5 uses of RPA tools that might suit your business needs

As a savvy investor, your job is to scan the markets for money-making opportunities. What makes an opportunity stand out will depend on the market you’re surveying. However, if there are two underlying strengths you’re typically looking for with any commodity, they are cost and utility. If something is affordable and it has some practical uses, it’s usually worth investing in.

Over the last year or two, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) software has become one of the rising stars of the tech world. By helping businesses automate repetitive, predictable tasks—and, in the case of advanced solutions like Kryon’s, tapping into artificial intelligence to automate increasingly complex activities—RPA makes these processes more efficient, more accurate, and less expensive.

Reasons RPA has value

According to McKinsey Global Institute’s 2017 report, 43% of the tasks carried out on a daily basis within the financial sector could be automated. Based on this, analysts at Forrester have predicted that the RPA market will grow from a $250 million industry (2016) to $2.9 billion by 2021. While these numbers show promise, as with all potential investments, we need to ask why RPA could boom in the coming years. The best way to do that is to look at its uses. 

Quote-to-cash automation – one of the simplest yet most effective RPA tools a business could utilize. Without making sales, a business can never survive. But manual processing can lead to errors, which in turn lead to delays and complaints. In contrast, RPA software can create quotes, send invoices, and process payments received – increasing both the speed and accuracy of these tasks. Therefore, by using a quote-to-cash RPA system, businesses can significantly reduce costs.

Human resources – an essential but time-consuming part of any midsize or large business. Using intelligent RPA tools, a company can automate a wide variety of HR tasks with relative ease. As well as payroll processes, these tools can use RPA to simplify the process of onboarding employees. Instead of having to conduct live training sessions (which take time and resources), attended robots can use a new employee’s computer to guide them through various parts of their job.

Using RPA, robots can scan texts or images and records those that match certain keywords linked to the company. (Photo by DepositPhotos)

Character and image recognition – keys to working with unstructured information as a human would. When a company needs someone to read and extract important information from long documents, the process can seem to take an eternity. For example, when a new set of regulations such as the GDPR is published, it takes a team of people to review the document and note the relevant parts. With RPA, you can program robots to scan the text or images and record the bits that match certain keywords linked to the company.

Preparing and sending mass emails – essential processes for today’s businesses, which RPA software can streamline. Because RPA-powered mailers can draw data from multiple sources across a company’s network faster than a human, these emails can be compiled and distributed in a shorter space of time.

Customer service – an essential aspect of companies across a wide variety of industries. In large companies, tier 1 technical support desks are those that typically deal with a high volume of simple problems. An RPA program can be configured to read through a database of common queries and process the transaction according to pre-programmed responses. This system can be refined over time to then deal with issues more accurately and tackle new problems.

A tech investment with solid credentials

From a business perspective, there are plenty of reasons to use RPA. Indeed, as companies look to maximize their output while keeping costs to a minimum, automated processing will become much more important. When you combine this with the increasing amounts of data available – data which needs to be processed in the least resource-heavy way – robot workforces look set to grow. With demand always driving up the market, this is certainly an area of the tech world that’s worth monitoring as it becomes an integral part of running a modern business.

(Featured Image by DepositPhotos)