Key advantages derived by implementing RPA:

• Rapid scalability
• Reduced cost
• Higher quality services
• Greater compliance
• Significantly lower down time
• Comprehensive insights
• Freed-up resources who can take up more innovative tasks

As a first step, it is important to identify processes and its scope for implementation. RPA can be applied across many areas, but outcome or ROI can be drastically different. Thorough planning and analysis will certainly be necessary in order to take up high-value implementations rather than ad-hoc approach.

High Value additions / ROI: It is important to decide where most business benefits would accrue by implementing RPA, be it enhanced demand fulfilment, increased customer satisfaction, improved business volume or satisfied employees. For example, you may identify procure-to-pay as a critical area to apply RPA if organisation has high CAPEX budget and complex capital procurement system to manage. Customer on-boarding and Customer Relationship Management may be an area where RPA can yield high value in case of a company where B2B business model and loyal clientele is critical to the business.

Some of the attributes which should be considered while planning and deciding RPA implementations can be summarised as below:

• High volume: The ROI potential will be higher as the transaction volume increases.
• Multiple digital systems: If you have many systems to be referred to, but most of them are in digital forms, RPA could be the way to get error-free, faster automation of tasks.
• Well defined Process and Flow: RPA could be more easily implemented if process is standardised, and flow of information and decisions are well planned and understood.
• Low variations and changes: Frequent changes would make it difficult to implement RPA. Fairly standard approach and changes which are rule-based could be handled more effectively.
• Activities which could be structured, can be Rule-Based: Activities those can be defined well, follow rules and well-planned sequences are good RPA candidates.

The repetitive activities such as referring and updating data from multiple enterprise-grade applications such as Product Life-Cycle Management (PLM) Systems, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, and third-party regulatory portals can be highly time-consuming and prone to errors.  RPA can be a good candidate in demanding tasks. RPA can easily handle such operations by automating such tasks across the systems and platforms, by leveraging APIs and BOTs.

InOpTra would develop and implement RPA solutions across the enterprise in a systematic, phased approach. The tool used could be of your choice: UiPath, Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism or any other preferred RPA tool. Given below is the typical approach followed, though it will be customized based on scope, complexity and automation (assisted or unassisted RPA) required.