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.

Automation, RPA, and AI just might be the most popular buzzwords in any business right now. But with that popularity comes misunderstanding and the spread of further misinformation.

So what really is automation and how important is it for modern businesses? Do we need to fear ‘the robots’? Are they coming for our jobs? Or can they actually help us?

Let’s see.

Fear of the Unknown

Robots have long been the stuff of science fiction. But, over time their capabilities have slowly crept into reality as their technology has evolved. However, while ‘robots’ in their physical sense are, for the most part, machines in factory environments; in their software form they are really making an impact.

Pop culture aside, what really we need to understand is that bots are just machines performing prescribed jobs. When we talk about RPA (Robotic Process Automation) today, what we’re typically referring to is software designed to carry out a task. It’s really that simple.

Even when we speak about AI, what we’re really referring to are highly complex machines that can come to conclusions and improve their own processes through more data ingestion. It’s not true intelligence and certainly doesn’t resemble Terminator’s ‘Skynet’ or signal end times.

The Reality

In business we all encounter repetitive, menial tasks which have a time cost associated with them. These can be simple things like writing emails and processing orders.

Basic bots can already take care of many of these types of tasks and can be implemented into a business with relative ease. They are a great way to free up the time of employees so that they can focus on the jobs which actually add value.

People now have begun to worry that an increase in robots might spell the downfall of many jobs and signal waves of mass unemployment.

Thankfully, the purpose of robots is to assist us – not take over. They can act as a way of alleviating pressure on staff so that they can use their own skills and experience to make better decisions.

Using car factories as an example, robots for the most part don’t take care of car assembly; they simply help workers move heavy and cumbersome parts around to make assembly easier.

We are also seeing the use of bots in customer support environments – chatbots. These simple tools offer a great way to thin incoming traffic into a call centre by answering basic questions immediately – saving time for the operators and allowing them to deal with more complex customer issues.

Robots will continue to develop and offer more support to human operators. They will help us become more fulfilled in the work we do – as it will comprise more of the meaningful and less of the menial.

They aren’t going to take over your job or the world – and unless your name is John or Sarah Connor you don’t have any reason to worry about them (!).

PAteam is a global Automation services company focussing on technologies like RPA (Robotic Process Automation), RDA (Robotic Desktop Automation), Intelligent Automation and Hyper Automation in Europe, the Middle East, and North America. We have worked with brands such as Ikea and FedEx and are not afraid of taking on big projects.

We are driven by the desire to help businesses change the way employees carry out repetitive and tedious tasks. We automate these tasks and, by doing so, free up time for teams – so that they can spend more time with the customer.

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People Should Be People

A big reason for us championing Automation is to help employees everywhere fulfil their true potential, not just carrying out labour-intensive tasks. Essentially, by freeing up people’s time, we aim to help businesses increase staff productivity and, in turn, boost profitability.

We take great pride in our transparent and pragmatic approach to Automation honed over the years of experience we have at scale. We know where Automation will bring the most value and take pride in working with our customers to implement it only when it adds value.

Although Automation has enormous ROI when done correctly, it is not plug and play as it often is pitched. We come across many companies who have got stuck on scaling up during their automation journey and are not sure how to.

With our knowledge of Automation, we introduce businesses to the idea of augmentation at first – rather than full Automation. This helps clients genuinely get to grips with the real issues at hand and see first hand how and if the technology will add value from the get-go.

Over time, augmentation can be developed into more Automation. Introducing clients to Automation this way helps engage business leaders early on, ultimately helping to fuel development in the future.

Looking Ahead

Looking ahead to the future, we see ourselves continuing to work with a growing network of clients, big and small, towards a modern workplace environment where businesses are firing on all cylinders.

We are committed to growth – both our clients and our own – in fact, we are rapidly expanding our footprint. We are also continuing to innovate – not only with the technology we have in place but also by seeking new tools to create compelling customer solutions.

Coupled with our tried and tested model of delivering honest, effective solutions to clients who need our help, we aim to help businesses get more from their teams and to help teams get more from their time – by applying their human skills in a way that machines just can not do.

Interested in implementing RPA or want to find out more to do with the technology? Contact the PAteam today!