RPA is on the rise and is particularly interesting for making processes between the front and back office run more smoothly. The Belgian Customer Contact Association (formerly Contactcentres.be) organized a webinar on RPA or Robotic Process Automation on 10 December. Always good to have an overview of what RPA is and what you can do with it.

According to Gert Billen from Möbius, RPA is the future, because it gives the front and back office the option to make efficiency gains independently. So they don't always need the IT department to automate administrative actions. Möbius clearly explained what RPA is and why it is a useful technology.

Mimic screen actions

RPA solutions are aimed at recognizing and mimicking screen actions: copy paste, log in, open and close files such as e-mails. That is also the limitation: RPA requires solid processes and clear business rules. It is of course not the intention that RPA software will also imitate the workarounds of employees. The question is whether it is sufficiently recognized that the use of RPA is a step towards more automation. However, the difference with 'real' automation is that RPA software itself does not 'touch' the underlying systems.

Less development time

With RPA you spend less time on the analysis phase and the design and build phases that often take months in classic software development. An RPA process tends to take several weeks. The downside is that RPA can never run faster than the speed of the software, says Billen. The advantage is that RPA solutions continue to work 24×7 - this prevents an administrative action from ending up in a pile because you don't free up enough employees - and that the market is reasonably mature, according to Möbius.

Gartner predicts RPA software sales to be on the rise for the foreseeable future with a annual increase of about 20%. Next year the market should reach $ 1,9 billion and the growth will continue at least until 2024. Many companies will feel extra pressure to implement cost savings due to Covid19 and RPA is then a logical choice, according to Gartner. The analysts estimate that by 2022, 90% of companies will be working with some RPA application. In addition, Gartner predicts that by 2024, half of RPA spending will come from the business and go beyond IT.

Glue

In the second and (too long) part of the webinar, various market parties spoke. Huw Williams from RPA supplier UI Path calls RPA 'customer experience automation'. As far as he is concerned, RPA can be the glue to 'stick processes together better'. This can be beneficial for customers in a self-service environment and for employees who have to look in different systems in the search for information. Practical RPA applications that Williams mentions: the processing of vouchers in the covid era or assisting the agent by quickly gathering and combining data in the background – think of the amount of a fee.

RPA lacks an employee's context sensitivity

An important difference between 'people' and RPA is that RPA does not take trends or context into account. This makes it difficult, for example, to apply leniency or to allow progressive insight to play a role. As a customer service department, for example, you can credit delivery costs if your delivery service does not perform well due to bad weather conditions, but you want to phase out the application of that policy over time. When RPA is combined with AI and analytics, automating non-routine tasks becomes within reach, which is something QandaGo labeled with Intelligent Process Automation. Examples of this are the faster onboarding of new customers or the acceleration of return processes or compliance checks.

ROI guarantee

It is clear that RPA has taken off; two years ago it was still considered 'technology in the children's shoes.' Although 'ordinary' RPA has become accessible, there are also limitations: your processes must be standardized and the speed of your software determines the speed of your RPA application. Despite these limitations Martin Larelle supplier Smart Connect is so convinced of the benefits of RPA that his company issues an ROI guarantee.

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