Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a process that uses “robots” which are software tools developed to automate business process execution. These software robots help automate routine, repetitive tasks across multiple business applications (e.g., Excel, email, ERP, etc.) without altering a company’s existing IT infrastructure or systems. RPA can be applied by installing the software directly on an employee’s computer and/or deploying it on a server. A key advantage of Robotic Process Automation is that unlike previous IT transformations such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP’s), RPA does not require a massive upfront investment.
Businesses across the board are realizing that RPA is the next significant digital transformation that will enable employees to stop working on repetitive tasks. Robotic Process Automation allows employees to concentrate on more value adding initiatives, which are imperative for the bottom line of the firm.
Organizations using RPA solutions typically experience benefits like
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has evolved over the years into the Intelligent Automation (IA) realm and resolved the trade-offs related to efficiency and productivity. However both RPA and IA are limited in achieving total automation in case of a paper-based environment. The challenge to derive the required form of quality of the digitized asset renders even hi-tech technologies, such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Intelligent Automation (IA), simply ineffective.
Intelligent Data Capture along with RPA provides a phenomenal success in delivering a successful Digital Transformation for a paper based environment. Intelligent Data Capture enables the information from unstructured data sources such as a PDF, a printout, or even an image to be read and captured and to update databases and downstream systems.
Automation cannot take place without digitization and hence Digitization is the stepping stone to your Digital Transformation journey.
RPA is applied to fetch the document from a system for executing the Intelligent OCR. After digitization and extraction of details, the required information is either directly posted to a downstream system or handed over to an RPA bot. As per the defined process, the RPA bot either posts the data to an ERP, triggers a workflow, stores the digitized asset in a Document Management System (DMS), or feeds the data into a core enterprise system.
RPA will not eliminate the need to continue to invest in other enabling tools, such as the ERP, workflow and document management solutions, OCR tools etc. A fully automated process is conceivable only when each tool plays its part, and hands over the output from one stage to another.
The benefits Finance and Accounting departments are realizing through RPA are
Accuracy is 95+%; cycle times are 3x-4x faster and cost savings are >70%. F&A processes by their very fundamental characteristics are considered as RPA ready. Processes are typically heavily reliant on ERPs or excel for inputs and outputs, addressing a key RPA readiness criteria– one which requires process inputs to be electronic /structured and consistent. However, despite this, each F&A process demonstrates a unique, and sometimes widely divergent amenability to RPA. The key is to drill down into process specific and activity-level characteristics to gain a sharp sense of which processes RPA can be applied to, and estimate the level of benefits that can be expected.
Healthcare data processing with Robotic Process Automation
RPA helps healthcare providers manage complexity by providing an end-to-end revenue cycle management service that not only promises to accelerate the claims process, but also guarantees full compliance with all relevant healthcare and data privacy regulations, such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
Employees spend many hours manually handling mundane aspects of the claims processing cycle, such as data validation. This not only increases turnaround times and processing costs, but also prevents talented employees from focusing on higher value tasks.
Enterprises face the challenges of making legacy systems work with the modern IT ecosystems. Insurance is one such domain that is heavily entrenched into legacy and fully reliant on paper-based processes, and therefore undergoing a Digital Transformation seems an unrealizable dream. Intelligent Document Processing and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) provides enterprises with a uniform stage of operations where the old and new intermingle together seamlessly resulting in a harmony. In a heavy legacy laden Insurance sector, RPA enables the enterprise to reduce cycle time and overhead by a significant extent and improve productivity by more than 80.0%.