Feb 24 2021
Management

Robotic Process Automation: What Businesses and Leaders Need to Know

RPA is valuable for keeping up with ever-increasing transactions, but it’s not right for every situation.
Joel Snyder
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Joel is an internationally recognized expert in the areas of security, networking and messaging. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @joelsnyder.

Robotic process automation helps businesses keep up with ever-increasing transactions. Here’s what they should know.

What Is Robotic Process Automation Technology?

RPA uses virtual robots to simulate the work of a human at a keyboard, usually interacting with multiple applications. It’s different from simply programming business rules into an application, because the bot is external to the application and can cross applications, read something off a web page, enter it into a local database, send an email and update yet another web page.

What Are the Keys to a Successful RPA Deployment?

RPA succeeds best when the scope and steps of the process can be tightly defined, and when you take the time to carefully define each step before starting to automate anything. RPA projects should start with the fast, easy wins before moving to more complicated processes that are more difficult to automate. 

automation automation

What Are the Benefits of RPA?

RPA delivers a 24/7 workforce that operates faster and more accurately than humans at repetitive and easily defined tasks. Having a programmer update an application to implement some business processes or rules is expensive and time-consuming. RPA is a shortcut technology that lets businesses quickly define and deploy automation without modifying applications.

Where Does RPA Fit Best?

RPA delivers quickly in environments where many disconnected applications are needed to support a process and where human operators act as the glue to bring things together. Any data entry operation that is repetitive and requires a very low level of judgement is an excellent candidate for RPA.

Why Do Some RPA Projects Fail?

RPA does not require re-engineering and refactoring business processes, but it doesn’t fit well into every process. Before starting, ask how a specific process can be simplified and improved and how it can be optimized when a robot will be doing most of the work.

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