Understanding Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

August 13, 2018

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In general, a reference to robots naturally brings an idea of massive and iron-made, robotic arms lifting heavy objects in a manufacturing or construction environment. However, with an arrival of the fourth industrial revolution, there is a major shift in this niche.

What is exactly Robotic Process Automation (RPA)? According to Institute for Robotic Process Automation (IRPA), Robotic process automation (RPA) is the application of technology that allows employees in a company to configure computer software or a “robot” to capture and interpret existing applications for processing a transaction, manipulating data, triggering responses and communicating with other digital systems. In simple words, RPA is a new form of robotics, comprises of software bots that can be easily integrated into day to day operations of an organization of any size to enhance process efficiencies and revenue. These software bots are capable of handling various everyday tasks related to customer services, complaints management and customer onboarding, invoices handling, service requests and several other operational tasks.

Here, it is important to understand that RPA is different than Macro. A macro as defined by UiPath is a short sequence of code that automatically expands into a set of instructions to perform a single task. If you are doing something over and over again in code, such as transforming certain text inputs into something else, you can write a macro for that task and call on that macro whenever you need to perform that task. Common macros include keyboard and mouse shortcuts and text substitutions. Software bots, on the other hand, can respond to external stimuli, can learn and reprogram their function over time — hence the bots have an ability to get smarter over the period of time.

The biggest advantage of RPA is that the bots are very easy to configure and streamline the complicated tasks in a matter of days only. This enables businesses to reap the benefits of RPA quickly. Most importantly, software bots never sleep or fall sick, make no mistakes and are always faster, meaning, helping organizations to let their employees focus on more strategic and business critical initiatives that are important for business growth.

If you want to understand what RPA can deliver to your organization, get in touch with AbacusConsulting.