The fear we have from film and television is that robots are coming for our lives. In real life, people fear more that they are coming for our jobs. Neither of those things is really true. Robots stand with us as a means to free ourselves from the zombification of ourselves at work. They are designed to help us have more time in and out of work, and they’re presence will only grow in the coming years.

Just The Job

There is no question that automation is going to play a part in reducing the number of basic jobs that are available to us. Their very purpose is to be set to tasks we would rather not do. In many cases this is repetitive and labour intensive work. But this isn’t new, in fact in our short history, humans have continuously developed ways to make things easier which has always meant someone was no longer required to complete a task.

Robots Work for Us

However, this doesn’t mean that work will dry up for a huge number of people. Human oversight is still very much required. Robots by nature are simple, they struggle with fringe cases or errant data.

Humans are perfect in situations that require flexibility and the application of intelligence. The only jobs that will be lost are the zombie ones – which leave people bored and unfulfilled. Robots can give us the time to learn more and focus on the jobs where we can add value – and in turn feel more valued.

Time Is Relative

The real irony here is that we quickly approach a reality where people expect access to everything all the time wherever they are. They themselves want to work less and more flexibly – but at the same time demand more availability from every other person and company.

The only feasible way to achieve this is with robots. Robots which can manage customer service out of regular hours. Robots which can keep manufacturing when we are with our families. RPA enhances our lives, by allowing business to scale: without us always needing to be there.

Machines Bring Opportunity

When was the last time you asked if your employees were enjoying their work? It’s a vital question. If you can afford your employees more balance in their work and personal lives, more freedom to choose and pursue new avenues of learning. they will be fundamentally happier.

Ultimately, every business, every customer, every person is looking for ROI. They are looking for the best ROI they can find – both financial and personal. More money, more time, more balance. Happy employees make happier clients – which make the happiest shareholders.

That’s the simple recipe for a healthy company. RPA can be the spark for that shift and can offer some of the best ROI of any tech on the market.

If you want to find out more about bots and how they’ll help us vanquish the zombie threat, reach out to us today.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could leave all the automation to figure itself out? Well, more and more, this is becoming a reality. If that gets your attention, well good! It’s a really exciting part of RPA and something we are keen for people to know more about.

Paper and Pen

To automate our automation (so to speak!), we must first understand the tasks that we carry out to find out if a bot can take them over.

To do this in the past, companies would run ‘brown paper sessions’, essentially mapping out processes by hand where two or three people would cover a room in brown paper and write down every action involved in any given job.

Thankfully, new methods are now available, making this job far easier and based on big data.

Digging For Gold

Tech now allows us to carry out two far more efficient ways of identifying jobs ready for RPA. These two approaches are Process Mining and Task Mining. They sound similar, and some people think they’re one and the same – but don’t be so easily fooled.

Process mining looks at all of the broad processes that make up a large activity. For instance, a car manufacturer selling a car is made up of design, manufacturing, and distribution processes. It’s a simplified analogy, but just think of process mining as looking at activities from a ‘zoomed out’ perspective.

Task mining, on the other hand, looks into the fine detail of what makes up processes. For example, someone in an accounts team processing an invoice must click through and select various options in a CRM. In the world of automation, tracking a user’s UI on their computer to see where they are clicking – as well as how many times and how often they repeat these actions – is an excellent way of really understanding tasks.

Planning is Everything

The best place to start with any automation is on the low hanging fruit – the tasks that a lot of time also are mechanically simple. Remember, knowing when and where to apply RPA is the best way to get the ROI you’re looking for. Too often, the wrong process is selected to automate.

Real consideration should be given to the processes you want to automate before you dive in headfirst. Properly measure what you are currently doing and understand which task is worth getting a bot to carry out – you must base your decisions on facts and data, not just gut feeling.

Away You Go

We’re now at a place where the technology we have access to technology like NICE’s Automation Finder—allowing us to have processes and tasks mapped out for us. It helps us identify the job most appropriate for automation and then automate it with a few clicks of a button using click-to-automate. It’s so simple that you can even automate these stages. The best part is that this can be used in many different settings, whether in call centres or accounting practices – there are gains to be made in almost any business. Why spend time on creating automations yourself if you can automate your own job.

We recently held a webinar on this topic, and you can check out the broadcast here. Or, if you’re interested in just going through the slides at your own speed, click here. Our door is always open, so if you want to chat, we would love to learn more about your business and how PAteam could help you with automation.

The acceleration of digital adoption has allowed companies to cope during a global pandemic. We’ll do our best not to overly mention COVID, but its effect on digital practices is monumental.

We can already see that the companies who are going to bounce back are the ones embracing change and bringing the best tools to their teams. Attended RPA (Robotic Process Automation) is another tool in the Swiss Army software knife – so let us show you how it’s used and how much it could benefit you.

Hello Operator

Attended RPA is an assistant designed to work alongside employees augmenting their own ability. Like all RPA software, it can be used on a variety of tasks dependent on the requirements of the user. Primarily, attended RPA is designed to work best in areas such as contact and support centres, where agents take many calls and have very clear checklists of what they need to run through in each interaction with a caller.

An environment like a call centre is a perfect place for RPA as the tasks have typically been identified and broken down to their most granular level allowing managers to understand the time requirements of each activity. Also, most call centres have SLAs where they have to cover legal statements – think of insurance or banking. The tasks are typically repetitive and basic but if forgotten can cause issues for the business and customers down the line.

Difficulties of Distribution

But with the move to home working and teams becoming more and more distributed, you don’t always have a colleague you can lean across your desk and check something with or conversely a manager observing customer interactions.

That’s where attended RPA comes in. It can easily guide call handlers through the steps they need to take, reminding them along the way to ask this, or note that. It’s a supportive mechanism that helps quality interactions by ensuring the necessary parts of a call are covered while freeing up the agent to focus on the customer themselves.

Because offices have been broken up and staff have been confined to their homes, they are the ones who have shouldered the burden of technology. While people have proven adaptable in these difficult times you want to move forward by reducing your team’s learning curve with new technology and processes – a perfect job for attended RPA.

Right Here, Right Now

Rather than have a support desk, with a ticketing system and response time frames, you can dedicate some thought to each specific point of a task and develop a bot from that framework and then implement it. This can then serve all your staff, wherever and whenever they are, working alongside them without getting under their feet.

Attended RPA, as we’ve touched on, is one of many tools available within Automation. It forms part of modern digital strategies and as we’ve seen companies that can’t adapt and use the digital tools available to them don’t make it. If it’s something you want to know more about then get in touch and we can show you just how many possibilities RPA offers.

At PAteam, broadly speaking, we engage with two types of potential clients – those that ‘get’ RPA and those that don’t. Much of the trouble we have in showing our customers when to use RPA stems from them thinking of it as a fix all – which just isn’t the case.

Understanding the real value of RPA – including how and when to use it – is part of the journey we take new clients on.

Let’s get a quick glimpse of what the value is.

Three Variables

Because of the cool name and wider attention RPA, as well as AI and HyperAutomation now are getting, businesses are looking to engage with the technology from the perspective of fundamental business goals. Things like how much money can it save us and how will it help us scale? While RPA can definitely save money and help a business scale, it can only do so if applied in the right way, to the right task.

Let’s keep it simple for now. RPA ROI comes down to a basic formula – Volume x Time x Cost.

• Volume is the amount of a task that you already carry out that can also be automated.
• Time is how long it takes to complete one task
• Cost is your outlay for that task, not just the hourly fee of the employee.

While this is a little simplistic and can be expanded on, these three variables are what you should consider first when looking at the use of RPA in your business.

We’ve actually put together a far more comprehensive calculator here which you can check out to get a better idea of the savings you might expect to find in your own business. Or if you want an overview of automation adoption then check out the journey we’ve mapped for people wanting to know more.

Good Value

In the applications we develop here at PAteam, ROI usually comes between the magical numbers of 9 and 12 months – so RPA should very much be seen as an short-term investment rather than a quick fix. Clients are getting more concerned that they aren’t seeing a return even quicker; but we always remind them that this is a solution for their future, and it is only the start. The cost savings will compound and the bot will provide more and more value as time goes on.

Ultimately, RPA is a Swiss Army Knife and can be used to tackle a whole host of problems. At PAteam we believe in finding the right solution to a problem – not just shoehorning AI into your process. We help customers understand their problem, the ways that we can solve it, and what they can expect to get from their investment. We don’t just sell tech – we sell solutions.

If you want to know more about what’s out there in the world of RPA then get in touch. We’d love to chat and find out how we can help.