Robotic Process Automation (RPA) holds a plethora of advantages in various industrial segments as it is supportive of high-occurrence, manual, repetitious, rules-based procedures, which are vital for the organization. With RPA, these tasks can be delegated to machines, freeing valuable time for employees to handle more dynamic tasks that don’t require leveraging a machine. 

The following are some RPA industrial use cases that AICoreSpot will be exploring in this blog: 

1. Customer Service 
2. Finance Services (Banking and insurance) 
3. Human Resources 
4. Telecom 
5. Retail 

• Customer Services – RPA can be leveraged in the automatization of several activities in the customer service field, or on support desks. These can consist of incident administration, user management, billing queries, updating documentation, and much more. 

Real-world use case instances 

An IT service provider, based out of Europe was carrying out supportive services for their customers. And the organization had to manage a massive volume of calls, nearly 15,000 calls per month and therefore there was a lot of time expenditure in the first line of the customer support team. 

Owing to the complicated nature of the system, the mean time an agent spent was approximately 6 minutes, as their existing system was ineffective and lethargic, and as an outcome imparted weak client service. 

How was RPA deployed? 

With RPA, the business obtained a unit of virtual labor force that were able to execute the activities in <50 seconds, which indicates an 83% reduction in execution times. 

RPA not just handles monotonous tasks but assists in improving the level of services that can render time and cost savings – critical for any organization. RPA robots have the capacity to manage rules-based functionalities in ways that humans are not able to. They have reduced scope for human error, and carry out these tasks with an increase level of precision and accuracy. 

Tangible advantages of RPA implementation within customer service 

• It imparts a seamless, intuitive client experience. 
• Human error is eradicated, with nearly 0% errors. 
• The client can call and obtain updated notes and contact data right from the get go. 
• The customer service agent’s tasks of communicating data and providing responses to the client’s needs are greatly simplified, reducing loads. 
• RPA’s effectiveness has the outcome of handling an increased number of clients in a reduced time span and thus companies can make sure that they are giving the client their time’s worth. 

RPA use case: Financial sector 

RPA assists in filling the gaps between various applications existing within the legacy system. Although there are various system implementation software, like Oracle and SAP, they are not adequate with regards to the process and integration of micro-level activities. 

Real-world use case instance 

A majority of Canada-based banks, for instance, have been advocating the adoption of RPA technologies with a great extent of success. 

Royal Bank of Canada, the biggest financial concern in Canada is leveraging intelligent chatbots for over a year to enhance client service. 

Additionally, the Guardian Group have also welcomed the RPA technology into their fold with regards to their process, witnessing success early on in their adoption cycle. These technologies have facilitated them to quantify, access, copy, paste, or leverage current business rules to manage, utilize, an input information into the core enterprise application. 

Other RPA use cases in Financial Services 

• Accounts payable (AP) – RPA bots can have a part in transferring invoices from PDFs, existing spreadsheets, and internet-based apps. Additionally, RPA robots can put a copy PDF on internal servers and this proves its utility in ensuring compliance with regulations, and can minimize up to 6/10ths of vendor invoice process cycle times. 
• Accounts receivable (AR) – Bots have the potential of quicker and more precise upkeep of client master files and credit approvals. The same is applicable for AR cash receipts and order, and their process. Also, due notices can be delivered via email messaging more swiftly with minimal complications that is naturally connected to last-minute updates. 
• Financial close and reporting – This is the foundation of inter-department, multisystem processes. Drafting tax entry information from several business units is a tedious activity. A robot can mitigate the tedium while inputting error proof entries in the process, which cannot be stated for humans. 
• Accounting reconciliation – Accounting information needs reconciliation obtained from various sources, like Excel spreadsheets, or client invoices. Through automated technologies such as RPA, the information can be processed, downloaded in the preferrable format, and validated for any outliers. 

Advantages of RPA implementation in finance 

• Non-intrusive application 
• Customized workflows 
• Major lifting 
• Quick setup 
• Reduced human error 
• Continuous performance 

RPA Use Case: Human Resources 

Nearly 7/10ths of HR professionals view RPA as an operational model play, facilitating the introduction of a cyber workforce. RPA holds a lot of promise that can stir a revolution within HR by providing a massive amount of efficiency improvements and quicker ROI. 

RPA can be leveraged to minimize the major portion of the tedious tasks that take up the time of the full-time equivalents. (FTEs) 

Additionally, developing agile organizations has long been an objective of corporate leadership, with 9/10ths wishing to get staff members closer to their clients, enhance the speed of innovating, and enhance staff empowerment and engagement levels. RPA can be a powerful facilitator of these objectives. 

Real-world use case instance 

UiPath’s People Operations Team executed automation in facets of the onboarding procedures for incoming staff members. The manual work was being carried out by one person with pen and paper, consuming much of the staff member’s valuable time, which could’ve been spent on higher value activities.  

This is the kind of task that nobody wishes to undertake on an everyday basis. CHROs are well aware that HR teams want to provide an electronic, and accessible experience. The task we are speaking of on the other hand, was full of monotonous copy-paste activities.  

To fortify the case for RPA, the bot finished the onboarding paperwork for incoming staff members 16% of the time taken by a human agent, enabling HR staff to concentrate more on valuable activities such as CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility), entice talent, initiatives, undertaking to improve an organization’s reputation, and enhance staff retention. 

Advantages conferred by RPA implementation in HR: 

• RPA can assist in automating sick leaves, and vacation time requisitions 
• Expenses and reimbursement procedures 
• Onboarding and offboarding procedures 
• Candidate sourcing 
• Replies to FAQs from employment candidates or staff members with the assistance of chatbots 
• Several other processes and protocol where data entry and other tedious activities are central 

RPA Use Case: Telecom 

The telecom domain is poised to benefit from Robotic Process Automation. Implementation of RPA in the telecom industry will enable them to surpass obstacles, ongoing matters that ail them, and will not just help in enhancing their corporate operations, but also provide them with a winning edge over their competitors. 

One of the most critical priorities for the telecom is the increasing, and demanding client expectations and how to handle the experience in a positive fashion. Clients are the central focus of the telecom sector. 

Recent research states that until 2024, IT and Telecom look to be the leaders with regards to the automation scene in business processes and protocol, with a massive growth rate (CAGR) of 60%. 

RPA can play a vital role in enabling transformation across the board in the telecom domain, imparting improved effectiveness to telecommunications functionalities; this ranges from operations and supply chain to enterprise administration and client care. 

Processes where RPA can be leveraged in Telecom: 

• Client onboarding and offboarding administration – Through automation of onboarding and offboarding procedures, organizations can maintain clarity with regards to all of their clients and their personal data. It becomes simpler to add clients automatically when a new client hops on board and also simple to remove them when they choose to not be associated with the business. 
• Network management – RPA automates many simplistic processes in the incident, event, and diagnosis administration spheres, thereby facilitating the staff member to focus on more dynamic tasks. 
• Application of credit/discount on the accounts – Configuration of intelligence by the digital enterprise labor force in the pursuit of automating swivel chair applications consisting of the manual transferring of transaction information for effective decision making with regards to credits and discounts. 
• Billing – RPA can go about automating the processes with regards to maintenance of billing documentation of clients, invoicing, and reconciliation across its several channels and units. It enables executing these activities in a timely manner with reduced error. 

RPA real-world use case: Retail industry 

Retail consists of work-intensive, ongoing operational, and analytics tasks. RPA bots can assist retail organizations without the cutting-edge systems to fill the gaps in their systems and facilitate automation of their processes. 

International retail organization are required to arrange SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) information from various markets to be in a position to gain perspective beyond numbers to insights such as “What is our hair gel market share in Eastern Europe?”  

Conventionally, these activities needed staff members to manually correlate SKUs to categorizations in complicated spreadsheets. As this is an activity that does not impact consumers in an overt manner, room for error is not very high and RPA bots can be leveraged in automation of the processes saving thousands of labor hours, freeing up staff members for more dynamic, and value creating tasks. 

Conclusion 

The discussion above depicts a few of the business processes and procedures that if outsourced to robots, can assist organizations to function in a more efficient fashion, while simultaneously curtailing operational costs.  

The RPA use cases in various business processes provide an assistant profile that is sure to direct you in attaining your organizational goals and objectives. The leveraging of RPA demonstrates a humanistic, people-oriented strategy to carrying out business, and as the saying goes: “You don’t understand businesses if you don’t understand people.” People make all the difference in the world.