SME

9 Key Benefits of Automating Your Business (with RPA)

Sam

04 Oct 2019 • 6 min read

If you have ever browsed the internet for…well, just about anything, chances are you have had the experience of chatting with a Bot – a software robot designed to perform a specific task or process. With between 40 and 50 percent of all businesses implementing robotic customer service, perhaps you didn’t even realise you were communicating with artificial intelligence! CRM Chatbots, like any Bots, are compact and smart digital machines used to communicate with customers via messaging on a website. Increasingly responsive in their interaction, they rely primarily on traditional keyword-search algorithms and friendly, natural speech. Despite their lack of a pulse, Bots are very much alive and kicking – not to mention, quite efficient in solving simple and routine customer complaints. While many believe that the human touch is necessary for quality customer service, those statistics send a clear message; Automated Bots can improve your business and your customer experience satisfaction. It can be challenging to envision the benefits of automating your business with RPA Bots unless you’ve had first-hand experience of what it’s like to work both with and without their help. As COO of my own and while holding other executive roles in multiple startups, I’ve explored in depth and implemented Robotic Process Automation. Through that experience I have discovered many potential RPA benefits for business shareholders, employees, and customers. I strongly encourage you to read the valuable sources listed at the bottom of this article, in full for a comprehensive analysis, but in the meantime;

Value of RPA in the Office

Shareholder Value

Lets’ face it, money talks! When your company is dependent upon the interest of shareholders, it’s important that you understand these bottom-line, financial benefits of engaging Robotic Process Automation;

Quick ROI – In only 1 year, as much as 1,000 %.
Operational Efficiency – Doing more work without hiring more people.
Improved Compliance – Reducing effects of human errors and inconsistencies of manual work.
Scalable – Scaling Bots for peak demand is automated or requires little work. In contrast, hiring and training temporary staff is just another repetitive and manual time waster.
Adaptable – If the process changes, updating Bots is quick and easy, with central systems. Re-training staff is slow and resource-intensive.
Workforce Flexibility – Ability to redeploy Bots or delegate staff to the roles they’re best suited to, as needed.

When Bots work alongside humans they optimise each other’s strengths. Therefore, when a company leverages RPA with all the benefits listed here it gains a competitive advantage in its industry and will outperform its competitors not doing so.

Employee Value

Most people want to be doing more interesting work. Bots help us address that self-actualisation need by letting us get rid of repetitive tasks that can be done automatically, and without much creative investment. When businesses assign lower-level tasks to Bots, employees can dedicate their time to plant new creative seeds and enrich more complex and more lucrative top projects. This brings efficiency to both the employee and the organisation.

“RPA takes the robot out of the human” – Mary C. Lacity & Leslie P. Willcocks

You may have already seen, or even felt the effect of boredom in the office – when employees get into the slumber mode, their work suffers, the team suffers and the business as a whole suffers. So how do Bots bring value to your staff? They let them:

Focus on more rewarding tasks, where employees can add more value.
Learn new skills to enrich their portfolio and their position in the company.
Work output quality and amount are increased, which reflects good on people and teams.

Being involved in deciding what to automate and the implementation of RPA gives employees an opportunity to understand better how digitalisation and machines work. These benefits are not only valuable skills for the employees’ future, but also a large contribution to people embracing RPA rather than fearing it. Finally, employees and the organisation gain indirect benefits from the increased employee satisfaction and reduced churn, as well as a sense of pride that derives from working in an innovative company.

Customer Value

Businesses eventually exist for the benefit of their customers. Keeping them happy should be your number one priority, one you can substantially strengthen by automating your business with RPA. When Bots serve your employees, your customers get:

Improved service quality. There are fewer (read: no) mistakes.
Faster service delivery. Bots are simply faster at performing tasks than humans.
Consistent service. Bots process tasks the same every single time.
24/7 availability. Bar the exceptional server issue, Bots are always-on With SLAs of 99.9%, there will be almost no need to calculate potential “time off”.
Enhanced customer journeys. More data can be surfaced, and you can take additional actions, for instance, step-by-step notifications or a backlog of what has been done already.
Full-time equivalent (FTE) savings result in high ROI.

The customer value adds up in concentric circles that ripple like waves across the organisation. From better service quality and faster deployment of new services, you extract additional benefits in terms of compliance, scalability, and workforce flexibility. In the end, you get to see happier, more productive employees that have helpful, digital colleagues who never complain about a boring task, execute consistently with quality, and don’t mind taking extra workload just after a few tweaks to their algorithm.

Finally, an overview of the top key benefits of automating your office with RPA:

Ultimate Bots Benefits Checklist

Accuracy
Consistency
24/7 availability
Instant scalability
Operational reportability
Frictionless processing
Standardised service
Reduced error rates
Improved business-wide results

1. Accuracy

Once an automation has been implemented correctly your process will see reduced errors and far more accuracy than ever before, as well as improved data quality. RPA protects your company from false analytics, and the likely result of poor decision making in it’s wake.

2. Consistency

Bots will do the same thing, in the same time, every time. With automation you can be sure that the process will not change unless you disrupt the workflow to implement those changes.

3. 24/7 availability

Bots don’t sleep. Your digital employee is always available, always at peek performance. They do not take breaks, end their shifts or get lost in the distractions of the office. If an RPA bot breaks, it only breaks once, and most often, alerts are sent automatically so fixes are quick and final.

4. Instant scalability

Because humans can disrupt workflows to implement changes, RPA is immediately scalable. Studies show that when tasked with repetative task, employees go into auto-pilot and often forget to make required modifications. You do not have to train your Bot to learn a new task, you simply tell it what you want, and wait for the results.

5. Operational reportability

When analytics departments have access to RPA, generating reports is quick and easy, giving them more free time to focus on the data within the reports to provide detailed and custom reporting of operations. RPA provides a far wider scope of data-collection, providing even more in-dept analysis and more comprehensive insights.

6. Frictionless processing

RPA means that processes run smoothly. There are no bottlenecks caused by absent employees, awaiting third-party input or delays of overworked and frustrated staff. RPA is non-evasive and will not disturb existing systems, but rather work with them. When internal processes run without friction, they run faster.

7. Standardised service

Automating tasks and processes allows businesses to provide services with an expected and reliable standard. This improves Quality Assurance and customer relationship.

8. Reduced cost

While there is some truth that automation will eliminate the employee, RPA is not aimed to do that. It is aimed at making your existing employees more efficient, giving them space to up-skill and advance within their departments while removing the need for you to hire additional, and redundant staff to handle the over-spill. Because of the improved accuracy and reduced errors mentioned, there are no costly mistakes to recover from!

9. Improved business-wide results

When businesses engage RPA and open their departments to the benefits of robotic task automation, a number of irreplaceable and valuable things occur; Employees are happier, and happier employees always mean more efficient employees. They are no longer over worked, overwhelmed or stressed out about potential errors in their work. Because processes are automated, the entire team can refocus collectively, and individually, knowing their repetitive, and boring tasks are running accurately in the background. Processes which are accurately collecting data, and handling that data with sophistication. Customers report fewer errors, relish in quick and accurate services, scaled to suit their needs, all while interacting with balanced and motivated representatives from your company. Building and retaining customer relationships, improving employee motivation, reducing costs, eliminating errors and significantly increasing overall, workplace morale can not be matched. Ready to discuss Automation for your business? Need a consultation to get you on the right track? OfficeBots is ready to help! Don’t forget to check out these helpful resources: