RPA: Accelerating Businesses for the Better
RPA: Accelerating Businesses for the Better
Why RPA?
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) will revolutionise the way business is transacted. Imagine a sales representative who spends his/her crucial time of the day entering data to enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) systems. In most cases employees enter data across multiple systems. As a result, data duplication, human errors, and low productivity are encountered. This is an everyday scenario of sales departments that are yet to embark on a robust digital transformation journey and embrace innovative technologies.
Technologies such as robotic process automation (RPA) can enable sales departments, to perform end-to-end sales activities by automating processes such as follow ups, sales order entry and invoicing, among others. RPA is not limited to sales teams alone but departments like finance, procurement, operations and even HR can adopt RPA to automate essential processes and improve their overall efficiency and productivity.
As data is growing by the day, the need for making it meaningful and actionable is what organisations can derive value from. However, analysing the data can be challenging, especially if done manually, leading to employee burnout and low productivity. RPA is capable of resolving all these challenges. It saves employees’ time dealing with monotonous tasks, allowing them to channel their efforts toward high value work. This can be understood better with a case study.
For instance, a company collects and analyses volumes of data to help other organisations make informed decisions. The company needs a scalable solution to derive insights from the data that would free up its employees to focus on other critical work such as improving customer experience. To achieve the goal, the company’s RPA implementation strategy can be built around eliminating the manual tasks involved in evaluating data. With an RPA solution, the company can reapportion the human time invested earlier toward engaging customers and now accelerate better, resulting in increased overall business output. Let’s dig deeper into the benefits of Robotic Process Automation.
Benefits of Robotic Process Automation
Enhance Existing Jobs
Expedite Business Workflows and Processes
Aggregate Data Across Different Systems
Customise Processes as per Need
RPA - the verdict is out
Today, Robotic Process Automation is enabling organisations to analyse structured data that’s coming their way. As a result, businesses are becoming more productive, reaping the benefits of digital transformation, and adopting dynamic business models. Automating repetitive processes with RPA allows employees to spend more time examining information that generates valuable insights. In a nutshell, RPA empowers employees to steer their organisation forward. Vendor selection is also important, UiPath has been constantly named as a leader in this space by Forrester.
6 Reasons Why SMBs must Leverage the Power of RPA
6 Reasons Why SMBs must Leverage the Power of RPA
The growth and spread of Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
Organisations are looking at robotic process automation (RPA) as a way to optimise their business processes and build an efficient workflow. Due to its ease of implementation and higher ROI, RPA is gaining popularity among businesses. According to reports from Deloitte, Everest Group, and NICE, compliance and productivity improvements are the most commonly observed RPA benefits among organisations with a 38% growth rate in compliance and 27% in productivity.
The RPA technology adoption is growing at a rapid rate than ever before. According to Gartner market forecast for RPA is to grow at double-digit rates through 2024 despite economic pressures from COVID-19. Sectors such as Banking, financial services, insurance and utilities have started to benefit from the outcome of their RPA uptake. Be it any industry, RPA not only benefits the larger organisations but also small and midsize businesses (SMBs) with its capabilities to streamline various business processes and increase efficiency.
So Why Bother?
- Only 35% of organisations are effective across their entire process landscape.
- One of the most consistent challenges businesses face is maintaining data quality.
- Businesses have to navigate through three fundamental changes post pandemic:
- New customer behaviour and needs – businesses need to reinvent and adapt.
- Unpredictable demand – need to upscale or downscale.
- Huge spike in working remotely.
If we had to monitor the waste and rework caused by the above mentioned and rectify the needful, then increasing employee resource is expensive and can limit the organisation from achieving scalability. RPA has played a big role for many enterprises during the pandemic. Gartner predicts that 90% of large organizations globally will have adopted RPA in some form by 2022 as they look to digitally empower critical business processes through resilience and scalability, while recalibrating human labour and manual effort.
In simpler words, RPA aids in automating tedious rule-based business processes, allowing employees to focus on other critical tasks. Repetitive actions by an employee on a computer can easily be mimicked by RPA. For instance, RPA can assist finance departments in invoice processing or perform sales-admin activities such as sales order entry and invoicing for sales departments. From managing invoice processing, sales orders, accounting reconciliation to handling ERP data entry, data queries, payroll, RPA can streamline operations and reduce costs for organisations in several ways.
Benefits of RPA
Rework caused by erroneous data entry, lack of process know how, increased onboarding costs for employees and challenges with employee retention eat into operational costs and reduce the overall margins for many of these businesses. Research carried out in 2017 showed mental and physical exhaustion was prevalent for more than 50% of business owners in SMBs only to be surpassed by financial worries and isolation.
SMBs need to embrace RPA to increase their margins but also to ensure their employees are equipped and not time poor to deliver on high value tasks.
Leverage the power of RPA to achieve
- Operational efficiency: RPA software can work round the clock. In an organization, teams can complete increased volumes of work in less time with the help of RPA solutions, which means faster turnaround time, zero waiting time, and increased efficiency.
- Accuracy: When employees multitask owing to their heavy workload, the number of errors and rework increases resulting in higher costs and lower efficiency. RPA can eliminate these issues increasing both efficiency and effectiveness of a process.
- Change Management: Humans need much time to adapt to process changes. RPA eradicates this issue and instantly helps in process change rollouts, ensuring regulatory compliance and a faster adoption rate owing to the change built into the process automation.
- Data Management and Intelligent Insights: For humans, it is difficult to log every task detail such as turnaround time, waiting time, defects occurred, etc., especially when time frame is short, and workload is high. RPA is very smart in this respect as it can store data at every step and provide for the same.
- Customer Experience: RPA frees up employees’ time so they can prioritize difficult tasks like customer complaints and queries giving personalized attention thereby improving customer outcomes and decreasing response time while increasing speed to market.
Implementation
Today, RPA is transforming the way SMBs manage their business processes. SMBs can successfully implement RPA in their existing workflows. Let us find out how.
- Define Scope: SMBs need to define the scope for RPA services at their workplace. It is important to determine, examine, and measure, the performance of the current process and select processes to automate to reduce the pain point for the business.
- Relevant Documentation:Proper documentation can help SMBs determine repetitive processes. It can enable SMBs to initiate common standards for processes and simplify the workflow.
- Calculate ROI: ROI for an RPA project is generally 6 – 9 months which makes it a better project choice than the other technology initiatives of similar calibre.
Final Word
Take Off
In 2020 if you are utilising the same resources as pre covid 19 to serve customers and get superior returns you are one of the lucky few. The reality is business as usual has changed and in these uncertain times there is a need for faster decision making so that resources can be pivoted to generate higher value where warranted. Technology and data must be used to improve productivity and innovation needs to be accelerated to achieve scalability. This by no means is a singular task driven by senior leadership alone, although the direction they provide will guide the organisation on a better path. A collective effort is required if organisations want to achieve positive results in record time. The beautiful Maori proverb comes to mind and something I strongly believe in.,
MY STRENGTH IS NOT MINE ALONE, BUT COMES FROM THE MANY
How do we achieve positive results in record time. We need to ask the tough questions, can we as an organisation:
- Redeploy our talent
- Launch new business models
- Improve productivity
- Develop new products
- Reduce cost to serve
To achieve any of the above, boundaries need to be broken, processes need to be streamlined and frontline employees need to be empowered.
Sustainable speed
The process to develop speed needs to be well planned, it needs to be sustained rather than viewed as another initiative across the organisation. Developing sustainable speed is a process and the article from Mckinsey and Company is a good read -Ready, set, go: Reinventing the organization for speed in the post-COVID-19 era. An excerpt from the article on unleashing sustainable speed below :
Rethink Ways Of Working
- Speed up and delegate decision making
- Setup execution excellence
- Cultivate extraordinary partnerships
Reimagine Structure
- Fllaten the structure
- Unleash nimble, empowered teams
- Make hybrid work
Reshape Talent
- Field tommorrow's leaders today
- Learn how to learn
- Rethimk the role of CEOs and leaders
Evaluate
We need to take small steps to move to our new style of work by redeploying talent, increasing productivity, and reducing cost to serve while aiming to launch new business models and products or services. A good starting point is understanding the current state, its challenges and the desired output required in the short term and long term.
Unarguably the future of work has changed and redeploying talent to multiple business units is a necessity, however achieving this with low cost is a challenge. We can start by examining business processes to identify waste. Eliminating waste will optimise resource allocation and improve the customer experience. There are 8 elements of waste to consider as depicted in the diagram.
1. DEFECTS – accuracy issues when it comes to data capture or input
2. OVERPRODUCTION – bottlenecks in a process leading to overproduction in one area and downtime in another area
3. WAITING – high dependency on internal or external elements leading to increased response time
4. UNUSED POTENTIAL – multiple staff engaging in the same activity
5. TRANSPORTATION – time spent moving files and or accessing information
6. INVENTORY – backlog of tasks to action, delaying the end to end process
7. EXTRA PROCESSING – over processing of information thus reducing the efficiency of the process
8. MOTION – constantly communicating via emails or phone to access information
Once identified it is important to have a discussion if the current process is fit for requirement, running a tool like voice of the customer (VOC) can enhance the conversation with stakeholders.
Some of the wastes can be eliminated by redesigning the process. As we live in challenging times, we must rethink ways of working and automation technology like robotics process automation (RPA) can truly transform processes and free up resources. RPA can mimic the actions of humans on an application within a guided set of parameters. RPA and AI can deliver hyperautomation in ways not previously conceived.
The use of RPA will enable
Accuracy – Data input errors will be eliminated as the tedious task of copy and paste can be overcome, although a simple task in nature it is often the repetitiveness of the tasks that leads to errors.
Just in time inventory – tasks can be scheduled to ensure there is no accumulation of tasks in a certain area thus benefitting the entire end to end process.
Resource availability – as mundane tasks get automated; organisations will be able to mobilise staff.
Easy access to information – The creation of folders and storage of files can be automated thus creating consistency with storage location and file naming conventions.
Reduced cost – Employees will be able to do more with less, the overall effectiveness and efficiency of the process will improve and reduce unnecessary motion driven by emails.
Increased transparency – As processes are handled by BOTS and logs are created and or distributed, the reliability on complex excel spreadsheets is reduced.
Speed to market – As waiting times are reduced, the customer experience journey can be enriched and what seemed like eternity can now be managed with timely communication with customers.
Now is the time
The pandemic challenge is unprecedented, and we must act now and garner speed to rethink ways of working, reimagine structure and reshape talent. The road ahead is long and challenging but by using automation technology we can eliminate wastes and unleash potential of the most talented people.,
Know your environment
In 1936 Jesse Owens held the world record for 100 m – 10.2 sec, now compare that to Usain Bolt’s record 9.63 sec in 2012 and Jesse Owens would be 14 feet behind. Biomechanical analysis of the speed of Owen’s joints shows that had he be running on the same surface as Usain bolt he would have been just a stride behind rather than 14 feet. If you are interested listen to the TED talk – are athletes really getting faster better stronger. Are you running fast with antiquated systems, think of the environment your competitor is creating and build a strategy to propel forward with an even faster pace. Eliminate your waste.
6 lessons that business owners can learn from bees
6 lessons that business owners can learn from bees
Beehives, and bees themselves, are perfectly designed. They are functional, economical, productive and highly organised. Maybe it’s time you learned a little from nature.
1. Leadership And Social Structure
A beehive has a strict social structure, and for very good reason. You have the queen, who is the reason they live, the one who controls the hive. You have the worker bees, the ones going out each day, finding pollen, pollinating plants, doing the mahi, making the honey. Then you have drones, the male bees, whose only purpose in life is to mate with the queen and ensure repopulation of the hive. It’s a finely tuned machine, and the queen needs her drones and workers for her survival- she could not survive on her own.
So is a business. You have the CEO or manager, who oversees the wellbeing of all the staff. You have teams of people assigned to specific tasks, that work together to produce the service or product. Together, as a team, we can achieve. Without the other workers doing their job, a business will fail..
2. Pollinating is a daily task
While a bee flies around collecting nectar and pollen, they are also inadvertently ensure one third of the world’s food supply. As they bury themselves in flowers, they get covered in pollen. Then, they fly to another flower and spread the pollen from the previous flower in that one, pollinating it. And the cycle continues, throughout a bee’s busy day.
In the same way, a business owner should be pollinating as a side effect from running their business. As they move through their day, they come into contact with other business owners. This is networking, and collaboration. A good business owner should always be networking and pollinating their business—as well as pollinating businesses alongside it.
3. Small, agile and intelligent
A bee’s brain is tiny, about the size of a sesame seed. Yet it continually makes complex calculations about foraging and distances required. They dance to show other bees how to access the best food sources. They have a complex social structure, yet each bee knows exactly what their job is.
In New Zealand, we are a tiny part of the world. Compared to the India, China, the US, or even our cousin Australia, we are little. But we are highly intelligent, capable of doing more than our fair share of heavy lifting, in a business sense. Our number eight wire mentality and highly innovative thinking make us quick responders to complex solutions. We may be small, but we are agile and intelligent, making us world leaders in a huge variety of industries.
4. A hive is the perfect framework for strength and function
Bees don’t waste an iota of space, and nothing they do is due to chance. Their hive structure is the perfect example of that. Hexagonal wax shapes are compact, strong, and means zero wastage. They need less wax in order to build them, and together they create a strong, seamless, infinitely functional home with zero waste of resources.
This is where you and your business should be. Building a hive of efficient, complex and seamless business structures that work together as a base for your team of workers. Evaluate your business processes and look to eliminate waste – Take our business process health survey to see where you can improve. Once you’veidentified areas to improve, implement automation technology like Ui Path and EdCast to optimise your business and strengthen its form and function. Look to automate mundane tasks by using robotic process automation and utilise digital adoption to deliver information just in time.
Whether they are working from home, setting up a remote office on the other side of the world, or there’s a need to give access to information or your platform, software like this can make it happen. These robust programmes help enhance user productivity, maximising each business opportunity and adding resilience to your business.
These programmes inspire collaboration, with real time access to everything a business needs, for everyone who needs it. They offer automation, turning processes that took valuable time and were prone to human error, into tasks completed in milliseconds, with 100% accuracy. They offer deep insights into your business, allowing you to see where bottlenecks occur and where changes need to be made for the best workflow and productivity. And it’s all easy to implement and use. Broca Consulting’s clients typically pay off any investment they make between six to 18 months.
5. 5 milliseconds makes a difference.
5 milliseconds. That’s how long a bee’s wing beats for. That’s about 200 beats per second. Imagine if a bee flew slowly, how much less honey they’d make or how many less flowers they’d pollinate.
Automation technology takes time consuming, often error-prone processes, and makes them instantaneous. There’s no painful data entry, or time-consuming communications. Instead, automation makes things happen in less than 5 milliseconds, increasing capabilities, efficiencies and reducing errors at the same time.
6. Make your service or product as unique as honey
Honey, the output that bees create that humans consume, is incredible. It is the only food that includes all the substances necessary to sustain life, including enzymes, vitamins, minerals, and water; and it’s the only food that contains pinocembrin, an antioxidant associated with improved brain functioning. The more scientists study honey, the more they realise the incredible varied ways it can help human’s health, skin, and well-being.
Your product or service should be just as unique, helpful and amazing to your customers. What you create should be the absolute perfect solution for your customers. On time, perfectly suited to their needs, and a part of their business they cannot do without.
The hive can teach us a lot about efficient, well-designed business
Bees and their hive structures are the ultimate in intelligent design. Not one element of their lives has been left to chance, and your business should be the same. If you know your business isn’t quite hive-efficient, contact us at Broca Consultancy Services. Together, we can find the problems and inefficiencies in your business. We can streamline, creating a business structure as strong, reliable, and efficient as honeycomb. We can help ensure your staffing structure is clearly defined, so the Queen isn’t having to do all the work herself. And finally, we can ensure your customers will love your product because it’s absolute perfection.
Planning For Growth
"Resilience is an ineffable quality for people to possess, it is even better when it forms part of the culture of an organisation. We need to be comfortable with uncertainty but plan for opportunities and minimise threats."
In the article Bubbles pop, downturns stop by McKinsey and Company the focus is on resilient companies and their ability to create earnings advantage superior to their competition. Resilient companies create :
1. Flexibility
2. Cut costs ahead of the curve
3. Resilients in countercyclical sectors focus on growth, despite costs
The findings are well articulated on how resilient companies delivered on total returns to shareholders (TRS) in excess when compared to the sector median. Digitisation also adds to the capabilities of organisations and companies that adopt to the new way of work and will accelerate in a downturn. The traditional levers of cost cutting account for approximately 2% of costs however digital tools can cut costs by an additional 5%. In the article McKinsey & Company has also formulated a resilience playbook creating interventions and accelerating decisions.
Companies further along the digital journey are realizing 7-plus percent more revenue growth than industry peers, and nearly 6 percent more EBITDA growth
Hirt M., Laczkowski K. & Mysore M. – Bubbles pop, downturns stop – McKinsey & Company
Let us explore how new digital tools can move your organisation towards flexibility and help curb costs to move towards a resilient organisation. Digital tools are redefining the customer experience by allowing for faster response time and multiple touchpoints during the sale and purchase cycle. Companies like Dexibit are using Machine Learning, visitor data and forecasting to serve customers in museums and cultural attractions better – Dexibit and big data solutions.
Adobe CIO Cynthia Stoddard talks about Robotics Process Automation (RPA) which created a 79% reduction in manual hours for work involving creation of purchase orders and the automation of wire transfer requests by bots resulted in a 94% decrease in manual hours – How we scaled RPA with a Center of ExcellenceIt is then of little wonder that these technologies rank high in 2019 to :
- Improve business efficiency
- Increase profitability
- Reduce cost
- Increase market share (Growth)
ML, AI and cognitive computing remain in the top 3 as perceived by technology industry leaders to drive business transformation while RPA has catapulted from no. 9 to no. 2 in 2019 highlighting how digital tools are driving long term value – The top 10 technologies for business transformation
“Human capital is a crucial asset of any business—in fact, in an age of ubiquitous technology, it is human skills, creativity and capability that will form the competitive edge for any organization.”
Towards a Reskilling Revolution – World Economic Forum
There is little doubt that advances in technology are disrupting industries and organisations are failing to adapt or are slow to react. In order to drive creativity and complexity and grow the human asset bold decisions need to be taken at the board level. Workers at all levels in the organisation need to adapt to changing forces, be flexible with the futureof work. This does not necessarily imply delegation of power to allin the organisation but rather create a governance structure that is transparent and understood by all,allow data to flow seamlessly to enable quicker decision making. Nonvalue adding tasks need to be automated through tools like RPA and MS Flow to name a couple and customers need to be engaged right from product selection to purchase even outside of office hours, chatbots is helpful in this regard.
According to Stats NZ 60% of insurance, 54% of Utilities, 51% of Adminand support services and 50% of Finance organisationsare up to 4 years behind when compared to the best common available technology. If the human asset is bogged down with daily mundane activity due to lack of new technology, it will fail to create a flexible working environment to adapt to external forces that can progress the organisation towards resilience.
Large organisations serving a global market may have the luxury of outsourcing staff, however the New Zealand Market predominantlycomprises of small businesses. They need to utilise technology to its full advantage to minimise costs and boost productivity. There are many aspects to cost cutting other than employee count but given we are talking about latest technology viz. RPA, ML and AI, these can curb costs at a much faster rate compared to traditional methods when it comes to process optimisation. For e.g. the use of RPA can enable an employee to process 100sof invoices in minutes when compared to manually processing the same in hours. In addition to time, accuracy is also realised. These tools not only help with cost cutting but also increase speed of information which can improve the customer experience..
By 2022, more than 50% of all people collaborating in Industry 4.0 ecosystems will use virtual assistants or intelligent agents to interact more naturally with their surroundings and with people.
Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2019 – Gartner
Let us use technology to our benefit if we want to create a resilient organisation that can deliver on earnings superior to the competition. Struggling with compliance, scalability, processes not allowing for proactive management of customers and customer experience suffering at the expense of growth then evaluate the digital strategy. Work towards a resilient organisation.
Be the Rocket
Should We Follow Tradition
For many decades we have followed the traditional method where the support functions were steered to deliver on operations for strategic decisions best thought out at a corporate level. We have got better at delivery and presentation, but paperwork has largely been replaced by emails. Many employees at the support level utilise their expertise to deliver on information that is repetitive and mundane as their KPIs are structured around departmental performance. As digital technology has advanced support functions require a reorganisation of activities and greater inclusion to be prepared for the future of work.
Turbocharge
Technology will radically improve the performance or reach of an organisation; more and more companies are looking to transform theirbusiness. Digitally an organisation can transform across three key areas: customer experiences, operational processes and business models (fig. 1).These three areas of transformation have three different digital elements and for an organisation to transform across all nine elements is a monumental undertaking. The risk however for organisations is losing market share or becoming irrelevant altogether.
Resources both living and non-living have been utilised traditionally until Air BnB, Uber, Upwork and the likes challenged business models. Organisations need to take the innovative mindset and utilise the support functions to grow a digitally capable business. Connectivity or automation is not new but the speed with which it can be implemented to reap benefits has changed. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) will grow into a multibillion-dollar industry by 2021. RPA can turbo charge support functions and free up valuable time by optimising processes, enhancing the customer experience and ultimately allowing for a reinvigorated business model. RPA can significantly improve the customer experience by improving the speed of delivery, and support functions in call centres, accounting, procurement, pricing and administration can be automated resulting in reduction in cost to serve and well governed optimised processes. Freeing up resources used traditionally will allow organisations to rethink their business model and capabilities.
The Challenge
Any transition is a challenge, but a well-planned digital tool aligned with strategy is a step in the right direction. According to a Forrester report –Transformation goes pragmatic there is going to be renewed focus on moving customers to low cost digital channels, automating processes to improve margins and launching digital products, when executed efficiently firms it will allow focus on pressing and promising items. The report further states that RPA and AI will join forces to create digital workers for more than 40% of enterprises. Let us be prudent and proactive and navigate ahead by collaborating with partners to deliver on excellence before it turns into a minefield. Be the rocket and turbocharge the workforce.
The Nine Elements of Digital Transformation | ||
Customer experience | Operational processes | Business models |
1. Customer understanding | 4. Process Digitization | 7. Digitally modified businesses |
2. Top line growth | 5. Worker enablement | 8. New digital businesses |
3. Customer touch points | 6. Performance management | 9. Digital globalization |
Westerman, George; Bonnet, Didier; McAfee, AndrewMIT Sloan Management Review. | ||
Generation Z
#Z
There are about 983,000 people aged between 10 and 24 in New Zealand, compared with just over a million Millennials, 929,000 Generation Xers and 817,000 Baby Boomers, according to Statistics New Zealand
The Age Of Digital Transformation
For many decades we have followed the traditional method where the support functions were steered to deliver on operations for strategic decisions best thought out at a corporate level. We have got better at delivery and presentation, but paperwork has largely been replaced by emails. Many employees at the support level utilise their expertise to deliver on information that is repetitive and mundane as their KPIs are structured around departmental performance. As digital technology has advanced support functions require a reorganisation of activities and greater inclusion to be prepared for the future of work.
The Business Landscape
A business case carefully considers the macro and micro environment identifying competitors, evaluating strengths and weaknesses and validating ideas. A company can align itself from outward in or vice versa while building resources. Careful considerations are given to financial plans and the vision, mission and goals are well articulated. At the crux is the ability to have co-workers that are cohesive and can move forward diligently and prudently.
Mind The Gap
The best summary of a team I have heard is a bunch of people trying to do the very best given the resources and the direction chalked out. I like this observation as it mentions of delivering on the best; for an individual to deliver their very best the environment needs to be conducive and he/she needs to feel valued. According to Stats NZ there are just under a million Gen Z and research indicates they place a very high value on flexibility. The Business case needs to dig deeper on how best to acquire this new talent so that a team can deliver on its best and create an environment to adopt to a changing world. The traits of Gen Z below highlight the need for organisations to engage the new workforce so that a vast majority of them stay beyond a couple of years.
The Impact Of Doing Nothing
Productivity
Among OECD countries NZ does not sit well in terms of productivity but the direction of the arrow will be upwards if teams give their very best in a conducive environment. Attracting new talent on board especially Gen Z will require us to go beyond the norm. Digital tools like Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) will not only assist in increasing productivity but will allow for flexibility of resources. As projects gets varied and complex these digital tools deliver on ROI if planned properly but also deliver on intangible benefits; employees performing value adding activities and remaining engaged in the workforce.
The infographic below taken from the world economic forum highlight the skills of the future, this is aligned with research on Gen Z where they need assistance from businesses to develop soft skills. If we want our employees to engage meaningfully with one another and with clients, then being busy is the catchphrase we need to avoid. We need to upskill and educate how to better action mundane and repetitive tasks with the aid of Bots (a software program that can run scheduled or unscheduled tasks autonomously).
Conclusion
Benefits Of Robotics Process Automation (RPA)
- Improved customer experience
- Reduces cost to serve
- Increased governance
- Improved employee engagement
- Allows for flexibility and is scalable
RPA for Better and Improved Results across Insurance Industry
RPA The Driving Factor Of Growth And Efficiency Across Insurance Industry
The insurance industry has plethora of repetitive and stringent back-office processes. The processing of these tasks is as per set guideline with negligible scope of deviation. These tasks include processing of claims, underwriting, serving of policy, renewals of policy and operational tasks. They amount of data collection from various sources is huge and a tedious task. The task is overwhelming for many insurers, often stalling the growth. For many insurers, the challenge of servicing existing customers is more than acquiring new one.
This is where Robotic Process Automation (RPA) comes in the picture. With the use of cognitive technologies like computer vision, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence with RPA, insurance companies have succeeded in radical transformation of their business processes. By automating they have achieved accelerating of claim handling, improvement of fraud detection and creating new insurance products. Hence the substantial growth in implementation of Robotic Process Automation across the Insurance industry. Insurers are reworking on their existing legacy business models and replacing them with emerging technologies for effective operations.
About RPA
RPA is automation of repetitive mundane manual tasks through Robots or BOTs. These are known to improve the communication between the existing legacy systems and the new systems within an organisation. With automation of manual processes, employees can work towards innovating ways for better products, processes, fraud detection methodologies and customer delight.
Implementation of RPA has helped the insurance companies in streamlining of various business processes to reduce administrative tasks. As per a report shared by McKinsey RPA has been successful in saving 34% of employee time. RPA has proven to increase efficiency by reducing of manual errors and help in cost saving. Afterall, the programming of Robots is not to get tired and commit errors in entries. Apart from costs and efficiency, RPA also extends the lifespan of your legacy systems by working as a layer between human and systems. It works by replicating human activities like data entry, report generation and much more.
RPA And Insurance
RPA and Insurance are best fit because RPA automates the overall lifecycle end-to-end of a process. It works in coordination with the latest technologies and the company’s existing legacy systems.
Over the past few months, the Insurance industry has seen growth in implementation of RPA. Since the onset, RPA has worked by focusing on one process at a time. The ideology here is working towards identifying bottleneck or critical mundane task and then automating them. With simple automation of repetitive tasks like data entry, report generations, copy paste activities, organisations have been able to save a lot of time that improves efficiency of the overall business.
Huge amount of paperwork is associated with creation of a customer profile. Filling of hard copy forms and data entry in the system is a repetitive task and is prone to manual errors. The integration of intelligent optical character recognition (OCR) along with Software Robots has helped in reducing paperwork and manual errors while data entry. OCR’s works as aggregators by scanning the paperwork and transferring the unstructured data into digital formats. OCR technologies specialise in recognising document, capture data and process it with accuracy.
RPA helps in meeting the stringent compliance parameters set for the insurance industry. In case of any discrepancy during audits, the data is easily accessible due to prior recording and storage. Customers today are aware and concerned about data threats, they need assurance of no misuse and security of data. Automated round-the-clock support, ease of data access, less human errors in processing of claims have helped the insurance sector provide better customer service.
RPA in coordination with ML and AI has been able to rework on the traditional process followed by insurance companies. Resulting to automation of various tasks like processing of claims, processing of approvals and speeding up of service delivery.
Conclusion
With the use of strategic Robotic Process Automation solutions, insurance companies can improve efficiencies and be cost-effective. A study had concluded that in Insurance companies almost 25% of the tasks are repetitive. Automation can help in reduction of these manual tasks. However, it is important to get the best tool for your automation needs.
We at Broca, help you in your digital journey at every stage. No matter where you are, we will help you achieve your business goals. We work in collaboration with various partners to provide the best suited RPA solution for your insurance company. Talk to us, to learn more about how we can help you in your digital journey.
