A mid-sized financial company in China used to fill the Excel templates manually every month for filing VAT returns for 250+ entities. This being a time-consuming and tedious task, it led to many manual errors many a times. This was not only risky for the company but also became demoralizing for the staff. This company approached a Robotic Process Automation solution provider for automating their VAT return process. The solution provider developed a customized software for them. They also developed a central storage function and built-in data analysis tool for easy data access and organization. As a result, the in-house process time of this financial company drastically reduced from 1,400 hours to 280 hours in a year. Along with the elimination of human errors, this also resulted in a more productive workforce and improved the turnover of the company.
Robotic Process Automation is a powerful technology and confidence in the results it delivers has significantly grown over the last few years.
RPA has significantly influenced not only giants but also small and medium sized businesses (SMBs). Talking about the SMBs, it becomes challenging for them to manage all the workflows in the limited resources and budgets they have. They greatly depend on efficient processes and systems for operations like data entry, email processing, clerical tasks, etc. Such no brain operations consume the vital time of the employees thereby reducing the productivity.
For such highly data centric organizations, RPA has come up as an outstanding solution to automate everyday data operations while improving cost-effectiveness. Using RPA, many SMBs are now experiencing flawless and streamlined processes.
Examples of RPA Applications in Different SMBs:
Order processing in the retail industry
Resume screening, candidate shortlisting, validating the employee data, etc. in human resource departments
Migrating order-data of an e-commerce site to the dispatch center
Record patient data, streamline the claims process, etc. in hospitals, clinics and individual practices
Reducing errors in Bill of Materials (BOM) in small manufacturing firms
Shipment tracking and scheduling in the transportation industry
Significant Benefits that RPA Offers to SMBs:
This technology has brought a revolutionary change in the automaton of business processes. We have already heard a lot about how RPA is automating mundane, repetitive and error-prone clerical tasks that are usually carried out by human workers. Let us now understand what benefits can the SMBs avail by deploying RPA techniques:
Data Management and Intelligent Insights for Decision-making
Keeping track of every single detail in a business is quite improbable, especially when the processes are manual. RPA technology is a smart solution to store vital data at every step and improve the data quality. When robots work on data collection and analytics, there are lesser risks of incorrect analytics, data leakages, obsolete information, etc. This data can be used for making precise and predictive decisions in the SMBs using advanced analytics that RPA provides and ensure the right actions for improving the workflows.
Reduced Manual Errors and Higher Accuracy
Succumbed to boredom, humans tend to make silly mistakes while doing repetitive tasks. Robotic Process Automation applies standardized processes to streamline operations and improve accuracy in SMBs. RPA solutions don’t miss tracking any data and thus, eliminate costly mistakes from processes that could lead to false analytics and bad decision-making.
Redeployment of Workforce to Higher Value Tasks
RPA for business can take care of the low-importance manual and repetitive tasks that consume a lot of time of the staff. The workforce can be employed on higher-value and complex activities which will ultimately result in enhanced business metrics. RPA also improves employee satisfaction to a greater extent.
Enhanced Productivity and Higher Customer Satisfaction
It is estimated by RPA vendors that automation of processes improves the cost-efficiency by 25-60% approximately. So employing software to automate manual processes improves the overall productivity and efficiency of the SMBs. It improves the quality of the end products which ultimately resulting in customer satisfaction.
Final Verdict:
Advanced RPA solutions have brought a paradigm shift in the operations of SMBs as well as large businesses.
As per a report generated by Gartner, the global Robotic Process Automation market grew 63% in the year 2018 and reached $846 million. In 2019, revenue has touched $1.3 billion.
Another renowned online research portal, Statista, forecasts that RPA market revenues could reach 3 billion by the year 2022.
These statistics indicate that RPA is becoming the fastest-growing segment of the global software market.
Hope this read was helpful to you. I would like to know your comments and hear your views about how RPA solutions are influencing different businesses?