The State of Enterprise Work report 2017-2018 by Workfront shows that:
- Only 44% of a workweek is spent on the primary duties of our jobs.
- Of the remaining time, about 8% is spent on non-essential tasks.
- Another 8% are spent on wasteful meetings.
That means there is room to reclaim about 1.5 hours for every 8 hours of work that you put in, which is almost equivalent to 1 full business workday per week that could be utilized.
Busy work is not working. It is simply an additional load of stress that produces nothing. Long gone is the time when the results you receive are measured by the hours you work. With advanced technology, it’s time we work smarter, not harder, so that we can take back that 1.5 hours per day to put into productive tasks. RPA can help.
What is Robotic Process Automation (RPA)?
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) automates repeatable manual business processes, freeing us up to do more meaningful work. A software bot can be trained to learn and subsequently execute these routine jobs and can be a time-saver for tasks such as verifying credit card expense statements, sorting through large quantities of data, or filling out an application or data entry from an excel statement or report into an application(s).
Are you ready for RPA implementation?
Find out with a complimentary assessment from our team.
Who Benefits Most From RPA?
The prime candidates for RPA implementations are repetitive tasks that require manual input. Hint: look for the tasks that no one in the team wants to complete. If your employees find them redundant, time-consuming, and not meaningful, chances are those tasks can be replaced with a bot. Not only can a bot complete those tasks faster and with better accuracy, but it can also eliminate human error and boost team morale and motivation, crucial elements for any successful modern workplace.
Claim processing, accounts payable and payroll are the most common areas to start with your RPA journey. Here are some common RPA implementations that can be easily implemented with fast and tangible ROI across industries.
A healthcare insurance company receives thousands of claims and invoices that need processing, sorting for data, and storing across multiple systems. Some of these systems might be legacy, which requires employees to painstakingly move or key-in the information from application to application or worksheets.
With RPA, insurance companies can replace human effort with bots to perform the gathering, searching sorting, cutting, pasting, and reporting tasks, saving time and effort, and freeing up employees to perform more meaningful tasks. With RPA, you can enhance your claim processing speed by 50%. That’s 50% more satisfied customers and 50% more work time allotted to productive tasks.
- RPA in accounting:
In any accounts payable department across industries, processing invoices and uploading them to an enterprise planning or accounting systems, such as Netsuite or SAP, are unavoidable repetitive tasks. Every supplier or contractor invoice follows a different format, many of which are non-standard, which then varies the format and structure of the incoming data.
Using optical character recognition (OCR) and machine learning models, RPA can interpret these invoices and extract key information for processing, then validate such information before entering it into the system of choice. A simple and efficient process with zero errors and no employee’s grinding.
- RPA in mortgage:
The typical home buying process requires appraisals that provide unbiased estimates of each home’s value. Unfortunately, this appraisal process itself is highly repetitive and prone to human errors. RPA can significantly reduce human error in this appraisal process and eliminate lengthy, discouraging delays. A win-win situation for both lenders and customers.
If you’re looking for some inspiration on where to start looking for RPA implementation, here is a list of the hottest areas for RPA across industries.
- HR Services
- Payroll
- Time and Attendance management
- Onboarding and Offboarding
- Personnel Administration
- Recruitment (back office)
- Supply Chain
- Inventory Management
- Invoice and Contract Management
- Work Order Management
- Returns Processing
- IT Services
- Server and Application Monitoring
- Routine maintenance and monitoring
- Password reset/unlock
- Help desk
- Finance and Accounting
- Vendor Master
- Payment processing (AR/AP)
- Invoicing
- Reporting
- Bank reconciliations
- Customer Services
- Order management
- Customer account setup
- Document processing
- Customer inquiries
The examples above are only some of the areas where a simple RPA process can have so much impact: more satisfied customers, more motivated employees, fewer errors, and better bottom line. Using RPA can unburden workers from mundane, redundant tasks, and free them up to do more challenging, collaborative, and creative work.
Interested in building a roadmap for your RPA projects? Our specialists have just the answers you need. Get in touch with us today to build an RPA strategy tailored to your situation that guarantees to improve your bottom line.
Not quite ready to take the jump yet?
Visit out blog for more insights into applications of RPA and subscribe to our newsletter below to receive the latest industry news and observations.
For further reading on how to start with RPA in Accounting and Finance, download our whitepaper.