Automation is Unlocking the Best of What Makes us Human

Automation and robotics are becoming increasingly integral parts of the business process, but implementation remains a thorny issue for many.  

 

Put simply, the technology and processes required to successfully get an RPA initiative off the ground can be a significant drain on resources for teams which lack time, RPA knowledge or both. But whether working with an in-house team or collaborating with a key partner, the benefits of RPA are worth fighting for, for any business. 

 

 

RPA provides businesses with the opportunity to streamline and improve their service design. Yet even the most service-orientated companies encounter difficulties, because service designers too often work in isolation from the rest of the business. By creating a collaborative, organisation-wide approach to RPA, companies can more efficiently encourage the input of subject matter experts (SMEs) and successfully implement automation. I would go so far as to say that companies not currently using or planning the adoption of RPA are setting themselves up for an expensive restructuring in the not too distant future.  

 

While different companies have a huge range of reasons to implement RPA, there tends to be one common goal - to make their customers happier. RPA helps businesses achieve higher customer satisfaction rates by increasing the efficiency of services, resulting in an improved customer experience. Here we can see the value of expert partners, informing and empowering workforces to set out the journey for automation.  

 

Effective RPA not only improves customer experience and satisfaction, but betters the working lives of staff. I believe that employers have a moral obligation to provide meaningful jobs. RPA achieves this by automating menial tasks and putting people back in positions they are qualified for and away from administration. As if improving customer and employee experience aren’t enough, this process also generates considerable savings and service efficiencies for businesses. 

 

 

RPA partners empower businesses to reap the rewards of RPA by successfully engaging business stakeholders, implementing the right technology and enabling the humans central to its adoption. Ultimately, this solves the implementation issue in robotics and automation for companies across a range of sectors. 

 

A big part of what RPA partners do comes in the education of workforces that may have strong concerns about the adoption of automation in the first place. Much of the noise in the media over the last decade has been about job losses precipitated by robots, accompanied by high-impact headlines. But more recent studies have painted a different picture – for example the Swiss think tank predicts that by 2022, while 75 million human jobs will be replaced by automation, 133 million new jobs will be created in its wake. Studies by PwC and Gartner come to the same conclusion; RPA will create more jobs than it renders obsolete. In fact, many companies working to adopt RPA are looking to add capacity to teams using RPA rather than replace humans in the process. 

 

 

So the question then becomes, ‘How do we make the most of our RPA projects’? The bottom line here is to hand as much repeatable, high volume and low value work to software ‘bots’ as possible, because this will not only minimise human error and increase speed of work, but unlock the full potential of the human workforce. I mean the business-critical work that requires empathy, significant experience, intuition and all the other best bits of human nature. There’s an increasing need for companies to sign up an RPA partner that not only understands technology, but also understands the human element and how this affects the people within an organisation.  

 

I firmly believe that in the near future companies will see RPA as a way of attracting talent. Businesses will develop an obligation to provide automation assistance to ensure people have stimulating and interesting jobs, free of so much of the administrative tasks we see today. 

 

There may be mountains to climb in the journey to effective and efficient RPA, but with a good team or RPA partner to guide you, the journey will quickly pay off. From increasing the efficiency and decreasing the costs of your services, to improving customer experience and employee job satisfaction; the benefits of RPA stretch far beyond the automation of repetitive processes, holding the power to revolutionise the way your business is perceived by your stakeholders.