Robotic Process Automation

Robotic process automation (RPA) is the use of software with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning capabilities to handle high-volume, repeatable tasks that previously required humans to perform. These tasks can include queries, calculations and maintenance of records and transactions.

RPA technology, sometimes called a software robot or bot, mimics a human worker, logging into applications, entering data, calculating and completing tasks, and logging out.

RPA software isn't part of an organization's IT infrastructure. Instead, it sits on top of it, enabling a company to implement the technology quickly and efficiently all without changing the existing infrastructure and systems.

The evolution of RPA

Although the term "robotic process automation" can be traced to the early 2000s, it had been developing for a number of years previously. RPA evolved from three key technologies: screen scraping, workflow automation and artificial intelligence.

Screen scraping is the process of collecting screen display data from a legacy application so that the data can be displayed by a more modern user interface. The advantages of workflow automation software, which eliminates the need for manual data entry and increases order fulfillment rates, include increased speed, efficiency and accuracy. Lastly, artificial intelligence involves the ability of computer systems to perform tasks that normally require human intervention and intelligence.

Benefits of RPA

Robotic process automation technology can help organizations on their digital transformation journeys by:

• Enabling better customer service
• Ensuring business operations and processes comply with regulations and standards
• Allowing processes to be completed much more rapidly
• Providing improved efficiency by digitizing and auditing process data
• Creating cost savings for manual and repetitive tasks
• Enabling employees to be more productive

Why is RPA important?

Robots are here to stay. The faster you harvest their potential, the faster you create a competitive edge for your business. Robotic Process Automation delivers direct profitability while improving accuracy across organizations and industries. Enabling RPA to handle any processes will not only transform and streamline your organization’s workflow. It will allow for superior scalability and flexibility within the enterprise, doubled by fast, tailored response to specific needs. Software robots are easy to train and they integrate seamlessly into any system. Multiply them, and instantly deploy more as you go. They constantly report on their progress so you can go even bigger and better by using operational and business predictability, while improving strategically.

Automation vs RPA

Automation existed even before RPA came into the picture. Though multiple overlaps exist between these two, unlike RPA, Automation is the invention of a new technology to solve real-life problems with the need for human intervention.

Refer to the table below to look into the differences between Automation and RPA.

Parameter	Automation	RPA
What does it Reduce?	Reduces execution time	Reduces the number of people working on something.
What does it automate?	Automates repetitive test cases i.e a product	Automates the repetitive business process i.e product as well as business
Programming Knowledge	Programming knowledge required to create test scripts	Programming knowledge is mostly not needed as it is wizard-driven
Software Environment	Limited software environment	A wide range of software environments
Application	Used for QA, Production, Performance, UAT environments	Usually used in production environments

What distinguishes RPA from traditional IT automation is the ability of the RPA software to be aware and adapt to changing circumstances, exceptions and new situations. Once RPA software has been trained to capture and interpret the actions of specific processes in existing software applications, it can then manipulate data, trigger responses, initiate new actions and communicate with other systems autonomously.

RPA software is particularly useful for organizations that have many different and complicated systems that need to interact together fluidly.

For instance, if an electronic form from a human resource system is missing a zip code, traditional automation software would flag the form as having an exception and an employee would handle the exception by looking up the correct zip code and entering it on the form. Once the form is complete, the employee might send it on to payroll so the information can be entered into the organization's payroll system.

With RPA technology, however, software that has the ability to adapt, self-learn and self-correct would handle the exception and interact with the payroll system without human assistance.

Lifecycle of RPA

A typical life cycle of RPA has 4 phases. Analysis, Bot Development, Testing, and Support & Maintenance.

Analysis: Business teams & RPA Architects work together to analyze a business process for RPA development.

Bot Development: Developer teams start working on developing the automated workflows for the requirements in a distinct development environment.

Testing: Run testing cycles such as SDLC  to analyze the quality and correct defects.

Support & Maintenance: After the development & testing phases, a bot enters the maintenance phases in which it provides continuous support and helps in the immediate defect resolution.

How does Robotic Process Automation work?

RPA robots are capable of mimicking many–if not most–human user actions. They log into applications, move files and folders, copy and paste data, fill in forms, extract structured and semi-structured data from documents, scrape browsers, and more.

Applications of RPA

Some of the top applications of RPA include:

Customer service: RPA can help companies offer better customer service by automating contact center tasks, including verifying e-signatures, uploading scanned documents and verifying information for automatic approvals or rejections.

Accounting: Organizations can use RPA for general accounting, operational accounting, transactional reporting and budgeting.

Financial services: Companies in the financial services industry can use RPA for foreign exchange payments, automating account openings and closings, managing audit requests and processing insurance claims.

Healthcare: Medical organizations can use RPA for handling patient records, claims, customer support, account management, billing, reporting and analytics.

Human resources: RPA can automate HR tasks, including onboarding and offboarding, updating employee information and timesheet submission processes.

Supply chain management: RPA can be used for procurement, automating order processing and payments, monitoring inventory levels and tracking shipments.

Checklist for selecting RPA Tools:

Technology: Many organizations perform their day to day tasks outside the local desktop using Citrix or Virtual machines. So the tool must be platform independent and should support any type of application.

Scalability: Selection of an RPA tool must include how quickly and easily the tool can respond to business requirements, changes, exceptions or increasing operations.

Security: One of the important parameter to be considered is security. RPA tools are a piece of software, in which you need to measure the implementation of security controls.

Total Cost of Ownership: This includes the initial setup cost of RPA system, ongoing vendor license fees, and maintenance cost. All these costs must be considered when you wish to select a tool for your job to be done.

Ease of Use & Control: The RPA tool that you choose must be user-friendly to increase both efficiency and employee satisfaction. Also, easy to use solutions require less training and have better ease of control.

Vendor Experience: Choose a vendor that serves a company similar to yours both in terms of size and industry. This kind of experience drastically improves the speed of implementation by reducing the work required to implement RPA software.

Maintenance & Support: Vendor has to follow a support model to ensure you meet the required Service Level Agreements. 

Quick Deployment: The tool should be able to help as a real end-user by interacting with applications at the presentation layer, using the screens, validation, and business rules as they are presented via a virtual desktop.

Considering the Robotic Process Automation tools that are available in the current market, we might have to go through some of the important factors and basis that, we should be able to opt for the best suited Robotic Process Automation tool. Here, we have briefly classified the various factors that can influence our decision to choose for the best suiting Robotic Process Automation tool for our businesses, but not all factors may be satisfied as well while choosing the ideal fit for our business requirements. Considering that, we will discuss the most important ones and the rest can be treated as optional or not that intriguing factors for a business.

Factors to look in RPA software:

Below mentioned are the factors, you need to consider while choosing an RPA software/tool.

To implement RPA, you should know the top trending tools. So, let us see the top tools and compare them based on various parameters.

Top RPA vendors:

Automation Anywhere Inc. provides an enterprise digital workforce platform geared toward procure-to-pay, quote-to-cash, HR, claims processing and other back-office processes.

Blue Prism focuses on providing organizations in regulated industries with more agile virtual workforce's, offering desktop-aligned robots that are defined and managed centrally.

EdgeVerve Limited, an Infosys company, helps enterprises modernize customer service, improve business processes and enhance operational productivity.

HelpSystems enables companies to streamline IT and business operations by automating tasks and workflows without the need to write code.

UiPath offers an open platform to help organizations efficiently automate business processes.

Workfusion combines robotics, AI-powered cognitive automation and workforce orchestration to automate enterprise business processes.

Forrester researched, analyzed, and scored the 15 most significant RPA vendors against a set of 30 criteria grouped by three categories: Current Offering, Strategy and Market Presence.

UiPath was top-ranked in the “Current Offering” category, achieved the highest possible score in “Market Presence” and received among the highest scores in the “Strategy” category

RPA Tools Comparison: UiPath vs Blue Prism vs Automation Anywheren 

Features	UiPath	Blue Prism	Automation Anywhere
How will I learn?	Has a community edition/ Free edition available	No trial version available	Trial version is available for 30 days
Learning Curve	Has a user-friendly visual designer	Has a user-friendly visual designer, easier than Automation Anywhere	Developers friendly but requires high programming skills
Google Trends Popularity	Most Popular tool	More popular than Automation Anywhere	Least popular tool in the thee

Vendor	Free Version Available/ Not	Pricing	Usability
Automation Anywhere	–	Per Process	Drag & Drop, Macro Recording
BluePrism	–	Per Bot	Drag & Drop
UiPath	UiPath Community Edition	per bot	Drag & Drop, Macro Recording

Vendor Fit Matrix: 

RPA Tools in Google Trends

C-level decision-making around RPA

Though automation software is expected to replace up to 140 million full-time employees worldwide by 2025, many high-quality jobs will be created for those who maintain and improve RPA software. When software robots do replace people in the enterprise, C-level executives need to be responsible for ensuring that business outcomes are achieved and new governance policies are met.

Robotic process automation technology also requires that the CTO/CIO take more of a leadership role and assume accountability for the business outcomes and the risks of deploying RPA tools.

Additionally, the COO, CIO and chief human resources officer, as well as the relevant C-level executive who owns the process being automated, should all work toward ensuring the availability of an enterprise-grade, secure platform for controlling and operating bots across systems.

Where the robotic process automation market is heading

References

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotic_process_automation

https://mindmajix.com/rpa-tools-comparison

https://www.forrester.com/report/The+Forrester+Wave+Robotic+Process+Automation+Q2+2018/-/E-RES142662

https://www.uipath.com/automate/robotic-process-automation

https://www.blueprism.com/intelligent-automation-skills

https://www.automationanywhere.com/products/bot-insight

https://disruptionhub.com/robotic-process-automation-artificial-intelligence

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_process_automation