Contact us anytime to know more — Kuldeep K., Founder & CEO CISIN
What is Robotic Process Automation (RPA)?
RPA refers to software robots that perform tasks generally undertaken by humans, especially automating rule-based processes across multiple IT systems.
As we move toward the Fourth Industrial Revolution, administrative duties are anticipated to become automated, much like Human Intelligence industrial robots do on production lines.
10 Myths About Robotic Process Automation
As RPA is still relatively new (albeit its technologies have advanced), we thought that dispelling Speech Team some common misperceptions about it would be wise.
Here is our attempt:
RPA Does Not Involve Any Robots:
Unfortunately, robotic process automation can be misunderstood: no physical or industrial robots are used - software robots automate digital tasks that are repetitive or mundane instead.
We are evolving from Robotic Process Automation toward Intelligent Automation, possibly due to our increasing fascination with Artificial Intelligence and industry players looking for Gartner, Robotic Process Automation opportunities to ascend value chains.
Robots To Replace Workers:
Concerns exist regarding the future of technology and whether robots will replace workers. Who bears responsibility? In many countries sinc, wage and job growth has been stagnant or decreasing rapidly.
As a result, digital disruption caused by innovations felt even more impactful when applied against this backdrop.
McKinsey believes the truth lies somewhere in between; while there will likely be casualties as technology evolves, less than five percent can be fully automated with current tools available; 30-40 percent of activities for 60% of jobs could also be automated using current tech solutions.
Robots do the jobs we loathe anyway - taking away one more reason why human laborers hate working! Additionally, we have yet to consider all the new jobs created as RPA grows - it seems unlikely we'll witness mass unemployment soon!
Robots Can Be 100% Accurate:
Robots can only ever be as accurate as their programmers allow them to be. RPA robots don't possess cognitive ability and follow preconfigured instructions strictly.
Therefore, errors may arise if misconfiguration or incorrect assumptions regarding robotic operations arise.
A RPA Script Is Just A Macro/Script:
RPA software stands apart as it offers more power. RPA enables seamless integration across IT Systems at the User Interface level; many enterprise RPA solutions emphasize governance, Breed Of Developer which macros or scripts cannot deliver.
RPA Developers Do Not Need Programming Knowledge:
RPA software vendors tend to market it as user-friendly software that anyone, from non-IT staffers to subject matter experts without programming skills, can use effectively.
So, it is unsurprising to find bids that call for software solutions that meet all users' needs, even those without much IT background.
Unfortunately, such an approach can result in disappointment; according to reports, RPA projects fail between 30-50% of the time due to complex interdependent processes that must be automated; solutions must, therefore, be robust enough to withstand exceptions as part of any effective solution design strategy.
Normal users in any organization cannot expect to do this work themselves; an example is robot developers who use selectors for interfacing with various elements on screen of applications - as evidenced in the screenshot below, which reveals its inherent complexity.
Many RPA programs feature "record and play," an application for desktop recording software that creates scripts based on users' actions.
Blue Prism, one of the leading RPA providers, does Intelligence By Machine not provide desktop recording tools as this would increase total cost over time and decrease the durability/resilience of automation.
The RPA Only Focuses On Cost Reduction:
Doing without RPA would mean forgoing its many advantages; its main benefit lies in cost reduction: software robots cost one-third to one-ninth of what the annual wages of offshore Full-Time Equivalents would.
Automation has been at the core of disrupting labor arbitrage in Business Process Outsourcing industries.
RPA offers advantages that extend far beyond cost reduction alone, such as:
- Software robots can perform tasks instantly, speeding up market entry.
- Human error has been eliminated
- Compliance with regulatory requirements.
- Increased productivity due to software robots operating 24 hours daily with minimal downtime.
- Scalable robotic operations to suit business requirements.
- Ditch mundane and menial tasks to boost employee engagement.
- The operating paradigm will switch from being labor-intensive to becoming technology-driven.
If cost-cutting has become the focus, now might be an opportune moment to review RPA goals and strategies to maximize productivity gains from robots (and spending).
Your current Repetitive Task approach may not yield maximum returns from RPA investments (or spending).
RPA Costs a Lot:
False. The cost of hiring full-time employees (FTEs) is higher than hiring robots because they work 24/7 without breaks for lunch or annual leave, plus one minute's work by the robot is equivalent to 15 minutes for employees.
RPA will often be more cost-effective and straightforward than system integration methods; costs tend to be higher, with SI projects taking more time and having their first day be the Audio Narration hardest.
RPA could provide its initial challenges while SI could see its best day! Which route do you opt for?
Full-Time Equivalent is not the same as Full Time Employee:
Does it make a difference, beyond mere semantics, to view them differently, or do these terms carry any additional weight? They do.
Their significance lies within how an organization perceives virtual or digital workforce - many organizations mistakenly view robots as Blog Series replacement employees for current employees instead. But this does not always pan out: in most organizations, an employee has multiple duties that could benefit from automation through RPA technology or related tools.
Tasks will always require an employee's focus and judgment, typically those that don't follow the rules or involve non-digitized data.
Unfortunately, many companies cannot handle sensitive issues like retraining and redeployment effectively - don't make this mistake by failing to include Human Resources or Corporate Communications departments when planning change management and communication strategies for employees affected.
Robots Automate All
Most certainly not; there are stringent guidelines regarding which forms of RPA processes may be considered appropriate.
- These criteria include Rule-Based.
- Transaction Volume.
- Minimum Exceptions.
- Well Defined Processes With Stable Outcomes.
- Low System Change Cost.
- Data structures and electronic inputs that can be read.
Even with all checkboxes satisfied, automating specific processes through RPA may still fail to produce tangible results due to ineffective processes that need reengineering.
Want More Information About Our Services? Talk to Our Consultants!
Be Aware of these 13 RPA Challenges When Embarking On an Automation Project
robotic process automation tools is our RPA expert and discusses all 13 challenges of Robotic Process Automation (RPA).
- Business and IT misalignment.
- Ineffective ownership and poorly defined responsibilities.
- The wrong Business Case.
- Absence of an RPA Strategy.
- The Wrong Process to Choose.
- Fail to streamline and optimize the process selected before automating.
- Automating the entire process.
- You are not getting the best-customized solution on the market.
- Inadequate infrastructure.
- Scale difficulties.
- Work with third parties.
- Maintenance is not sufficient.
- The Security of Your Own Home.
These challenges can be broken down further into organizational structure issues, process selection decisions, technical implementation/deployment problems and post-deployment procedures.
You will find below a comprehensive list of RPA problems with potential solutions.
RPA and Organizational Pitfalls
Business and IT Misalignment
lists this issue as one of the main challenges of RPA implementation since organizations tend to start automating by segregating business and IT functions while delaying integration until after proof-of-concept evaluation, leading to frustration and distrust between staff.
David Wright, Consulting Partner, emphasizes the value of IT participation for successful RPA implementation: "IT participation is key for RPA deployment - learned this early during its RPA deployment efforts; engaged IT departments to make all the difference when it comes to speed of delivery and costs of implementation for clients with greater ease."
Solution:
Business departments should make clear that RPA does not aim to replace IT systems but instead reduces staff workload by relieving staff of administrative tasks.
Be ready to answer any security concerns raised by IT. Incorporate both parties into an RPA competency center so they are all on equal ground and communicate and understand each other well.
Ineffective Ownership And Poorly Defined Responsibilities
RPA solutions present another set of unique challenges due to the absence of designated individuals for every project component, which may confuse all those involved and hinder decision-making processes.
Employees must become acquainted with their new roles following implementation.
Solution:
Your project team should assign each aspect, from approval of designs and execution through monitoring and success evaluation, directly to those individuals responsible.
The Wrong Business Case
Companies will only experience minimal profits if their chosen business case for automation does not match up well with their efforts.
Solution:
Understanding your goals and when RPA may help is paramount for successful use. RPA has two uses; for one, it automates mundane processes.
- Automate the repetitive work being completed by skilled employees so they can concentrate their energies on more strategic initiatives for your company.
- Automating simple manual tasks to avoid hiring additional staff for them will allow RPA to help optimize hiring processes and accelerate recruitment processes.
Estimating the overall RPA cost requires considering all relevant elements, such as automation software licensing fees, infrastructure upgrades, and monitoring and maintenance expenses.
Absence of an RPA Strategy
Zeeshan Rajan, Senior Manager at PwC, stated that creating an automation strategy will enable companies to avoid robotic process automation (RPA) traps.
RPA technology may be easy to use, but implementation takes longer. To scale successfully to higher levels of use and scale to scale with RPA implementation requires building upon solid foundations such as well-outlined strategy documents, change management plans, RPA specialists, and reliable IT infrastructures in place.
Solution:
Every company must determine its strategy before initiating RPA implementation or pose these questions to themselves.
- What are the goals and metrics associated with RPA implementation?
- What situations make RPA viable, and are other technologies worth consideration as an alternative solution?
- Are RPA solutions long or short-term solutions?
- What are our goals for scaling?
Failures Of Rpa Related To The Process Of Selection
The Wrong Process to Choose
Automation may not always be suitable for all processes; while automating small processes may bring significant savings, automating large, wasteful ones won't lead to improvements.
Gina Schaefer from Intelligent Automation Practice Lead puts it best: just because a process could be automated doesn't necessarily mean it should. For optimal results, you must carefully choose RPA candidates.
Solution:
Take these characteristics into consideration when assessing the automation potential of any given process:
- Process Structure: Search for processes that utilize templates and are guided by standard rules; additionally, they should require manual input from participants.
- Change Frequency: Automating processes that involve frequent adjustments may prove challenging.
- Standardization: Assess whether your organization employs a standard candidate selection process across departments or whether it differs by department. Automation costs increase exponentially the more variables there are in candidate selection processes.
- Frequency of Execution: Is Your Process Executed Regularly? It is wiser to prioritize processes that are frequently performed daily or weekly over those that don't get much use - RPA automation won't pay back its efforts if a particular process isn't executed enough times!
- Complexity of Process: Automating complex tasks may not always be feasible. As an example, designing commercial images involves communicating with clients to understand their requirements before creating designs with these requirements in mind and submitting them for final approval - which marketers do quite easily themselves but would cost much more money using RPA systems; furthermore, crowdsourcing would take too much time and risk being rejected by clients altogether.
- Fault Tolerance: Fault-tolerant processes make better RPA candidates than error-sensitive tasks since bots rely heavily on user experience when performing tasks; any changes could render bots incapable of adapting. Nonetheless, you could automate critical processes but must always verify results using other tools or human employees.
- Business Impact: For rapid results from your automation efforts, select processes with high impact on business (for instance, effort tasks that directly serve customers).
Automation teams should comprehensively understand their respective processes and roles in a broader business context.
Fail To Streamline And Optimize The Process Selected Before Automating
Automating ineffective processes only leads to wasted effort, and people who are used to performing specific tasks in a particular way will continue doing it even when it isn't optimal.
Imagine this scenario: An employee receives an email containing both text and numbers; only the numbers are essential. Instead of copying directly off of it, however, they had to scan and upload digital images containing these figures to enable others to look them up without constantly returning to email for answers.
To automate the process thoroughly, printing and scanning must also be removed as steps that need to be automated.
Solution:
Your solution for RPA may lie in optimizing and simplifying processes; this includes eliminating redundant steps like approvals while decreasing exceptions where applicable.
Subject matter experts, RPA programmers, business analysts or others can take this on.
RPA Implementation challenges
Automating The Entire Process
Not all processes can be automated efficiently or cost-effectively; typically, 70 to 80% can be accomplished quickly, while 20% will cost significantly more.
Should going the extra mile matter for your business?
Solution:
Decide whether all processes need to be automated to address RPA challenges or only certain parts. If not all tasks need to be automated by RPA alone, determine which tasks could benefit most.
If RPA alone doesn't suffice, but you want your employees freed of some tasks more effectively using AI technology, that may also work.
Read More: How Robotic Process Automation Tools Can Offer Time-Saving Solutions?
You Are Not Able To Benefit From The Reliable And Customizable Solutions That Exist On The Market
On the market are numerous enterprise automation products available. Ready-made solutions can reduce challenges associated with RPA automation and save time creating one from scratch.
Ready-made tools with all necessary features may already exist. They may save time creating something entirely new if it fits.
Solution:
Automation teams can assess whether ready-made RPA solutions or customized RPA suits their case. If your industry is heavily regulated with standard candidate selection processes and you require RPA solutions with standard features to evaluate candidates for hire, then trusted RPA may be appropriate for use in your case.
However, your processes cannot easily be modified due to legacy systems/software requirements. In that case, custom solutions should be sought out instead.
RPA Technical Issues
Inadequate Infrastructure
Companies will never realize their desired results without an adequately supported RPA infrastructure.
Solution:
Consider how automation may change your company's capabilities and whether your infrastructure can accommodate them.
Your infrastructure should consist of two key aspects:
- Your script requires a powerful computer to run correctly.
- Assure it runs 24/7 by installing a backup plan or failover system.
Ensure that your system's centralization is protected against external influences, and any updates installed won't break it.
As evidence for our claim, provided an example from its portfolio to support it. A Massachusetts healthcare technology company contracted to automate appointment scheduling and store all relevant data in an EMR system.
One employee manually scheduled appointments using a desktop; the team's responsibility was implementing a solution that copied clinical information collected by this employee into EMR.
Integration of an RPA tool was complex due to slow, rigid, and outdated technology, with Windows updates among the most significant obstacles.
To circumvent them, we created a script that ran nightly, copying any employee-acquired data throughout their day - only to stop mid-copy when Windows updated itself! So, to address RPA challenges, we added a flagging feature that would mark successfully copied fields before canceling out partially copied ones after every interruption caused by Windows updates - then discard this data (i.e., partially copied data) with each interruption caused by Windows OS updates!
Scale Difficulties
reported that only three percent (of companies surveyed) could successfully scale up their RPA solution. Russ Felker is CTO at GlobalTranz Logistics Service Provider and experienced firsthand how difficult RPA scaling could be - GlobalTranz had successfully automated for some time; things weren't so smooth when scaling.
Bots were suitable technologies but had limitations when dealing with more significant amounts of data that became increasingly challenging to keep pace with; to address this, his team attempted giving more computing power while decreasing data frequency as Felker considered shifting away from "just bot" towards integrated processes.
Solution:
Implement your processes in parallel for easy scaling; adding more bots will be much simpler than increasing capacity.
When using RPA solutions, ensure their architecture is transparent and audited to protect clients and RPA developers.
Japan stands out as an innovator when it comes to robotic process automation (RPA) implementation, having successfully deployed it at scale across numerous financial institutions like Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation with UiPath partners EY, PwC for implementation and successfully automating over 400,000 hours in 200 operations per year with RPA systems implemented through UiPath's services.
Work With Third Parties
Understanding how third parties fit into automation processes and their interactions is integral. In GlobalTranz's case study involving third-party drivers, when automating delivery proof submission into the RPA tool, drivers often used different layouts when sending documents via paper instead of using software for submission into the tool, requiring GlobalTranz to improve responsiveness after bots could no longer manage diverse tasks effectively.
Solution:
Examine your stakeholders' feedback over time, such as following a consistent format or submission order. Do they all request similar things or contribute equally? It is worthwhile informing stakeholders of changes within your organization and asking them to stay consistent - you should consider informing them of other digital tools to supplement RPA if that proves difficult or impractical.
Robotic Process Automation Post-Deployment Challenges
Maintenance Is Not Sufficient
Organizations may need to adjust their RPA software as regulations and business requirements change; monitoring automated processes can uncover any missed issues by the RPA implementation team, and even slight modifications can cause bots to be confused by actual rpa consulting companies processes, leading them into errors; consequently, the system degrades even though RPA functions perfectly; bugs will form, and memory overflow may lead to an overflow in databases causing memory overflow issues for example.
Solution:
Companies looking to avoid being drawn into this RPA trap need someone who will assume full responsibility for RPA and take these steps:
- RPA Software should be reviewed regularly, and any necessary modifications should be made.
- Clean cache registers and transfer data into larger units would all benefit from being automated so the process owner could monitor and intervene as necessary.
- Test the endurance of your system to ascertain that it can continue operating reliably over an extended period.
RPA Security Failures
RPA technology can also be utilized to take advantage of loopholes. Critical systems, including CRM and ERP platforms, can be accessed directly.
Data may even move freely between various processes.
Solution:
Gartner offers four solutions to resolve RPA-related issues:
- Each bot should be assigned its ID for two-factor authentication of its operator.
- RPA access should extend to systems necessary for each bot to fulfill its task, such as only reading data for reading purposes. It should have read-only privileges when doing this task. Use screenshots or video footage of how these bots interact with your system.
- RPA should generate logs with no gaps, making them available for review if suspicious activities arise.
- Develop a risk management framework for RPA deployment and operation.
Want More Information About Our Services? Talk to Our Consultants!
To sum up
If you wish to automate processes effectively, RPA presents a challenge that must be faced, so take this checklist as preparation.
- Be sure to involve both business and IT departments in your endeavor.
- An automation project manager should be appointed to lead automation efforts effectively.
- Create an RPA company strategy that details automation goals, evaluation metrics and scaling opportunities.
- Select an automation solution that's standardized, reliable, frequently utilized and fault-tolerant while not placing undue emphasis on cognitive tasks.
- Before automating, ensure your process identifies suitable candidates for automation.
- Research to locate an RPA solution that meets all your specifications on the market.
- Assess and make any required improvements to your infrastructure.
- Develop an ongoing maintenance plan.
RPA security challenges. By dispelling misconceptions surrounding RPA, we hope that by robotic process automation services dispelling them, we can better help our readers grasp its meaning - so they may use RPA more successfully within their organization.
