What is Robotic Process Automation (RPA)?

RPA is saving companies millions annually, but what is it?

RPA is short for Robotic Process Automation. Did you know that 60% of all occupations in the US, on average, involve 33% repetitive activities that can be automated (according to a recent McKinsey Report)? Office and administration jobs fall smack in the middle of that 60%. RPA is the groundbreaking technology that uses robotic software on your computers to redefine tasks, cut costs, and accelerate revenue. It involves the mastery of automation tools such as Blue Prism, Automation Anywhere, Power Automate, UiPath, and what's known as "GEN 2" automation tools such as Robocorp. Also, proficiency in programming languages, such as C, C++, Java, Python, or DOT NET, and experience with databases such as SQL and NoSQL is fundamental.

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Cool, so it's like AI.. right?

It has AI features, but it’s not a rogue bot that goes off and learns everything independently.

RPA bots integrate nicely with different types of machine learning/AI features such as Optical Character recognition, allowing for your bots to use its features better with each run.

AI will grow at an exponential rate in the next few years, giving RPA bots more and more power to make our lives easier. Right now, the latter is the type of machine intelligence professionals specifically design to perform defined repetitive tasks that human effort previously took care of. The significant benefits are:

• Management can shift the free’d human resources to revenue-generating projects
• The cost savings (salaries, overtime, fringe benefits, etc.) are nothing short of mind-boggling. Indeed, ‘bots work continuously 24/7/365 - a massive change from nine to five, weekdays only, lunch and coffee breaks.

Gotcha! Well I'm guessing anyone can use it then right?

“Automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiencies. Automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiencies. ”

The quote above says it all. While it can be applied to any organization & practically any task done on your computer, before going down the path of automation be sure to evaluate the task at hand and gauge whether or not a process is currently organized & efficient. If not, you'll definitely want to get both of these down prior to automating it.

Sweet. So what are a few departments people usually automate tasks in?

Supply Chain

• Inventory Updates
• Order fulfillment
• Product updates
• Inventory Consolidations
• External system communication

Accounting & Finance

• Macro Conversions
• Invoice processing
• Payroll processing
• SAP Data manipulation
• Bank Reconciliations

Human Resources

• New account creation
• Account removal
• Sending job offer letters
• Constructing employment packages
• Auditing Datasets

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Sales

• Lead nurtures
• Lead list pulls
• Cold reach-outs
• Proposal Creation
• CRM Updates

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This is just the start, as automation stretches far beyond the tasks listed above. If you're interested in hearing more about tasks that can be automated, or even learning if a specific task you had in mind can be automated, feel free to reach out to BabyBots and we'd be happy get you all the information needed!