Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is not only transforming businesses but also improving work efficiency and quality. This innovative technology empowers the human workforce to be more flexible, agile, and productive during day-to-day operations, resulting in better customer experience, employee satisfaction, and overall higher profits for a wide range of businesses. 

So, it’s no surprise why multiple businesses are leveraging RPA to streamline operational processes and achieve better business efficiencies. While many have come to terms with the benefits of automation technology, some are still apprehensive about how or why they should leverage RPA. 

Determining if your business is ready for RPA

Through the agile capabilities of software robots or bots, RPA automates high-volume, repetitive, and rule-based tasks that consume a major portion of the human workforce’s time as compared to the value those tasks offer. 

By taking over such monotonous tasks from humans, RPA streamlines a wide range of processes, from front-office management to back-office support. Here are 6 ways that can help realize if your business is ready for RPA:

1. Spot areas that need improvement.

Establishing a thorough, realistic evaluation of all the departments in the company, especially the areas that consistently underperform, can help enterprises understand what may be causing this. 

For example, while considering customer service in the back or front office, assess which processes in these departments are affected by:

• Transcription errors
• Data access issues (i.e. the time required to access data across multiple applications)
• Excessive approval times
• Extensive manual data entry times

These challenges are easily addressed by automation and are a good indicator that the business is ready for RPA. 

For more, read: Top Use Cases of RPA in Customer Service

2. Appraise the inter-departmental information flow.

Paying attention to information silos, helps enterprises understand the underlying dysfunctionality of data sharing across various departments. Such unstable and poor intercompany communications arise due to the existence of dated systems across multiple areas of the enterprise. 

By modernizing business operations, many such communication breakdowns are overcome. For instance, RPA is capable of supercharging the processes of tracking, updating, and sharing information within the enterprise. RPA is the key to ensuring that all the information shared is reliable, accurate, and consistent throughout all departments. 

3. Evaluate the stability of business processes.

Uncovering processes that are ideal candidates for automation is a prerequisite to RPA. These processes are typically repetitive, rule-based, and to some extent exception-free.

RPA bots work best when set to highly stable, repeatable processes with negligible variability. Therefore, you know your business is ready for RPA if there are a set of standardized activities that you can automate. 

4.Estimate the need to hire more people.

Enterprises continuously hire more and more people to meet the evolving demands of growing businesses. And needless to say, hiring new employees comes with significant costs.

As RPA offers heaps of scalability, it proves to be a more cost-effective option. Bots easily scale up or down handling massive volumes of work, helping enterprises save incurring additional labor costs by paying overtime rates to an overworked team or onboarding temporary staff. 

5. Assess the number of manual tasks that your employees perform.

The need for perpetual data entry across various departments (eg. in a finance company activating cards, producing financial statements, opening accounts, etc.) is a clear sign that the company will benefit from RPA implementation. 

RPA is also beneficial to execute structured and repetitive activities as well as high-frequency processes that are susceptible to human errors. Additionally, by performing a long list of mundane tasks, employees get bored, tired, dissatisfied, and even burned out. This can easily be prevented through RPA. By automating manual tasks, RPA lets employees get back the time they need to focus on work that requires their critical thinking, skills, and creativity while contributing to the overall success of the business.

6. Estimate the cost of errors.

This assessment is the consequence of the above point, mainly because manual data entry is largely a source of many errors. Even a minute error requires to be reviewed and course-corrected, further wasting  the enterprises' time and money.

If common errors lead to delays and consequential headaches, it means that the company is more than ready for RPA. 

Conclusion

Implementing RPA comes with a long list of practical benefits: streamlined data management, measurable ROI, reduced cybersecurity risks, satisfied customers and employees. Most importantly, business automation offers a substantial competitive advantage for innovators who are ready to embrace RPA. 

How can Neebal help?

Deploying RPA is well worth the returns, especially when a reputed RPA solutions provider like Neebal can provide you unlimited license free bots, helping you save expenses on recurring bot license renewals. Our team of experienced technology experts enables fast solution development and implementation. Would you like to reap the benefits of automation too? We’re here to help! Schedule a call today with one of our top experts to get started!