Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is software technology that’s easy for anyone to use to automate digital tasks. With RPA, software users create software robots, or “bots”, that can learn, mimic, and then execute rules-based business processes. RPA automation enables users to create bots by observing human digital actions. Show your bots what to do, then let them do the work. Robotic Process Automation software bots can interact with any application or system the same way people do—except that RPA bots can operate around the clock, nonstop, much faster and with 100% reliability and precision.

Robotic Process Automation bots have the same digital skillset as people—and then some. Think of RPA bots as a Digital Workforce that can interact with any system or application. For example, bots are able to copy-paste, scrape web data, make calculations, open and move files, parse emails, log into programs, connect to APIs, and extract unstructured data. And because bots can adapt to any interface or workflow, there’s no need to change business systems, applications, or existing processes in order to automate.

RPA bots are easy to set up, use, and share. If you know how to record video on your phone, you’ll be able to configure RPA bots. It’s as intuitive as hitting record, play, and stop buttons and using drag-and-drop to move files around at work. RPA bots can be scheduled, cloned, customized, and shared to execute business processes throughout the organization.

Some of the benefits of RPA include:

RPA bots create step-change in employee productivity by accelerating workflows and enabling more work to get done by executing processes independently. In document-intensive industries like financial services, insurance and in the public sector, RPA bots can handle form filling and claims processing all hands-free.

RPA is application agnostic so you’ll never need to upgrade or replace existing systems for RPA to work. Bots enable enterprises to live the dream of eliminating technology siloes by seamlessly connecting across all software tools regardless of function and department, in both front office and back office. The result? Achieve never-before seen enterprise-wide efficiencies and collaboration that taps into the true value of your human capital investment.

The intuitive, code-free interface allows anyone to quickly master bot creation and start driving ROI. For the average employee, that means regaining 40% of their time each day that was wasted on manual digital administrative tasks. In industries like healthcare the value of automating is amplified by the critical importance of error-free, compliant process execution to patient outcomes.

When artificial intelligence (AI) is combined with RPA to create Intelligent Automation, automating extends by an order of magnitude, able to draw on the 80% of enterprise data that’s unstructured. In procure-to-pay, automate invoice processing of non-standard vendor invoices. In insurance, automate extracting claims data and detecting potential fraud. In HR, automate request intake by understanding the employee’s intent.

RPA enables high-volume business processes to be more elastic and able to adapt in uncertain times and changing environments. Flexibly handle any workload—planned or unplanned—by expanding your Digital Workforce the moment it’s required. Now imagine it being so simple, so intuitive, that anyone can do it.

With 100% accuracy there is no rework and near-perfect compliance. Automating with RPA is enabling industries such as finance, healthcare and life sciences to leverage the reliability of bots to achieve strict compliance standards. Robotic Process Automation in accounting is enabling new levels of speed and precision in order-to-cash and procure-to-pay processes.

In the front office, attended RPA bots help agents interact with customers by doing all the system and data entry legwork—resulting in reduced call handling time (AHT) and a 50% improvement in customer experience at the same time. Industries such as telecommunications and life sciences deploy bots to streamline customer inquiry handling and smoothly respond to spikes in call volumes.

RPA improves business outcomes like customer satisfaction and enables competitive advantages by freeing humans to do what they do best—solving problems, improving processes, conducting analysis, and other value-added work—resulting in higher employee engagement and new revenue opportunities.

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