If you’ve read anything about RPA lately (including this blog!), you are undoubtedly aware that the technology and its applications are growing exponentially. Seemingly every article begins with big bold statistics corroborating just how popular RPA is.
Back in January we joined the conversation ourselves and made our predictions for the year, laying out our RPA expectations for 2020. In that post you can read about growing opportunities for ROI with RPA, the market’s focus on robust service providers, and how implementation will be a critical new emphasis. Today, we’re going to talk about what all those things might look like in real life.
The Tangible and Intangible Returns on Investment
Like we’ve mentioned before, as RPA technology matures and implementation techniques improve, we’re able to apply automation in ways that maximize financial returns. In practice, here’s what this might look like.
A manufacturing company uses RPA to reduce the time it takes to complete one stage of their production process by two minutes. Those two minutes are the equivalent of hundreds of monthly hours across multiple suppliers. Even figuring in the cost and time for implementation, the implications are staggering and reach across the entire enterprise.
2 minutes X 50 times a day = 100 minutes/ 1.66 hours daily
1.66 hours X 20 working days a month = 33.33 hours monthly
33.33 hours X 8 suppliers = 266.66 total hours monthly
266.66 hours X $35 avg. hourly rate = $9,333 monthly savings
$9,333 X 12 months = $112,000 annual savings
And while the returns are significant and quantifiable, there are even wider effects. Employees are freed up to build deeper relationships with vendors and customers, and to focus on growing their careers and the organization, creating an entirely new company culture.
A Full-Scope, Native Approach
Being able to consider a company’s “big-picture” is an absolutely critical component to success with RPA. So much so in fact, that a 2020 Gartner report recommends that businesses “Focus on the providers’ abilities to address outcomes critical to your organization across multiple areas.” Here’s an example of why that is so important.
Imagine you run an insurance company and you’ve just learned that repetitive data-entry is costing hundreds of hours of wasted time every month and slowing productivity. To correct the bottlenecks, you plan to use RPA to eliminate the duplicative data entry.
But, process mining soon reveals other barriers to the workflow. Documentation is paper-based, but claims are handled online. Account info is in one database, but claims are internally processed in another. Client contact details are manually input, leading to errors and inaccuracies that delay claims communications.
Suddenly, it’s clear: There is much more going on than just redundant data entry. Thanks to process intelligence, your insurance company can now identify multiple issues in the process workflow and address them all accordingly. This doesn’t fix one spoke in your process, but rather the process as a whole.
And it gets better. Even a seemingly modest time-savings on the claims lifecycle will bring huge impacts, not just for labor costs, but also for the company’s reputation—which relies significantly on the client claims experience.
A Sharper Focus on Implementation
As with most technology solutions, the biggest pitfalls for RPA lie in implementation. Until now, there was a common theme of “set it and forget it,” which primed most users for failure. That’s because that approach is not adaptable to change.
But in real life, no process is static. Things change constantly, and they inevitably impact how work gets done. For RPA to be effective in 2020 and beyond, implementation must consider the dynamic of change as part of the equation. Let’s say an HR department is looking to automate part of their onboarding process. After building workflows and doing a deep dive with process intelligence, they discover three areas of onboarding where automation can bring down labor costs and reduce errors.
Implementation begins and the benefits are immediate: There’s a measurable ROI and HR managers are able to spend more time with their new hires. Then, a few months later, a compliance change happens. There’s now a new form that must be added to the process. This could completely snag workflow in any number of directions.
But, if the HR company is using the EPSoft Intelligent Automation Platform, the bot running the automation immediately recognizes the change in process and alerts the company about the form. The company is notified proactively, the workflow is adapted to accommodate the new form, and the bots evolve to the new flow of work. Anticipating change is a key factor to RPA success.
These are just some examples of how 2020 is sure to be a huge year for RPA and business process management in general. To make the most of your investment, it’s so important to choose a vendor that is looking toward the future with you.
These are just some examples of how 2020 is sure to be a huge year for RPA and business process management in general. To make the most of your investment, it’s so important to choose a vendor that is looking toward the future with you.
At EPSoft, we believe we are that vendor. Let’s talk more and schedule your free 30-minute demo.