RPA or Robotic Process Automation involves the use of software and artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning in order to handle menial tasks. Businesses are able to eliminate the sort of tedious grunt work that employees hate to do by delegating the boring bits to AI-powered, “robot” helpers.
RPA tools have been embraced by a wide range of industries and businesses. These include human resource departments that use the tools to process mountains upon mountains of resumes while outsourcing companies have used the technology in order to help managers and other executives focus on important business decisions. They have even been used by accountants in order to process invoices, switching from a system where they received PDFs, printed them off and filed hard copies. This is a complex system but one made a lot simpler with RPA tools stepping in to provide a helping hand.
How Businesses Can Benefit from RPA Tools
Businesses can delegate all sorts of tasks to AI helpers using robotic process automation. Employees can automate their workflows, allowing these robots to take care of tasks such as sending emails (and crafting the responses), filing invoices, submitting and processing payouts to partners and handling orders, which is especially important for growing e-commerce channels. This can help businesses to save thousands of hours, allowing employees to refocus their time on other things that do require their input, such as telemarketing or making sales pitches to new clients.
According to a recent Gallup poll, some of the biggest reasons why employees do not enjoy their work include the fact that work has too great a demand on their time, there is little distinction between their work and personal lives, and it is difficult for them to focus on important tasks (e.g. there are too many things to do and not enough time to do them in). By introducing more automation into the workday, employees will be able to free up more time, alleviating many of the frustrations that they have.
How Small Businesses Can Success With RPA Tools
RPA tools may be used by some of the biggest and most well-known businesses on the block, including Microsoft, HP, AT&T, and Allianz, but the technology can also benefit smaller businesses. It could even give smaller organizations a huge advantage over their much larger competitors.
In a small workforce, the happiness of employees is integral to how that company grows and thrives. In a team of 10, one unhappy worker is 10% of the entire employee base and they may not be working at their best as a result. But, by supporting them with robotic process automation, that company can become more efficient. It also means that, as the company grows, it is able to expand much quicker as tasks that would traditionally require new hires (thus thwarting potential expansion) could be delegated to robot helpers.
The adoption of RPA may be driven by major names, which have garnered many headlines. However, smaller businesses can benefit greatly from it.
