RPA technology – Robotic Process Automation allows delegating repetitive tasks of low added value to robots, freeing up employees for tasks that drive business growth.
However, based on our experience with clients, it is not always easy to identify repetitive processes within organizations. Most of the time, this occurs due to resistance in looking up and considering alternatives that will bring medium-term benefits. Often, employees are exhausted by tasks and deadlines, without realizing that they are dealing with the inherent consequences of growth challenges and the lack of a digital infrastructure that supports them in performing their work within deadlines and with higher quality.
Every business owner desires the happiness and success of their employees, as they are the most important assets of their company. The success and motivation of these employees are fully dependent on the company’s culture, the available mechanisms to perform and fulfill tasks, and the encouragement of their growth. This aspect is particularly delicate in today’s environment, given the difficulty we observe in any field to acquire and retain talent. Therefore, valuing employees is and will continue to be one of the main drivers of corporate strategy. However, an employee will only stay in the company if they feel that their work has an impact, can balance work and personal life, and achieve progress accompanied by success.
Therefore, there are more than enough arguments to encourage managers to look at their organizational “machine” and think of new solutions to motivate their employees. And one of them is:
- Freeing employees from low-value-added tasks, putting the employee in the realm of decision-making rather than the process executor role.
With recent technological advancements, RPA, AI – Artificial Intelligence, and ML – Machine Learning increasingly emphasize the need for humans to work in areas where they can excel – feel, love, help, criticize, and analyze.
To do this, various members of organizational management – Board, Finance Department, Human Resources, Operations – should ask a simple question:
- What tasks are my employees performing that could be done by robots?
Without questioning whether the technology will be capable of doing this exercise, as machines nowadays already have tremendous capacity.
Next, one should ask:
- How many hours do my employees lose on each of these tasks? What is the annual cost?
Typically, a task that consumes 1 hour per day, on average, and depending on the profile, costs the company more than €3,600 per year!
There are processes that are common across most organizations, such as data input and reporting in ERPs, CRMs, and operational support systems. Tasks involving emails, Excel spreadsheets, synchronization of different systems, and gathering documents and data. Finance, human resources, and administrative departments often have several tasks that fall within this profile and can be partially or fully automated.
Next, the idea will be to create a business case for each process, evaluating development and maintenance costs versus returns. On average, RPA offers a return on investment (ROI) of just 1 year, which is a compelling metric to enable small and consistent advancements in digital transformation within organizations.
Engibots utilizes various methods to identify process inefficiencies in clients’ operations, with close collaboration and joint working sessions being the most efficient. This approach deepens the knowledge of clients’ difficulties. Our consultants have the ability to ask the right questions, combining knowledge from different industries and technologies, to accurately pinpoint the best automation strategy for each client. This is because no organization, even with similar processes and software, is the same, as mentioned at the beginning of this post, as companies are made up of people, processes, and software.
