The term Robotic Process Automation can be a bit confusing. The word “robotic” does not mean physical robots (we’ll cover these in Chapter 7); rather, it is about software-based robots or bots.
RPA allows you to use low-code visual drag-and-drop systems to automate the workflow of a process. Some examples include the following:
- Inputting, changing, and tracking Human Resources (HR) documents, contracts, and employee information
- Detecting issues with customer service and taking actions to resolve the problems
- Processing an insurance claim
- Sending invoices
- Issuing refunds to customers
- Reconciling financial records
- Transferring data from one system to another
- Providing standard replies to customers
This is all done by having a bot replicate the workflows for an application, say for an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) or CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system. This may even be done with the RPA program recording the steps from employees or with the use of OCR (optical character recognition) technology to translate handwritten notes. Think of RPA as a digital employee.
There are two flavors of this type of technology:
- Unattended RPA : This is a process that is completely autonomous as the bot will run in the background. Now this does not mean there is no human intervention. There will still be intervention for exception management. This is when the bot encounters something it does not understand.
- RDA (Robotic Desktop Automation ): This is where RPA helps an employee with a job or task. A common use case is with a contact center. That is, when a call comes in, the rep can use RDA to help find answers, send messages, pull customer profile information, and get insight on what to do next. The technology helps improve or augment the efficiency of the worker.
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