DM1907

OPINION: RPA Dm
"THERE WERE ONCE FEARS THAT COMPUTERS, THE INTERNET AND EMAIL WOULD ERADICATE WORKFORCES,
AND YET IT'S HAD THE OPPOSITE EFFECT. NOWADAYS, THERE ARE BARELY ANY INDUSTRIES IN THE WORLD THAT
DO NOT RELY ON MODERN TECHNOLOGY TO SOME DEGREE - AND THESE INNOVATIONS HAVE EVEN CREATED
JOBS THAT DIDN'T EXIST 30 YEARS AGO. RPA IS PRIMED TO HAVE THE SAME IMPACT: CREATING NOT JUST JOBS,
BUT ALSO POSITIVELY AFFECTING SOCIETY AND ENABLING STAFF MEMBERS TO FOCUS ON MORE VALUABLE,
GRATIFYING WORK."
will enhance job satisfaction, allowing
workers to spend more time on adding
value to their businesses where it
matters most. As Professor Daniel
Cable at London Business School and
author of Alive at Work, comments:
"Humans aren't built for routine and
repetition. We are designed to crave
exploration, experimentation and
learning."
For companies seeking to produce
high-quality products and services for
customers, provide an optimal working
environment for employees, as well as
boost productivity and revenue, RPA
technology could be the answer. It
mimics the activities of human
employees, whilst far exceeding their
speed, accuracy or volume of output.
ACCELERATING HUMAN
PERFORMANCE
RPA is helping improve the job market
by outsourcing the everyday and the
routine. By taking care of admin tasks
such as invoice processing, CV checking
or customer support, RPA gives humans
more time to spend on strategising and
planning, as well as on other highervalue
tasks. These tasks bring bigger
benefits to businesses - profit growth,
business expansion, and a larger
human workforce.
A recent study conducted with
Forrester Consulting has shown that
businesses and organisations have
observed multiple benefits to RPA -
including increased employee
engagement. That's because RPA allows
employees to engage in richer
interactions with others, perform work
that requires more brain power, and
make fewer mistakes. Two-thirds (66
percent) of respondents said that RPA
restructures existing work, enabling
employees to have more human
interactions, whilst 60 percent said RPA
helps employees focus on more
meaningful, strategic tasks. This has led
to better employee engagement,
according to over half (57 percent) of
respondents.
REINVESTING IN WHAT MATTERS
One example of a company benefiting
from RPA is EDF Energy, the largest
supplier of low-carbon electricity in the
UK, which employees around 12,500
people. It uses RPA for manual journalentry
financial processing. Previously,
every time a new entry was added, a
team member had to manually review
and enter it into an ERP system. After
automating the process, EDF has saved
£100,000 in software license and
development costs, and 70 man-hours
- nearly two work weeks' worth of
time, which can now be better spent
elsewhere. This has brought an
additional £50,000 worth of
aggregated annual savings to the firm -
money that can be reinvested in the
business and its current employees.
Another example of tangible business
benefits caused by RPA is at General
Electric. The company had already
implemented RPA and wanted to
expand its automation scope to an
enterprise level, achieving high-scale
adoption and enhanced productivity. It
created an RPA Centre of Excellence
and training hundreds of finance
professionals on RPA.
After incorporating machine learning
and business process management
(BPM) into its RPA stack, the company
recorded a $150 million productivity
benefit.
RPA can bring business benefits across
all sectors - including contact centres,
where human talent will still be
prevalent, even as automation rises. A
report from McKinsey has found that
the majority (96%) of customer-care
leaders think new technology won't
reduce the need for human skills -
whilst 94% believe that they will need
to hire new agents.
Every contact centre agent needs to
rapidly access multiple data sources in
real-time and a software robot will
significantly boost both speed and
accuracy, delivering increased job
satisfaction for agents. RPA can also
help with the considerable number of
administrative tasks brought in during
and after each call, again enabling call
centre workers to save time and
increase their job satisfaction.
A SIGN OF POSITIVE CHANGE
RPA and other new technologies
becoming widespread in our society is
inevitable, and it should be embraced
positively - and implemented correctly.
On the surface, automation job
statistics may seem alarming, but far
from destroying jobs, robotic process
automation (RPA) can help transform
jobs and keep employees happy and
engaged. There were once fears that
computers, the internet and email
would eradicate workforces, and yet it's
had the opposite effect. Nowadays,
there are barely any industries in the
world that do not rely on modern
technology to some degree - and these
innovations have even created jobs that
didn't exist 30 years ago.
RPA is primed to have the same
impact: creating not just jobs, but also
positively affecting society and
enabling staff members to focus on
more valuable, gratifying work.
More info: www.uipath.com
www.document-manager.com
July/August 2019
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