RPA: What’s This And Why It’s A Must-Have In 2024?

If you’re running a business, then, you are most likely very … busy, right? And it would be just perfect if someone (or something?) could take the burden off you. The good news is that there is this something and it is robotic process automation (RPA). The not-so-good news is that most businesses haven’t even heard of it. Yet, it’s already there and those using it are doing things so much faster that soon enough those without RPA will be simply unable to complete. Thanks to this article, you’ll be in the former team.

What’s RPA Exactly?

RPA are software robots that can mimic human actions. Some examples of the latter include

• clicking through applications,
• entering data,
• and processing transactions.

You can thus have a digital assistant who never sleeps, doesn’t make mistakes, and can work faster than anyone you know. For instance, an employee would spend a couple of hours manually entering invoice details into a system. An RPA bot would do it in minutes (error-free!).

By now, you may think that RPA is for big corporations with deep pockets. It’s not. With rpa development services, even small businesses can build custom solutions that’ll be deployed quickly and start showing results fast.

5 Things RPA Solutions Can Do For Your Business

1. Process Documents

Think about the mountain of documents your business handles daily. Invoices, purchase orders, HR forms. If you process these manually, you’ll spend a whole deal of time (and, who knows, make errors maybe)

RPA can automate this. For example, an RPA bot can scan documents using Optical Character Recognition (OCR), extract the relevant data, and input it into your system. It’s faster and precise. An RPA bot will process a hundred invoices in the time it takes a human to do ten. That’s efficiency.

2. Automate Reporting

Reports are essential but, let’s face it, creating them is always (almost) a pain. Bots can gather data from multiple sources, compile it, and generate comprehensive reports. Say goodbye to late nights crunching numbers.

Let’s say you need a monthly sales report. If you want to prepare it well, you must start in advance, right? Bots can pull data from your CRM, ERP, and sales platforms, then compile it into a neat report. You get accurate, timely reports without doing literally anything.

3. Automate Workflow

Workflows involve a lot of moving parts. RPA can automate it all so that tasks just move smoothly from one stage to the next. Imagine automating your order fulfillment process. Bots can track orders, update inventory, generate shipping labels, and notify customers, all by themselves.

4. Plan and Schedule

Planning and scheduling are super responsible and can be a headache. RPA can take over these tasks (or, at least some of them), too. For instance, bots can schedule meetings, manage calendars, and even coordinate project timelines.

Let’s take a product launch. Bots can help schedule all related tasks, set reminders, and ensure everyone is on track. So you see how convenient it is, don’t you?

5. Respond to Customer Queries

RPA can, among all else, handle many routine customer queries and free up your human agents for more complex issues. They can answer FAQs, provide order updates, and process returns.

But there are limitations. Bots are great for straightforward queries. When it comes to nuanced or emotional customer interactions, it’s best to leave those to humans. The key is to find the right balance and this usually comes with practice.

Conclusions

As you see, RPA can do quite a lot of things for you. Of course, you won’t implement all of those simultaneously. But it can be a really smart move to implement the most beneficial ones, one at a time, and see how they speed things up for you.