During the first wave of the pandemic, remote working became the new normal overnight. Organisations opted for digitally-driven businesses, which were powered by large-scale cloud adoption. As time progressed, organisations saw the benefits of digital transformation and looked for newer ways to increase operational efficiency and reduce redundancies.
One such solution is RPA owing to its numerous advantages. RPA automates the rule-based and redundant tasks. Hence, it can be widely implemented in process-intensive industries such as banking, finance, and insurance that have huge number of high-value processes such as Mortgage Processing, Accounts Payable, KYC, Report Automation, Fraud detection, Claims Processing, Policy Management, Regulatory Compliance and Underwriting.
Today, more and more businesses are turning to RPA to streamline enterprise operations and reduce costs as they have realized the benefits of automation not only from the perspective of enhancing operational efficiency but also garnering the best value from their human capital. At this juncture, it is also interesting to note that almost all industries have been on a digitization spree post-Covid and are now looking at measures to enhance the process and operational efficiency through automation.
The key advantages of having an RPA enabled workforce are:
It increases productivity – Since RPA frees up employees’ time to focus more on analytical and strategical work, it increases the overall productivity of the organization
It increases efficiency – RPA bots can work round the clock without getting fatigued. Also, it eliminates the chances of human-error, thereby improving the efficiency of the organization.
It enhances accuracy – The main feature of RPA is its power to eliminate processing errors. As it is not a turn-key solution, it requires testing, training, as well as governance.
It enhances security – Among the benefits of RPA, the most convincing one is that it functions on a granular level. As the bot performs only one task, there is no worry of information leakage from one part to another.
It improves analytics – RPA technologies allow organizations to gather data about task execution that can be employed for analytical purposes.
What’s more for RPA?
RPA, like any other new-age technology, is evolving and new trends keep emerging. By leveraging the machine learning capabilities, organizations will be able to make processes smarter, reduce the need for human intervention, and augment RoI in RPA.
As RPA becomes more sophisticated, we can witness it evolving into Smart Process Automation (SPA) – wherein it will be integrated with other emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to perform cognitive tasks.
What industries can also expect to see is how RPA will further evolve towards ‘Hyper Automation’. By using a combination of automation technologies, hyper-automation allows organizations to move beyond the confines of individual processes and automate nearly any tedious and scalable task.
Effects of RPA on the job market…
While addressing the automation takeover, we cannot afford to ignore the burning questions about its impact on the job market. Yes, there will be changes but contrary to popular beliefs, these technologies will not replace jobs but transform their nature. The redundant and rule-based jobs will be automated, paving the way for expertise-driven work that requires human intelligence and creativity.
With the automation of repetitive, high-volume processes, employees will have more time to focus on work that enhances their skillset development. RPA is one of the most desired skill sets in the IT industry. The last year’s pandemic and the resultant lockdown has further accelerated the demand for this skillset. With enterprises increasingly focusing on building ‘Virtual Workplaces’, RPA is emerging as one of the enablers for the same.
As seen, the future of the workplace is powered by technology. In a world defined by remote working, the need to be RPA ready will only increase with time, making it a must-have for organisations.
Neelesh Kripalani,
Chief Technology Officer, Clover Infotech
