Robotic Process Automation (RPA)

Published by Daniel at January 1, 2023

In the current world, the global economy has been pushing businesses to respond faster and more effectively to customer needs, wishes and demands; thus, newer technologies and methodologies have been sought to create companies that are more productive, cost-intelligent, and valuable.(1) Robotic Process Automation (RPA) are software-based robots or bots that allow users to work with simple systems that automate the workflow of a process.(2) RPA can replace employees on tasks that are repetitive, rule-based, and error-prone to automate and optimize those processes, enabling employees to be involved in more complicated tasks that require more human reasoning.(1)

What is RPA?

RPA can be defined as using pre-configured software that relies on predetermined rules and choreographed activity to complete the autonomous execution of a combination of processes or tasks to deliver a result or service with the human management of the exceptions.(3) It is mainly driven by simple rules and logic while interacting with existing user interfaces.(3) In situations where human labor or the construction of business process systems is too expensive or cannot be justified by the needs of the business, RPA serves as a transition element between strenuous human work and complicated business process systems.(3)

RPA software autonomously executes the job uninterruptedly, fast, and flawlessly, thus, improving processes performance, efficiency, security, auditability, and compliance while being easy to implement at low costs.(3) The autonomy of these software robots is limited by human management of the exceptions that require some cognition, intuition, and situational decisions. (3)

Some examples of RPA uses are the following:

Collecting, processing, and transferring data from one system to another
Providing standard replies to customers
Sending quotes and invoices
Detecting issues with customers and trying to solve them
Translating handwritten notes.(2)

In situations where human labor or the construction of business process systems is too expensive or cannot be justified by the needs of the business, RPA serves as a transition element between strenuous human work and complicated business process systems.(3) RPA software autonomously executes the job uninterruptedly, fast, and flawlessly, thus, improving processes performance, efficiency, security, auditability, and compliance while being easy to implement at low costs.(3) The autonomy of these software robots is limited by human management of the exceptions that require some cognition, intuition, and situational decisions. (3)

Some examples of RPA uses are the following:

Collecting, processing, and transferring data from one system to another
Providing standard replies to customers
Sending quotes and invoices
Detecting issues with customers and trying to solve them
Translating handwritten notes.(2)

Pros & Cons

Admiring the significant advantages RPA entails, most of the thoughts about it are positive:

Increased customer satisfaction by yielding minimal errors at high speed and working 24/7
Easily expandable to meet activity spikes
Greater adherence to rules, regulations, and laws, avoiding legal problems
Cleaner and more organized data with minimal input errors

However, some negative popular views are based on the following:

Inflexibility of a program if procedures and regulations change
General purpose mainly since higher specialized areas need more specific software design
Humans’ job take-over.(2)

Robot Process Automation and Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) added to this concept of RPA have allowed it to evolve into several types: rule-based (repeatedly apply predefined rules), knowledge-based (search for information in a system), and learning-based (learn their function from given data); however, rule-based bots have been the main focus thus far.(3)

This evolution led to the emergence of Cognitive Robotic Process Automation (CRPA) software bots that aim to implement AI and ML advances like speech recognition and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to enhance their abilities. Some examples of this include enabling chatbots with a system for automated customer service, program emailing times or alerts, Interactive Voice Response (IVR), NLP converting unstructured data into structured data, and more.(2)

Conclusion

RPA implementation in different services, including medicine, can lead to significant savings in time, money, and other valuable resources, making life more efficient.(2)

References