What is RPA – Robotic process automation or RPA is a technology that facilitates automation of repeatable rule-based tedious business processes using software robots or bots. This technology helps organizations to automate repetitive tasks efficiently across various applications and systems, Like Web based, Desktop based, Java based, Oracle based, or Mainframe based tools. The Robots are programmed to perform a sequence of steps under a set of predefined business rules leading to a meaningful task, without or lesser human intervention.
For Example, Let’s say you are in charge of the attendance register in a XYZ Ltd. Every day, you need to collect the attendance details from some web-based tool, import it to an excel or some database. Then, you need to sort these according to different departments/projects and finally, you send these to the respective supervisors of each department/project.
Now let’s break this task into steps to have a clearer idea, here we go:
1. Login to the online attendance system.
2. Navigate to today’s attendance page and import the data to an excel.
3. Filter & Sort the data according to different departments like; IT, HR, Finance, PM etc. and put them in different files. Save these files with today’s date as file name.
4. Finally send an email to each department head with this data file as attachment.
You see, the task here seems pretty simple & straightforward with a set of predefined rules in place, right?
but as you need to do this on a daily basis, it takes a lot of your valuable time and effort. What if this task can be automated end-to-end and can handled by a robot efficiently, without any human interventions?
That would be awesome, right!
With Robotic Process Automation or RPA, processes like this can be automated in no time. This is what RPA does - It automates your repetitive, rule-based tasks like this one freeing your valuable time which can be used in a more productive and intelligent way.
So in simple words, RPA is a platform, where one can create a software program(robot) that can perform basic rule based, repetitive tasks ultimately saving time and cost for organizations.
These RPA bots can do a lot of tasks from Login/Logout to a system, moving files and folders, Data Entry, Data Manipulation, Data Extraction, sending emails, opening emails/attachments, filling forms, Basic & Complex calculations, Reading/writing to databases and much more of repeatable tasks.
Now that we have a basic idea on what is Robotic process automation, Let’s go through the advantages & limitations of using RPA!
Advantages of RPA –
Better Speed & Increase Productivity: The RPA robots can work 24*7 without any breaks, thus improving the productivity.
No Human Errors: If RPA workflow is well defined, then you can get higher accuracy than what you get from a human work as computers only follow the instructions given by us and they do not perform/skip any steps other than what’s been fed to them. So, the possibility of errors are very low by these robots.
Easy Monitoring and Auditing: The whole process can be monitored and visualized at any point of time.
Saves human time & efforts: Frees up time for workers, enabling them to work on more productive and creative tasks than mundane things.
Limitations of RPA –
Limited to speed of the application: The robots speed depends on the speed of the website or application used in the process. If the application is slow, the robot will be slow too.
Changes in application leads to bot reconfiguration: If the structure of existing application is changed, the robot needs to be reconfigured accordingly.
Limited to repetitive rule-based processes: The robots don’t have human thinking or intelligence, so they work best for the processes that are repetitive and rule-based.
Now let’s see When to use RPA in the organization!!
Now, What are the main characteristics to keep in mind while choosing a business process to automate?
When to Use RPA –
High volume, highly repetitive processes: Business processes, that are done on a daily basis and are of very high volume taking up significant amount of time and human effort are easy targets for automation. as they take significant time that could be spent on work that requires more human thinking, intelligence and empathy, they are best suited for automation.
Stable Pre-defined decision tree (steps): the processes with a stable pre-defined set of steps of how the work is done by the humans and how to decide what to do in all cases.
Fixed Input/output points: The input to be used in the processed shall be obtained from a fixed file/application/website and the output location shall also be same for all the occurrences.
Let’s check out the industries where RPA is/can be used?
Leading RPA tools in the market – The below RPA vendors do provide certifications on their own learning platforms. Register yourself on the below links & start learning right away!
1. Uipath - https://www.uipath.com/
Link to Uipath Academy - https://academy.uipath.com/
2. Blue Prism - https://www.blueprism.com/ Blue Prism University - https://portal.blueprism.com/
3. Automation Anywhere - https://www.automationanywhere.com/
Automation Anywhere University - https://www.automationanywhere.com/
You can also visit our YouTube channel Project RPA & learn from the videos and develop hands-on projects there.
That’s the end of this article. Look around for more learning articles on RPA!
Thanks for stopping by!
Puja :)
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