What is Robotic Process Automation (RPA)?
Robotic process automation (RPA) is an emerging form of business process automation technology based on the notion of software robots or artificial intelligence (AI) workers. In traditional workflow automation tools, a software developer produces a list of actions to automate a task and interface to the back-end system using internal application programming interfaces (APIs) or dedicated scripting language.
In contrast, RPA systems develop the action list by watching the user perform that task in the application’s graphical user interface (GUI), and then perform the automation by repeating those tasks directly in the GUI. This can lower the barrier to use of automation in products that might not otherwise feature APIs for this purpose.
Types of Robotic Process Automation
There are 3 types of RPA automation that serves different needs:
Attended automation: These bots reside on the user’s machine and are invoked by the user. They are appropriate for tasks that are triggered at programmatically hard-to-detect points. For example, a customer service rep will understand the customer’s inquiry and need to complete a transaction in the system. RPA bot can actually work a lot better than the rep, perform regulatory and compliance checks and would never do manual mistakes due to fatigue or boredom. Launcher for RPA can be setup in 3 main ways to facilitate employee’s access to the tool. Launcher can be on an RPA client tool where the customer service rep selects the bot to be launched.
Unattended automation: Unattended bots are like batch processes on the cloud. They complete a data processing task in the background. They are ideal for reducing work of back-office employees. There are a few options for launching unattended automation:
Data input in a specified location: Most unattended bots are triggered when data is input in the system. Whether it is new transactions or employees, additional data processing is generally required to serve regulatory or marketing-related needs.
Bot initiated: A bot can also launch another bot. This can be useful when a bot operation has various different outcomes. For example, a KYC inquiry may either require manual investigation or automated processing to complete the customer’s registration. Based on the outcome, bot can notify the investigation team or launch another bot to complete registration.
Orchestrator initiated: RPA administrators can use orchestrator software to stop or launch bots.
Specified intervals: Bots can be launched at specific times to batch process data.
Hybrid RPA: Attended and unattended RPA bots are combined to provide automation for both front office and back office activities, allowing end-to-end automation of a process.
How RPA Works?
RPA bots transform back offices as industrial robots transformed the factory floor. RPA Bots replicate employee actions like opening files, inputting data, copy pasting fields in an automated way. To set up an RPA bot, it isn’t required to know programming. There are 4 ways to setup RPA bots
Programming: As expected, the most powerful interfaces for programming bots is a programming language. However, using a programming language requires skill and patience so this method is relevant for technically inclined personnel. Programming instructions essentially tell the bot which programs to use and how to interact with those programs.
Graphical User Interfaces: Many vendors offering solutions to program RPA bots with drag & drop interfaces. Anyone in the company should be capable of setting up simple bots.
Recorder: Just like macros in excel, bots can complete recorded actions. Recorded actions can involve numerous enterprise software such as taking data from Salesforce, merging it with a report from mail chimp in excel to identify which customers to target during the company’s routine customer activation SMS campaign. Recorder function is an important advantage in an RPA tool because it enables rapid bot programming. However, recorders have some limitations as well:
1: Recording a complex set of functionalities can be difficult and error prone
2: Maintaining recorded bots is difficult as their code is machine produced and may not be easy to read. Re-recording actions after each small change in the process can also be time consuming.
Self-learning bots: These bots watch recorded employee activity to learn automatable tasks. They are the easiest to deploy bots. However, their learning is not always perfect since they rely on recognizing images in scraped screenshots. Especially during initial deployment, they could be making mistakes and their activity needs to be audited. Most of the time mistakes are avoided as bots understand when they see cases they don’t know how to complete. In such cases, they contact employees for guidance. Once bots are setup, an orchestration module helps start/stop bots and analyze their activity.