The benefits of automating the front office

With the help of automation, companies can now deliver a superior digital experience to their customers across multiple channels and digital touch points. This improves the overall customer experience and helps them retain their existing customers. Here are some of the other benefits that companies can get by implementing robotic process automation:

Reduce Costs

Automation helps enterprises reduce their cost of operations. For example, BPO is one of the high operational costs for organizations. Through automation, organizations can reduce their BPO costs as it eliminates many repetitive tasks carried out by humans. Also, automation helps improve accuracy compared to human-executed activities and thus saves valuable time for employees. Thus, RPA helps companies save on operational costs.

Improve Decision-Making Capabilities

Automation provides access to data from numerous sources. This processed data is made available through visual dashboards that help business users make better decisions at all levels of the organization. For instance, employees in the finance department can identify trends in spending over time or compare spending to other departments within or outside of the organization. Different departments can identify root causes of exceptions or anomalies to ensure compliance with regulations or drive operational efficiency.

Improved Employee Retention

Business users who leverage automation have fewer errors in reporting as they no longer have to gather and analyze data manually. This reduces stress levels among employees and prevents high-turnover rates among teams who are required to perform mundane tasks often throughout their shift or overburdening employees with additional responsibilities when there are staff shortages due to absence or illness. Thus, robotic process automation improves employee retention across the organization’s workforce.

The Best Candidates for Automation

 Analytical tasks

Analytical tasks are well suited for robotic process automation since they usually follow a rigid, step-by-step workflow. For example, data analysis often involves following specific steps, such as importing the data into a software tool, running calculations, and creating visualizations. If a team of analysts follows this same workflow every day, robotic process automation can help improve efficiency by putting this workflow on autopilot via software robots.

Administrative tasks

Administrative tasks also follow a rigid workflow, making them an excellent fit for robotic process automation. Examples include approvals that follow a step-by-step workflow such as ‘manager review,’ ‘department manager review,’ ‘committee review,’ etc. Other administrative tasks that can be automated via robotic process automation include metrics gathering, reporting, and performance.

Business Process Management?

RPA and BPM are often mentioned in the same breath since both technologies have been introduced recently and are designed to help organizations streamline their business processes more efficiently. However, there are some critical differences between these two technologies. While BPM enables companies to create business process models and map out existing workflows, RPA allows organizations to automate specific tasks within these workflows without impacting the larger workflow itself. This gives organizations complete control over their business processes, no matter how they are automated via robotic process automation or other technologies.

What is Robotic Process Automation (RPA)?

Robotic process automation is a new technology that allows organizations to use artificial intelligence (AI) to streamline their business processes.

RPA is software that mimics the actions of an employee. RPA automates long-running, repeatable tasks in the back office, freeing human employees to focus on other work while improving efficiency and accuracy.

Robotic process automation combines artificial intelligence and business process management (BPM). These bots follow a specific step-by-step process, just like employees — eliminating the need for human beings to run operations or make mistakes.

Robotic process automation works best when applied to rigid workflow tasks. The exact functions best suited for robotic process automation will vary from industry to industry and from business function to business function. Still, most experts agree that repetitive analytical and administrative tasks fit the bill nicely.