In the nineties, through business process management (BPM) the companies could cater to end-to-end business processes based on some stipulated methods. With the need to automate these business processes, tech giants like Oracle and IBM started to provide automation technologies and coined the concept of Business Process Automation (BPA), following which emerged the revolutionary trend of Robotic Process Automation, or today, commonly
known as “RPA”.
Rightly once quoted by the tech behemoth, Mr. Elon Musk, “Science is discovering the essential truths about what exists in the universe, engineering is about creating things that never existed.” Interestingly, RPA is one such amazing creation of computer engineering which is capable of interacting, just like humans do, to facilitate repetitive tasks in bigger volumes.
RPA or software bots (autonomous programs) can easily coordinate an array of tasks like entering, calculating, and copying available data. When amalgamated with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), RPA can be used to build intelligent automation.
Wherein the inputs selected by humans can be used for better decision-making, for instance, in use cases such as cyber security, customer service, fraud detection, process analysis, invoice processing, customer/employee onboarding, etc., thereby saving a lot of time of the businesses and ensuring faster Return on Investment (ROI).
The companies can also consider RPA because it strives to deliver better performance in terms of efficiency, savings, customer service, time consumption, and complying with the standards/rules set by the organizations. Banking and financial services, healthcare, insurance, and retail industries have till now, seen humungous acceptance of RPA and due to its dynamic workability, RPA will surely be seen more into other management functions such as in Human Resources to facilitate information management, in Finance and Accounting to ensure high accuracy in billing, foreign exchange payments, and order management, etc. or to enhance procurement process, RPA can simplify tracking of shipments, inventory management, issuing of invoices and other supply chain management activities.
Further, RPA has also been categorically divided into three types i.e.- Attended, Unattended and Hybrid.
