6 Signs that Your Company Is Ready for Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
Robotic process automation is a paradigmatic case of transformative technology, with a direct impact on bottom lines, due to its productivity boost effects. This makes the growing need for people with requisite skills come as no surprise.
For instance, the 2019 index of the hottest skills in the U.S. freelance job market developed by the freelancing website Upwork, RPA skills were surpassed only by taxation and Hadoop skills.
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This seems to be a continuing trend, as evidenced by LinkedIn’s 2020 Emerging Jobs Report: in the list of top 15 emerging jobs in the U.S., robotics engineer, with its 40% annual growth rate, came second.
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It thus makes perfect sense to start pondering whether your company is ready for robotic process automation, and what this ‘readiness’ stands for. To begin with, you may have a look at some RPA application areas.
Operational activities in sales, portal queries, data extraction, and management, are but a few examples. If you are interested to get a more comprehensive idea of the most common RPA use cases with cross-industry applicability, you are invited to read this article.
Is your company ready for robotic process automation (RPA)?
Many times, the signs that your company is ready for robotic process automation lie in the problems that you are confronted with.
1. Smooth workflow throughout the year requires difficult changes in the human workforce
Seasonal variation in the necessary amount of work is a rather troublesome issue for companies because it typically causes undesirable fluctuations in the revenue flow. The hospitality industry, for instance, is a good illustration. Peak cycles require too much from your existing workforce, and in order to avoid this, you are forced to hire more employees. This has a domino effect and leads to sub-optimal resource allocation throughout the year.
Increasing the workforce means significant money waste during off-peak times. If, however, you try to avoid this by not performing additional hirings, your low-capacity workforce is likely to be overwhelmed during the peaks, which results in higher employee turnover rates.
The scalability of software robots makes your company more flexible and hence better able to handle the issue since more bots can simply be deployed or reassigned for a given process whenever the context calls for the extra volume of work.
2. Your company is having a hard time delivering services efficiently
A primary indicator of business efficiency across industry sectors is your company’s ability to achieve a satisfactory resolution of clients’ demands in a timely manner. However, manual task performance can result in slower-than-necessary service delivery, increased risk of error, and overburdened personnel by dull, routine tasks.
If this is the case, it may be the right time to consider leveraging disruptive technologies to address incoming claims in more effective ways. At the same time, RPA would free your employees to make better use of their expertise for higher-valued jobs.