To some people the term Robotic Process Automation (RPA) may sound like a feature from Tomorrow’s World but RPA is already delivering value to business and can have a significant impact to the way your company is run.
Key findings of Deloitte Global RPA Survey resulted in 53% of respondents have already started their RPA journey. This is expected to increase to 72% in the next two years. If this continues at its current level, RPA will have achieved near-universal adoption within the next five years.
What is RPA technology?
As the name implies Robotic Process Automation mimics the human worker and is capable of carrying out many of the day to day activities in the workplace.
Often referred to as “artificial intelligence” or a “software bot”, RPA is capable of logging into applications, entering data, calculations and completing a variety of tasks using the three technologies of which it was evolved from:
1. Screen scraping – collecting data from legacy systems and displaying them in a new more user-friendly interface.
2. Workflow automation, – removing manual data entry,increasing speed, efficiency, accuracy and machine learning to achieve a better understanding of data.
3. Artificial intelligence. – enabling systems to perform tasks which usually required human intervention.
- Opening email and attachments
- Logging into web/enterprise applications
- Moving files and folders
- Copying and pasting
- Filling in forms
- Extracting structured data from documents
Repeated tasks that RPA can automate for you.
- Reading and writing to databases
- Scraping data from the web
- Connecting to system API Making calculations
- Collecting social media statistics
- Following ‘if/then’ decisions/rules
How can RPA benefit my business?
Automation isn’t all about reducing head count and moving towards a self-service style operation. Insurance and financial intermediaries are there to prove a service after all.
Efficiency savings can allow for the redirection of resource to where it matters most, the client relationship.
The benefits of RPA adoption are significant. Payback was reported at less than 12 months, with an average 20% of full-time equivalent (FTE) capacity provided by robots. RPA continues to meet and exceed expectations across multiple dimensions including:
%
Improved Compliance
%
Improved Quality
%
Improved Productivity
%
Cost Reduction
How can efficiency be improved?
Processes can be performed more rapidly.
Data can be digitized, processed and audited automatically.
Employees can be freed on repetitive tasks allowing them to be more focused on higher product speciality and finally;
In heavily regulated industries such as financial services, RPA can help to ensure a business operates compliantly and meets industry standards.
What can my clients expect?
With new technologies ever advancing, so is the expectation of consumers and their needs and expectations.
It’s not necessarily just about the product anymore, its often about the product, the features, the user experience, and then the price. Business needs to keep up with the demands of their clients.
In the insurance world, despite the marketing tools available today, many of the brokers will still find the majority of their new business through personal recommendations.
This shows the value still placed on the human interaction, but service is paramount, and RPA can work behind the scenes to ensure quality service delivery.
Jason Bingham, MD of Lucid UX talks here about how he helped a broker, tripled their income and reduced operational costs by 77% using technology.
Using RPA at Lucid UX Limited has helped our clients in a number of ways, find out more here.
