The list of incentives for companies to incorporate robotic process automation (RPA) is growing constantly, though some businesses are catching on faster than others: Gartner research shows that approximately 70% of banks use RPA technology, and implementation is also strong within the insurance and utility industries. According to Deloitte, at its current growth rate, we’re about five years away from near-universal adoption, as the benefits of RPA can stretch across just about every field. RPA takes time-consuming, repetitive processes out of human hands (where they’ll face an estimated 10+% error rate) and precisely performs them via machine.
“As automation became much more popular throughout 2010 through 2020, we will likely see that the same sort of popularity and adoption of RPA really becomes a similar trend in the next 10 years,” says David Armendariz, General Manager, Technology Division at Lucas Group. “The education process will be easier because people have a reference point.”
More Valuable Than You Expect
SSON Analytics findings reveal something both curious and encouraging—most enterprises completely underestimate the value of RPA before implementing it. Over 80% of businesses predicted that RPA would not be able to assist them with at least 60% of their processes. Once it was in place, however, 36.4% indicated that it did just that. However, the reason for this might be less rooted in a lack of faith in RPA and an indication of a deeper problem.
“Most companies have a good understanding of the benefits of RPA,” says Siyong Liu, General Manager at CFB Bots. “Somewhat counterintuitively, many don’t [know] or refuse to acknowledge the depths of their operational inefficiencies.” These flaws, combined with inevitable human error, will lead to costly mistakes when not countered with some virtual assistance.
Now that more companies are realizing what RPA can bring to their organization, programs are becoming more user-friendly to set up, and better able to serve as the end user. They can record functions, interpret text, and take care of basic administrative tasks. Katalyst offers several structured, automation-based products that can assist an enterprise in its processes, including CC3 and Celero. Reach out to our experts to see which solutions can best serve your business, then check out the video below to see a side-by-side comparison of RPA and a person creating the same invoice—which one do you think will finish faster?
Can RPA and AI Co-Exist?
Some purists might argue that, under the strictest definition, RPA is a tool to handle only repetitive tasks with no variation. But Richard Hill, Chief Technology Officer at Celaton, feels it’s possible to bridge the gap between the consistent behavior of RPA and the intelligent thinking of machine learning (ML).
“RPAs are great because they’ve given a lot more power to business users,” Hill says, acknowledging that RPA is perfect for “drag and drop” sort of tasks. “But it really does seem to stop at those types of automation tasks. When you start getting into the higher-value tasks, there’s a lot more unstructured content. That’s when RPA on its own is going to struggle.”
“On the most fundamental level, RPA is associated with doing whereas AI and ML [are] concerned with thinking and learning respectively,” says Liu. “Brawn versus brains, if you like. In practice, RPA is about taking the robot out of the human, whereas AI is putting the human into the robot.”
Regardless of your stance on whether RPA and AI can co-exist, what’s especially vital is what you use them for. “You have to have real-world problems to solve,” says Hill. “If you don’t understand the real-world problems and do the business analysis, does that mean [RPA is] actually going to add any benefit? I would argue not.”
Like any new business function, an innovative mindset and a willingness to embrace the unknown is critical for a successful RPA implementation strategy. When you realize the impact it can have on your enterprise, the possibilities are endless.
