The future of RPA
Enterprises have been spending millions of dollars in applications such as ERP, CRM, HRMS etc. Yet close to 80% of processes are still manual. Content that process owners rely on, to execute processes is lying across multiple applications, emails, documents, etc. Workflows are typically manual in nature. Eventually, just the last 20% of the process is handled in the ERP or any structured data application.
Enterprises processes, on the other hand, are seeing significant opportunities for transformation led by the highly challenging marketplace, customer expectations as well as expectations for driving cost take-outs and revenue growth by management teams within enterprises. Process agility has become important than ever before. Initiatives such as cycle time reduction to processes, consequent reductions in costs and faster turnaround to customers are now accelerating with the support of process transformation programs enabled by technology. Emerging technologies such as Information Management solutions, Chatbot, Robotic Process Automation, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence are presenting new opportunities to deliver business outcomes in innovative ways.
The Robotic Process Automation (RPA) market is experiencing significant growth led by the huge adoption across several large enterprises. The market grew at 63.1 % in the year 2018 to $846 million, making it one of the fastest-growing segments in the enterprise software market, as per the estimates put up by Gartner Research. Gartner expects RPA software revenues to reach $1.3 billion in 2019.
RPA when deployed correctly, can facilitate not just automation of “swivel-chair” processes, but could perform several other automation including triggering responses, inter-application messaging, integration between legacy applications, exception identification/handling or delivering reports. This, in turn, could support enterprises to leverage their investments in legacy applications while delivering agile processes. Several enterprises are still at a nascent stage of RPA adoption. The market opportunity presented currently is therefore just the tip of the iceberg with SME company adoption driving the next wave.
Processes have been the core of any successful RPA implementation. Selecting the right processes for automation and optimizing processes prior to automation ensures that at least the top 60% of success parameters are taken care of. RPA is also about scale – no significant P&L impact can be showcased to the board if there are just a handful of tasks automated. To sustain this scale, therefore, means building a strong internal center of excellence that when coupled with subject matter expertise, will ensure delivery of business outcomes.
Most RPA implementations involve semi-automated bots (desktop-based) and unassisted bots (server-based) that caters to the automation of business processes which are repetitive, mechanical, rule-based, and primarily involving structured data. Most enterprises have taken a piecemeal approach to identify a few processes for automation rather than taking an enterprise-wide approach. While this approach may bring results to the specific process, it will not yield a transformative enterprise-wide impact. Taking an enterprise-wide approach could be more effective when RPA is combined with various other technologies to drive process transformation. This is probably the path that most enterprises and vendors will eventually take to create a deeper impact on process outcomes. Here are the top five considerations that will greatly influence the future of RPA:
- Smart process applications combining machine learning:
Several RPA vendors have either recently launched, or have plans for combining machine learning with the task automation capabilities of the bot. Using NLP and machine learning, the relevant data points could be extracted from unstructured content to then understand it in context and trigger the most relevant actions.
- Combining RPA with AI-based technologies:
AI, when combined with RPA, could automate judgment-based processes. By learning from human actions, bots could take actions autonomously and keep the intervention of humans to the bare minimum. By analyzing patterns and recognizing models, these cognitive bots will handle most semi-structured and unstructured data and be able to infer, make predictions, reason solutions and present responses just like humans do. By combining RPA and AI, complex end to end processes could be automated integrating the elements of predictive insights and supporting humans to deliver work in several superior ways.
- Combining RPA with Chatbots, OCR and Information Management solutions:
Process automation will present a confluence of multiple technologies to best empower business users to accelerate the pace to their processes. Documents coming via the chatbot could, for example, be read via an OCR to initiate workflows and trigger tasks via the bot, with these documents getting integrated with a content management application and eventually the data could be posted into the ERP by the bot. With a combination of one or more of these technologies, almost any business process could be automated, thereby reducing the overall cost of ownership of these applications.
- RPA and IoT:
The numerous data points from IoT will need feeding into several applications to then take necessary action or generate insights. RPA could offer significant value in terms of delivering this data in the shortest possible timeframe. An example of this would be for the bot to trigger automated procurement processes or trigger spares release from the warehouse when the machine triggers alerts. The interplay of IoT and RPA will enable the creation of smart factories as a result of picking up data from machines real-time and ensuring further action on the data depending on its context. Examples of this include predictive maintenance, output and performance analysis/pattern recognition and say proactive machine health monitoring.
- RPA and Cyber Security:
One argument in favor of RPA reducing internal security risk is that bot is always going to follow policies and processes with no deviances. Another argument is that of maintaining the confidentiality of the information and ensuring a clear desk policy. Bots could also be used to reduce time to detect incidents and initiate quick responses in the form of deployment of security controls upon any detection of vulnerabilities. However, a counter-argument is that of cyber criminals finding an open window to hack the bots which could become a huge threat in terms of financial losses or information leakage. Enterprise-grade bots would increasingly invest in becoming smarter to fix vulnerabilities that attackers may potentially look to leverage. System integrators will have a larger role to play to ensure that their design includes comprehensive considerations on governance, integrity, traceability, control, and confidentiality of data, information exchange and applications.
As enterprises leverage emerging technologies to deliver superior stakeholder outcomes and experiences, ‘digital’ will be the way of work and as a term will not assume much significance. The interplay between these technologies will drive cost take-outs on the one side while enabling a much faster turnaround time for enterprises. Enterprises will focus on various deployment models such that they optimize their total cost of ownership while maximizing stakeholder experiences.
“Still round the corner, there may wait, a new road or a secret gate” goes a quote by J.R.R. Tolkien. Enterprises have barely scratched the surface of real-world transformations with emerging technologies. There are still many unexplored possibilities of innovation and new destinations waiting to be found. Business stakeholders who can take time out to visualize these possibilities will immensely benefit from the exponential value that it could deliver.
