The emergence of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) comes as no surprise for savvy C-suite leaders. Since, they are always on the lookout for automated solutions to streamline operations, improve efficiency, reduce costs, and free up personnel from manual and time-intensive tasks. Interestingly, RPA does the same with greater accuracy and speed than a human could ever do. According to a report by Gartner, Hyperautomation technologies when combined with redesigned operational processes can help organizations lower operational costs by 30%. Besides lowering operational costs, RPA can help organizations save up to two full-time employees hours a day, which roughly amounts to $34,944 every year. This may be one of the reasons why RPA implementation is on the radar of C-suite executives. Many studies have indicated that automation initiatives are driven by the C-suite.

According to a recent report on “RPA Adoption Trends and Customer Experience” published by Computer Economics, 20% of all organizations have adopted Robotic Process Automation. The dramatic RPA adoption growth rate indicates that the ‘automation first’ era has finally arrived. By 2025, the RPA market is expected to reach 22 billion USD, as per the Forrester report. Now, let’s dive deeper into the key reasons why RPA implementation is one of the key priorities for CTOs.

What RPA Brings to the Table for (SMBs) and Large Enterprises

As the world of business is shifting to Industry 4.0, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is garnering significant attention and gaining strong momentum for a multitude of reasons. Let's find out how RPA implementation works wonders for small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) and large enterprises.

1) Better Accuracy to Achieve Business Goals Faster

To err is human, and there is always a possibility of mistakes when there is human involvement. At times these mistakes prove costly to businesses and manually fixing them can be a waste of both time and money, which leads to losses from downtime to reduced sales, profits, and revenue. Fortunately, with the help of RPA, businesses can do away with processing errors. In fact, in the global RPA survey report published by Deloitte, RPA continues to meet the accuracy/improved quality by 90%. Having said that, RPA implementation requires exhaustive testing, training, and strong governance since it is not a turn-key solution. With strategic mapping and accurate optimization of business processes using RPA, businesses need not worry about mistakes in their operations.

2) Advanced Analytics for Informed Decision Making

Another strong reason why RPA is on the radar of the C-suite audience is that it enables businesses to collect and collate valuable data, which can further be employed to extract meaningful insights and make informed decisions. Since RPA helps in collecting and segregating data in different business segments, enterprises can improve decision-making at micro and macro levels. With improved analytics, a company can better understand the needs of their customers and bring products/services tailored to the needs of the market. In addition, it helps in streamlining business processes to achieve enhanced efficiency by determining the gaps in the operations.

3) Non-Disruptive Automation

Many enterprises are reluctant to replace or modernize their legacy systems owing to the business downtime or the high cost of replacing the existing systems. However, you would be surprised to know that implementing RPA to improve legacy business operations would result in significant cost savings of around 37%, as per the study conducted by Information Services Group (ISG). The best part of RPA implementation is that it interacts seamlessly with legacy systems and allows enterprises to harness all the benefits offered by this emerging technology. In a nutshell, RPA implementation is neither disruptive nor complex, in fact, when you adopt RPA, your core tech program remains intact.

4) Scalability Opportunities

When a business starts growing, the lack of flexibility in the operations acts as an impediment to growth and scalability. For instance, during a particular time of year, an online business may receive an influx of visitors leading to a higher number of orders. Without automation, the business may need to shift employees here and there, and reprioritize some roles and responsibilities. Despite doing this, many businesses tend to collapse since they fail to cope with pressure. On the other hand, RPA bots can be instantly scaled up to handle a large volume of work and once the work gets completed, businesses can easily scale down the intelligent bots.

5) Improved Efficiency

As per the study conducted by the Fortune 500 consulting firm Accenture, RPA when used effectively can help organizations reduce business process costs by up to 80%. Furthermore, it has been estimated by Gartner that by 2024 organizations will be able to lower operational costs by 30% with Hyperautomation technologies. The reason being is robots can operate round-the-clock, with no change in speed and efficiency, and they don’t even require regular breaks, sick leaves, or vacations. On the other hand, human efficiency is limited since they can work only eight hours a day and 40 hours a week only. Generally speaking, an RPA bot is equivalent to 2-5 full-time employees.

6) Drive Workforce Productivity

RPA bots are designed to automate manual, tedious, and time-intensive tasks that require intense manual labor and are repetitive. By automating manual drudgery, RPA frees your employees from performing low-value tasks and lets them focus on the areas where humans naturally excel over bots such as relationship management, client and customer interaction, and other higher revenue generating tasks. For instance, if a human employee takes around four hours to prepare an assessment report, with the help of RPA Bots, they can prepare the same report in a matter of minutes.

As established with the example that RPA bots won't kill human jobs, instead, they work in tandem with your workforce and help them achieve more in less time. In other words, the role of RPA is not to replace humans, instead, it functions as a technology to complement humans and drive workforce productivity. A research report published by Deloitte stated that 95% of organizations that have implemented RPA in their operations witnessed that the emerging technology has improved productivity.

Summing Up

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is not here to replace human jobs. Instead, it is improving the workforce productivity and efficiency by automating routine and manual tasks so that employees can invest their productive time in strategic functions that add value to the company. It is the right time for C-suite leaders to adopt RPA solutions to drive digital transformation and take the business to the next level by leveraging the potential of this emerging technology.