What is Robotic process automation (RPA)?

Oct 15, 2020
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What is Robotic process automation (RPA)?

TechieClues

Posted On Oct 15, 2020

Answers (2)

Answer Accepted

Business enterprises continuously strive to generate more profit by increasing productivity and minimizing costs. Such growth is possible through enhancing business processes through technological innovation that significantly improves efficiency.

Robotic process automation (RPA) is one such innovation that drastically impacts business processes by employing a digital workforce. RPA allows automating tasks with the help of bots to perform most labor-intensive and repetitive tasks such as clerical and back-office work including data entry and data validation.

RPA imitates human actions and can be integrated with an organization's IT system to perform various operations using their in-house application.

Since RPA allows enterprises to use a virtual workforce that can replace manual labor-intensive tasks, which minimizes cost considerably, it is more time-efficient, reliable, and can be easily implemented within the existing infrastructure. RPA does not require administrator-level access to codes or enterprise database and hence is much safer to use.

RPA’s ability to simulate human actions allows it to be used on applications, business processes, software at normal employee level access. This ensures easy implementation of RPA into existing systems to perform any business activity saving a significant amount of time to generate error-free results.

TechieClues

Answered On Oct 15, 2020

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a technology that involves the use of software robots or "bots" to automate repetitive and rule-based tasks in business processes. These tasks are typically time-consuming, manual, and prone to human errors. RPA aims to streamline and optimize these processes by automating them, allowing human workers to focus on more strategic and value-added tasks.

RPA bots are designed to mimic human interactions with digital systems and applications, such as logging into the software, navigating through menus, entering data, copying and pasting information, and making decisions based on predefined rules. They can work across different Software Applications and systems, just like a human operator would, and they can be programmed to perform tasks around the clock without the need for breaks.

RPA technology offers several benefits, including:

Efficiency: RPA can execute tasks much faster and more consistently than human workers, leading to increased efficiency and reduced processing times.
Accuracy: Since RPA bots follow predefined rules and instructions, they are less prone to errors that can result from manual data entry and repetitive tasks.
Cost Savings: By automating tasks, organizations can reduce labor costs and allocate human resources to more strategic roles.
Scalability: RPA can handle a large volume of tasks simultaneously, making it easy to scale up or down based on business needs.
Compliance: RPA can ensure that tasks are performed in accordance with regulatory and compliance requirements, reducing the risk of non-compliance errors.
Auditability: RPA logs all actions taken by bots, providing a detailed audit trail that can be useful for tracking and analysis.
Integration: RPA can work with existing IT infrastructure and applications, without requiring major changes to systems or processes.

RPA is often used in various industries, including finance, insurance, healthcare, customer service, human resources, and supply chain management. It's important to note that while RPA is effective for automating rule-based tasks, it's not suitable for tasks that involve complex decision-making or tasks that require creativity and human judgment.