be more effective and deliver better productivity.

A good design practice is to keep “Humans in the loop”, so that they handle exceptions, the unusual, etc.

The usual triggers for a business to investigate RPA are:

• Budget pressure to do “More with Less”
• Difficulty finding and retaining staff, hence need to get the most productive use from staff that are available.