RPA Robots Are Dumb

Yes, they are. You may hear people talk thousands of times about how automated robots can handle a significant amount of tasks and think: “These bots are so smart that they’ll replace me”. Well, while it is true that they might eliminate some jobs, they are not smart, for several reasons. 

The truth behind RPA bots

RPA bots are capable of handling repetitive manual tasks which consume large amounts of business resources. They learn and mimic humans’ activities by working on a script pre-developed by RPA engineers.

What’s I feel not right about those bots is that they are completely rigid, or should I say, dumb. 

(Source: dumbrunner.com)

But why?

• RPA robots can only handle simple, structured data, which accounts for only 20% of business data.
• Automated processes have to be highly rule-based.

Let’s take invoice processing – one of the most popular processes that need automating within businesses as an example. To implement RPA in this process, make sure that your business’s invoices, say 1000 ones, come in a similar format and can be handled in a consistent way. Keep this in mind if you want the bots to work with repetitive tasks more accurately across a wide range of systems on their own while you spend time and effort on more strategic tasks.

But don’t get me wrong, RPA bots are still incredibly necessary in our technology-fueled quest.

They are highly applicable since the number of manual tasks that are draining employees’ energy and preventing businesses from operational excellence is pretty high. Clockify shows that more than 90% of employees are often troubled with tedious, repetitive tasks. Simply Flows also reports that employees often waste around 40% of their time working on mundane manual tasks that could be automated.

With the implementation of RPA, businesses can boost accuracy/quality by 90%, and leverage productivity by 86% while reducing costs by up to 59%, according to Deloitte. 

The even better part about RPA? They are low-code, which means no/very minimum coding skills are required to develop an RPA bot. What’s even better? There are also no technical skills required to use RPA. RPA bots can work independently to schedule or be triggered with just some easy-peasy manipulation on the interface. It means people can use RPA easily and gain benefits from the bots. RPA bots become one of the fastest ways to get accelerated in the digital transformation journey for businesses.

In Vietnam, FPT Software’s akaBot provides RPA solutions to 2,000+ customers in 20 nations. One of their most successful cases is the automation project with SCSK.

SKSC EU has partnered with akaBot to deploy exceptional automation solutions for its customers. akaBot utilizes RPA bots, allowing access to the website to scrape the rates, specifications, and data of products, extract data and save it to the database system of the customer’s business. 

And the results were remarkable:

• 100% of the product data collection process automated.
• 85% of processing time decreased.
• Resources with bots’ 24/7 operation were optimized.
• Accuracy significantly improved compared to the manual method.

Work more efficiently with Intelligent bots

Although RPA bots are rigid, they can be flexible in a way that they can seamlessly integrate with other intelligent technologies such as AI, ML, OCR, and IDP. That means the “dumb” automation could be made smarter.

Intelligent Automation (IA) is the combination of RPA and AI, which leverages intelligence and cognition for automation solutions. 

Back to the example of invoice processing. Now with an AI solution added to IDP, automation bots can handle invoices of different formats and identify the correct data fields in the invoice to fill in the required places. So instead of following a fixed script, automation bots now have the capabilities to “think” and “understand”. It is also a premise to create a comprehensive, end-to-end automation flow for business data processing, facilitating the acceleration of the Hyperautomation journey.

(Source: reinfer.io)

IA helps to build 3 building blocks of a healthy business: loyal customers, happy employees, and dynamic processes. The technology is effective and efficient in a way that transforms all three areas into sources of productivity, cost savings, and satisfaction for the business.

• Cost reduction: When the whole processes are automated intelligently, businesses gain cost savings both from increased efficiency and by eliminating resources to handle that same work.
• Automation of decision-making: IA bots make use of AI’s intelligence to let bots handle decision-making. For example, IA bots can identify “product names” and “items” of the same category without relying on humans’ support. But of course, when the confidence level is low, these bots can automatically deliver data to humans for further evaluation and correction. This ensures 100% of accuracy, which further enhances customer satisfaction.
• Continuous intelligence improvement: AI technology has the capability to become smarter over time, based on the increasing frequency they perform the tasks and the volume of data they work with. 
• Workflow orchestration: With IA bots, it’s not about automating one single bot anymore. It’s now about simplifying processes and developing a whole business-wide automation system. IA is the stepping stone to Hyperautomation which heads to automating as many parts of organizations as possible to harness the full power of technology.

Intelligent automation is not a buzzword. It is considered a powerful tool for businesses to achieve operational excellence and is supported among business leaders. A survey by Deloitte shows that 79% of leaders support an IA strategy in their organizations. Besides, 73% of them have adopted the IA initiatives in their organizations, according to Deloitte’s 2020 survey.

Conclusion

The implementation of IA has the potential to help businesses grow. The technology expands the use of automated business rules management by 36% to reduce errors and enhance productivity (Analytics Insight). Besides, 75% of business leaders believe that IA can increase the employee experience, while 72% think it encourages a smart digital environment. It is no doubt that IA is a potential choice for businesses, facilitating leaders to achieve Hyperautomation vision, and enhance business value and competitiveness in the market.

To learn more about IA and how to embark on a journey towards the technology, join us at the Intelligent Automation Summit 2022 this 28-29 November 2022.

References

Deloitte Global RPA Survey

How Much Time Are You Wasting on Those Tiresome, Repetitive Tasks?

Automation by the numbers: 11 stats to know

The Demise Of The Dumb Bots & The Four Levels Of Cognitive Automation

Editor’s note: This is a guest blog by Mr. Emil Figura, Director of Business Development, FPT Software Europe.

Mr. Emil Figura is currently Director of Business Development at FPT Software Europe. He have many experience working in IT for the last 18 years including Transformation Management, People Management, Managed Services, Software Development, Nearshore and Offshore development, IT Outsourcing and Sales. Mr. Figura also has a strong business development professional with a Master of Business Administration (MBA), strong Finance background and Masters in Enterprise Systems Development. Besides classical enterprise SW development and maintenance, he is now focusing on ‘game changing’ technologies and approaches in domain of digital technologies, e.g. , Automation/Robotization, Data Analytics, , IoT, Cloud Services, T Security and FPT Digital Kaizen.

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