Why RPA is Not a Silver Bullet to All of Your Automation Problems
you might be missing out on all the perks of automation if you’ve invested only in Robotic Process Automation or RPA.
As time goes by and new generations move into new workforce positions, and most employees consistently express the desire to work remotely, the need for Robotic Process automation is apparent. The mantra that lives behind most modern companies, even giants like Target and Starbucks, is to work smarter and not harder.
Automation is great for so many things. The main talking points in favor of automation include increased productivity and higher production rates. Automation is fantastic for better use of materials, improved safety, a better quality product, and shorter labor hours for employees, which leads to an uptick in employee satisfaction.
It only makes sense that, as a business owner, you want to cut costs, standardize processes, and minimize errors. However, you might be missing out on all the perks of automation if you’ve invested only in Robotic Process Automation or RPA.
Frustrations that Come with RPA Investment
While many businesses soar utilizing only RPA as their automation technology, plenty don’t. There are many frustrations that business owners have brought to light concerning Robotic Process Automation’s limitations, mainly rigidity.
It is madly irritating to invest in an automation solution that doesn’t solve your pain points, especially when you have to spend more money than you originally intended to see any results at all. Struggling to find a return on investment probably means you’re missing crucial pieces to your automation puzzle.
RPA definitely has its place, but if you cannot seem to make it work, it’s probably time to investigate intelligent automation solutions. Intelligent automation allows for more complex processes, eliminating the amount of unstructured data accumulated with RPA only. Here are a few downfalls to Robotic Process Automation.
Magnification of Errors
Many robots in RPA cannot detect glaring errors that a human can pinpoint. If your current data has issues, RPA will pass it on through the workflow, which means that mistake is making its way down the line without rectification.
Sustainability in the Long-Term
RPA is popular for fast automation and quick fixes, but there lies a possibility for taking too many shortcuts and ignoring efficiency from the start. A ton of work must go into digitizing and automating administrative processes, and when first implemented, RPA serves as a decoy from establishing efficiency the right way.
Maintenance
RPA systems are notorious for requiring detailed maintenance, and many solutions must be custom-made to fit your business. If you plan to change how your business runs in the future, it’s not likely that your RPA robots will take well to the change. For RPA solutions, minor changes equal massive disruptions.
Risks
RPA is an artificial intelligence that doesn’t solve complicated automation problems like sending or handling purchase invoices. You’ll likely need a more complex form of intelligent automation to complete this job, so investing in RPA might be moot from the very beginning.
Endless Resources
RPA makes it easy for businesses to become overburdened with technical debt and maintenance services. Continually implementing more bots is not cheap, but with RPA, it’s necessary to keep your automation accountable and cover all the bases, sucking up a ton of your internal and financial resources.
Each RPA bot requires system tracking, screen, and field maintenance any time process changes go into effect. Since this is the case, many companies find that it’s too expensive with too much time lost to an automation solution that doesn’t work as well as it should or could.
Finding the Right Solution
Highlighting these issues isn’t to say that Robotic Process Automation won’t work for certain companies and business processes. Instead, it’s about highlighting the benefits of intelligent automation and encouraging business owners to move forward with technology that has more answers and isn’t so rigid and rules-based.
Automation is pointless if it’s not impactful or increases your tech debt. Because of this, we must acknowledge the shortcomings of RPA while recognizing that, in some instances, it holds its own.
Companies on a global scale find it necessary to upgrade their automation solutions and artificial intelligence. However, RPA does work well regarding some workplace processes, such as clicking and dragging, copying and pasting, making if/then decisions, making simple calculations, and opening emails and email attachments.
It is important to note that RPA carries out these automated tasks without recognizing content and works best with structured data only. Intelligent automation proves to be the missing piece for so many teams worldwide, over and over again.
AIML: All Automation Solutions are Not Made Equal
If your company requires a well-rounded solution to automate data extraction and the processing of important documents, then you’ll need something backed by Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. Equipped to handle more complex organizational processes, intelligent automation actually involves humans and asks for help to achieve a better outcome for all.
Benefits of Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence is nothing new, but its capabilities continue to mature year after year. Artificial intelligence is necessary for plenty of jobs within almost every workplace, including:
Machine Learning Perks
Machine Learning is the force behind many innovative technologies, from security and anti-virus applications to supplying the shopping algorithm you see on your Amazon homepage. Machine Learning isn’t perfect, but it has many benefits when applied correctly, and it could have a lasting impact on you and your company goals.
- Identify trends and patterns easily
- Machine Learning algorithms can improve with time
- Adapt without human intervention
- Automated predictive analytics
Companies want accuracy and reliability from their automated solutions, especially when it comes to handling increasingly challenging everyday processes. With RPA, one bot performs the same task repeatedly, without adapting or reaching out for human help.
With intelligent automation, the playing field changes completely. There’s no doubt about it; intelligent automation drives better outcomes, period.
The Answer is Intelligent Automation
Intelligent automation is the answer to seamlessly automating your complex business functions. Not only does intelligent automation enable your company or organization to work alongside entirely flexible automation, but intelligent automation assists you in reaching your business goals and objectives.
If you want to quickly accomplish tasks that grow increasingly difficult by the day with accuracy and stellar connectivity, then intelligent automation is for you. Here are just a few benefits to executing intelligent automation.
- Increasing process efficiency at a high level
- Optimizing back-office operations
- Reduce costs and risks
- Increase workplace productivity while catching automation errors along the way
- Service and product innovation technologies
- Improve your customer experience
- Monitor fraud detection
- Reduce business costs
- Save your time for essential tasks
- Cut way down on human errors
- Reconcile your data from various company systems
- Trace audits and analytics
- Amp up client service times
- Skyrocket employee satisfaction
- Endless flexibility to create new processes and modify older ones
- Formulate predictions based on collected data
Of course, intelligent automation also has its pitfalls, but when compared to the perks, it’s easy to make the decision. To be fair, there are periodic problems that might pop up when implementing intelligent automation:
With Intelligent Automation, your company no longer adheres to legacy software and current methodologies. Software changes often interrupt how an RPA solution works, but intelligent software is not susceptible to crashes and malfunctions because of minor or major modifications.
Intelligent Automation and Long-Term Company Goals
There is no better solution than intelligent automation to help your company achieve long-term goals. Your business needs automation that opens doors instead of restricting processes. While streamlining is essential and possible with RPA, there is no room to evolve.
Intelligent automation provides many businesses with the choice to move forward, successfully automating processes that involve unstructured data and without requiring out-of-reach training data sets. This type of high-maintenance, low-performance automation (RPA) is simply out of reach for many enterprises.
RPA is not entirely unaffordable, to begin with, but keeping up with it and maintaining it every time you update anything within your process or workflow becomes costly very quickly. When you’re spending too much in one area, it limits cash flow to other parts of your business.
By implementing intelligent automation from the very beginning, you’ll cut costs in the long run while setting yourself up to succeed without stalling due to your automation choice. Companies stuck in one spot due to the restrictions placed on them by their current automation solution become one of two things: frustrated with way too much money invested or completely irrelevant.
To build a future-proof foundation, you have to begin with intelligent automation.
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