Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has revolutionized business processes by automating repetitive tasks, freeing up resources for strategic initiatives. In this blog, we’ll explore the latest advancements in RPA and how emerging technologies such as AI, machine learning, cloud computing, and IoT are reshaping their future. Discover how businesses can leverage RPA to drive efficiency, productivity, and profitability.
What is the future of RPA?
Many large companies employ robotic process automation (RPA) to improve production, efficiency, and customer service, but there is still more potential. RPA will help organizations, customers, and workers as it gets smarter.
Decoding robotic process automation’s (RPA) future
RPA implementation is rising as enterprises face pandemic-related social isolation and economic strain. To meet the new normal, technology is helping companies worldwide boost productivity, efficiency, and digital customer experience.
Software robots interact with applications and information sources like humans to automate repetitive, rule-based digital operations.
Attending Automation
One of the things we think will happen in the future is that we will move faster toward attended automation. Organizations all over the world know they need to give their employees more power through managed automation in order to automate more processes and get the most out of their RPA investments.
Attended automation, which is sometimes called “desktop automation,” makes bots even more useful. An attended automation robot, which is basically a digital personal assistant that lives on the desktop, helps workers give better customer service and do repetitive desktop tasks faster and more accurately by automating them.
Attended bots to take care of boring tasks like filling out forms for the employee. They can also tell the employee what the best next step is and help them stay in compliance while, for example, a customer service rep helps a customer solve an account question. This creates a link between tasks in the back office and tasks in the front office. This makes it possible to automate more complicated processes from start to finish.
Consider a use case in the healthcare industry where a health plan administrator could use a mix of server-based and attended bots to handle managerial tasks like claims adjudication, authorizations, and coordinating provider services. Based on the information gathered by the call center workers, the back-office bots could update the CRM software. Attended automation, on the other hand, could help workers switch between multiple applications, fill out data in multiple places, and be guided in real time to stay compliant and make the most of upsell opportunities. This frees up the employee to handle more complicated customer requests or focus on customer service instead of data entry.
Smarter automation is the future of RPA
The next step, which some companies are already taking, is to combine AI and machine learning tools with managed automation and RPA. This group of solutions, which goes by names like intelligent automation, intelligent process automation, and cognitive RPA, lets businesses automate jobs that aren’t based on rules.
Cognitive automation can handle exceptions and make decisions across whole processes. This is different from RPA, which is all about doing repetitive jobs as efficiently as possible. Traditional RPA automates processes based on data in structured databases, but intelligent automation can also work with unstructured data sources like scanned papers, emails, letters, and voice recordings.
The technology is “cognitive” in the sense that it acts like a human brain.
- Learning is getting knowledge and rules for how to use it in different situations.
- The reasoning is coming to decisions by using context and rules
- Self-correction is when you learn from your mistakes.
Handling harder and more complicated tasks
Cognitive automation has the capability to tackle intricate tasks without the need for human involvement. This is demonstrated through the implementation of machine learning algorithms, which enable the technology to learn how to autonomously handle complex jobs such as addressing a credit card dispute via email.
Here are some instances where an RPA platform would incorporate cognitive tools to achieve the following tasks:
- OCR (Optical Character Recognition) and imagine ID
- Getting out the purpose and the entities
- Analysis of text
- Analysis of feelings
- Categorization
- Classification
- Detection of a format change
- Handwriting identification
- Voice detection
Some benefits are:
- Cognitive automation can turn unstructured data into structured data via natural language processing. This, in turn, makes it possible for RPA to be used to automate many tasks.
- It can handle more and more complicated inputs and process steps without any help from a person.
- It can learn, gain new skills, and keep getting better at some of the things it can do on its own.
This means that in the future, companies will be able to automate more back-office and front-office tasks in a way that makes the customer experience smooth. Cognitive automation can help companies meet customer standards in a world where digital customer journeys need to be easy and clear.
A telecommunications company, for example, could use cognitive automation to run robots for sales, frequently asked questions (FAQs), and help desks. The customer and chatbot could talk to each other in normal language. If he or she wants a smartphone with a monthly data plan, the RPA bots could collect and verify all the customer’s personal information, check the customer’s credit score, and send the chatbot an online form to show the customer in real-time.
AI automation discovery and the emergence of no-code tools
Advanced RPA solutions simplify the automation process by identifying suitable candidates and deploying automation. No-code tools from NICE make it easy for non-technical users to map processes and create automation. AI-driven tools, like NICE’s Automation Finder, analyze employee desktop data to identify automation opportunities. Automated business process discovery speeds up RPA deployments and ensures accurate identification of suitable processes, leading to faster ROI.
NICE is building the future of RPA
The most seasoned RPA vendor on the market is NICE, which has a history of innovation in both RPA and attended automation. We firmly believe that the future of RPA will include a significant human component; intuitive and powerful attended automation will be essential to improving both customer and employee digital experiences.
One of the few companies, NICE provides top-tier products for desktop and backend automation. Our attended robots provide more than just automation; they also help staff with daily duties by displaying real-time next-best-action or next-best offer assistance, for example, via on-screen guidance callouts.
The NICE package also includes cutting-edge functions, such as a Desktop Analytics solution that keeps track of workers’ desktop actions to reveal inefficiencies and pinpoint best practices. Desktop Analytics is also a crucial part of NICE’s AI-infused Automation Finder function, which makes it possible to find operations that can be automated with greater intelligence and accuracy.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has already transformed how businesses approach process automation. As technology continues to advance, we can expect more sophisticated RPA solutions that can handle increasingly complex tasks without human intervention. AI-powered automation discovery tools will further streamline the process of identifying automation opportunities, enabling organizations to rapidly achieve their desired ROI. Additionally, the availability of no-code tools means that even business users with limited coding knowledge can easily create automation. Overall, the future of RPA is bright and holds great potential for driving efficiency, productivity, and innovation in the business world.
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