The Case for RPA
Building a robotic work force with Robotic Process Automation (RPA) software sounds like something from the future, but it has already been a growing force in modern companies. Integrating two incompatible systems is one of the long-time challenges solution engineers face. Too often, we are left with workflows that require employees to fill in the cracks. People repeating the same task day after day is a drain on intelligent resources, which is where RPA comes in. Automation software finally provides a chance to put robots to work and take monotonous processing work out of human hands. Of course, it does not come without its own set of challenges.
Some ideas to keep in mind when planning an automation solution, big or small:
Ease of Configuration: you may have built the perfect robot to integrate with a third-party website, but what happens when that company’s UX team decides it is time for a redesign? Your staff has been retrained for other work you are left with a resource gap while you update your automation bots. An RPA platform must be easy enough to configure that a robot can be designed and deployed in a couple of days or less. Change is unavoidable. Automation must meet that challenge.
Scalability: most companies have found that automation leads to more automation. As user adoption spreads, an automation platform needs to be able to grow with it. You will need to reallocate or add resources to different groups as the number of use cases grow.
Error Handling: one of the big benefits of automation is accuracy, but a robot is only as intelligent as its designer. Business process measures must be in place to ensure issues are reviewed by a human. Robots should also reviewed and improved with each failure. Automation is a long term investment that needs long term support.
User Adoption: handing over human work to a robot may not appeal to everyone. A key part of making this process successful is meeting directly with the current workforce to find out what tasks are taking up their time. Only then can you build software that integrates with their daily responsibilities in a positive way. Robots are getting smarter every year, but for now they still only thrive at jobs with limited logic and decision-making.
Get Started Today
The Robotic Process Automation space is growing rapidly. A few big names are taking the spotlight, such as Automation Anywhere, who recently strengthened their position by partnering with IBM. I recommend looking at product offerings and taking time to analyze which tasks in your organization could benefit from RPA technology. Automation can easily pay for itself. Our specialists at Perficient are available to help you achieve the best RPA results for your company.
