Businesses have more chances than ever to embark on automation to eliminate repetitive, rules-based, and manual processes. As Robotic Process Automation (RPA) will reach near-universal adoption, its applications will be found in every industry.
Deloitte RPA survey revealed that 53% of enterprises have already embarked on their RPA initiatives. And an additional 19% are planning to adopt this technology in the next 2 years. Additionally, the RPA market size is predicted to reach 23.9 billion by 2030.
Table of Contents
10 real-world applications of automation across industries
Here are some common industries that have reaped massive benefits from automation.
Banking
Banks and financial institutions are complex, highly regulated industries, not to mention heavy paper-related tasks.
With the implementation of RPA, banks can now reduce routine and repetitive tasks, eliminate human errors, and enhance efficiency. Hence, this allows banks to provide faster and more seamless experiences to customers, and reduce operating costs.
KYC (Know Your Customer)
The Thomson Reuters study revealed that banks have spent nearly $60 million annually on the KYC process. When it comes to KYC, RPA is fundamental to helping banks leverage efficiency, quality, and compliance.
RPA can be used in KYC to validate customer information (structured/unstructured) based on multiple databases and platforms and input them into the enterprise CRM. This reduces human errors and efforts in back-office operations.
Anti-money Laundering
Similar to KYC, AML is one of the integral processes of the banking industry. Generally, this entire process can take anywhere from 1 day to 1 week, causing error-prone and time-intensive manual checks.
But RPA bots can perform the task in just 15 minutes, saving massive costs for banks. The bots can monitor transactions and report any suspicious activity for further processing.
Finance & Accounting
Financial organizations are actively adopting RPA because it is effective in eliminating repetitive, mundane, back-office tasks. Besides, they can easily integrate with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning models to perform more complex tasks.
Accounts payable and invoice processing
SME research shows that 82% of finance departments are overwhelmed by the large volumes of invoices. Hence, time and cost savings are the main drivers for accounts payable and invoice processing automation.
RPA can help set up workflows to scan incoming invoices, and line items, and add them to ERP. Then, bots perform the verification and flag mismatches for further review. When processing approvals, bots automatically forward the invoices to the appropriate authority if they pass the verification. Last but not least, automated follow-ups allow them to remind them of upcoming deadlines.
Below is the story of how SCSK Europe actualized its automation vision with akaBot’s RPA solution.
Challenges
- The massive workload for back-office departments such as procurement, finance, recruitment, administration, etc. to serve multiple projects from 14 domestic & 7 overseas branches
- The pressure of delivering high efficiency and accuracy through the best service regardless of peak times (end of month/ quarter/ year)
Solution
From experiences and expertise in IT, SCSK soon realized RPA might be the key to the problem. However, the company struggled to find a starting point. With a long-lasting collaboration over the years, SCSK chose akaBot to actualize its automation vision.
Results
By collaborating with akaBot, SCSK Europe has successfully automated 6 internal processes (back-office). Besides, SCSK also implemented akaBot for 2 clients in the Chemical & Agriculture industry (Product data collection & Credit approval process automation).
- 75% of month-end reporting was reduced
- 85% of processing time was saved
- 4 weeks of fast automation
Regulatory compliance and reporting
Compliance with regulations is a critical aspect of financial reporting. With RPA, finance teams can ensure timely and insightful reporting that maintains the stability and integrity of the financial system.
An RPA-driven system can automate tasks including monitoring and analyzing data across several systems and apps, spotting compliance deviations or abnormalities, and delivering financial filings to regulatory authorities. Organizations that use RPA can save time, reduce manual labor, and effectively manage an ever-changing regulatory framework.
Manufacturing
Production: Bill of materials (BOM)
A bill of materials (BOM) is essentially a blueprint for manufacturing a product. A BOM contains the list of all parts and materials required to build an end product.
RPA bots can combine with IDP (Intelligent Document Processing) to extract the product’s order amount and calculate precisely the quantity needed for each good. RPA can also ensure that all component documentation is stored in a designated place, and raise exceptions for users when missing information.
Inventory management
Inventory management is the process of tracking inventory from purchase to the PoS (Point of Sales). However, this process in the manufacturing industry has a massive amount of paperwork.
By implementing RPA, manufacturers can track real-time information about inventory levels and avoid or limit the risk of stockouts. With the help of AI, organizations can also predict inventory accurately and consistently and make better decisions based on historical data.
Retail
Demand forecasting
RPA can allow retailers to generate accurate demand forecasting, leveraging greater decision-making. A study by Capgemini reveals that leveraging automation in demand forecasting can significantly increase forecast accuracy by up to 30%.
RPA bots can gather, organize, and extract real-time data from various documents. Using advanced AI and Machine Learning algorithms, retailers can generate accurate and timely demand forecasts. Then, retailers can use RPA to send key information based on analysis to warehouse managers, suppliers, and customers for better decision-making.
Invoice processing
Processing invoices is a time-consuming and repetitive task. However, when implementing RPA in retail, invoice processing becomes much faster and free of human errors.
RPA can monitor incoming invoices, extract relevant data from invoices, and enter the extracted invoice data into the centralized database. Additionally, retailers can enhance AI and Machine Learning to cross-check invoices against purchase orders and alert relevant staff in case of a difference.
The case study below will reveal how a business operating in the retail industry can achieve significant success with akaBot, the leading automation solution in Vietnam.
Challenges
- 1.8M invoices per year with 100% of manual work for processing
- 75 full-time accountants (180,000 working hours per year) for invoice-processing
- High employee turnover at Finance and Accounting Service Team
As a branch of the leading retail corporation in Asia, Central Retail in Vietnam (CRV) faces the huge workload of processing 1.8M invoices per year, which takes 180,000 working hours per year of 75 FTE in the Finance and Accounting service team. Besides, the tedious tasks might lead to an increase in employee turnover year by year.
Solution
CRV decided to adopt akaBot’s RPA solution to automate matching supplier invoices with the goods tracking system.
Results
- Automate 75% of the invoice-matching process
- Reduce operational time by 50%
- The invoice processing speed also doubled compared to manual processing before, corresponding to 1.8 million invoices/per year
- Save 90,000 hours/year
- Save $500,000 within 5 years
Insurance
A McKinsey study indicates that the insurance industry is leveraging RPA to automate numerous operational processes. Over 25% of the industry is predicted to adopt automation for processing claims, underwriting tasks, and other insurance filing activities by 2025.
Claims processing
Claims processing requires insurers to handle massive amounts of information, resulting in reduced efficiency and flexibility, and negatively affecting the customer experience.
However, the adoption of RPA in claims processing makes it easier to streamline the collection and verification of claims processing information from multiple resources. RPA bots automate the management of claims documentation and validate claims against policy terms and conditions. Then, intelligent bots seamlessly send the claims to the appropriate departments for further assessment and processing.
Underwriting
Using RPA, insurers can gather information from various sources, including previous losses, health, and financial data, and assess the risks associated with underwriting and pricing. Insurers can then take advantage of this assessment to provide suitable pricing options. This eventually optimizes the underwriting process so that customers receive the appropriate rates and policies quickly for their needs.
Read more: Top 5 Insurtech Trends To Expect in 2024
Wrapped Up
Automation is making waves across industries. With its potential to transform businesses, providing advantages such as enhanced performance, productivity, increased growth, and reduced costs, this technology is undoubtedly the game changer. The future will open up massive opportunities for this disruptive technology.
Significantly, Intelligent Automation (IA) is the next step of traditional RPA by integrating the cognitive capabilities of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), computer vision, and Natural Language Processing (NLP). This advanced solution will enable organizations to automate more complex tasks, facilitating end-to-end business process automation and complete digital transformation. In 2024, Intelligent Automation is expected to be widely adopted across several industry verticals.
References
Kickstart Your Automation Expedition With RPA Use Cases Across Industries
43 Back Office Automation Examples in 2024: RPA, WLA, AI/ML
akaBot (FPT) is the operation optimization solution for enterprises based on RPA (Robotic Process Automation) platform combined with Process Mining, OCR, Intelligent Document Processing, Machine Learning, Conversational AI, etc. Serving clients in 20+ countries, across 08 domains such as Banking & Finances, Retails, IT Services, Manufacturing, and Logistics…, akaBot is featured by Gartner Peer Insights, G2, and ranked as Top 6 Global RPA Platform by Software Reviews. akaBot also won the prestigious Stevie Award, The Asian Banker Award 2021, etc.
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