Intelligent Automation and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) can solve a wide range of problems meaning there is a wide range of benefits. These are typically broken down into 4 distinct categories: Efficiency and Productivity, Improving Customer Experience, Scalability and Resilience. The challenges facing a particular business will impact the motivation and business case for introducing an Intelligent Automation solution so the list below is intentionally generic.
Obvious Benefits: Efficiency and Productivity:
- Intelligent Automation improves productivity by performing menial processes which allow human users to focus on the tasks where they can add value meaning more work is completed in the same time. Due to the scalability of virtual users, the business can perform more work in the same period without increasing cost by the same magnitude and potentially even reducing cost (depending on the processes automated)
- The cost of performing the automated processes is cheaper as a virtual user is cheaper than a human user, even after taking into consideration delivery and support costs
- The cost of training a human user to perform the process is reduced to virtually zero whilst also reducing the general cost of training a person and their time to competence
- When the business scales, the automated processes will scale in sync at a massively reduced relative cost compared to increasing the operational capacity through hiring and training additional people, thus reducing the future overall cost
- The business can choose how to reinvest the improvement e.g. realise a saving or re-invest to make improvements elsewhere
Improving Customer Experience:
- Human users are not well suited to manual and repetitive processing and as a result make frequent mistakes which can increase due to factors such as tiredness, weather, home factors, illness, etc. Virtual users do not make mistakes. The improvement in quality and accuracy have a consequential positive impact on first time resolution and complaints
- Human users tend to diverge from approved business processes which results in reduced overall compliance and disparity in how different users go about executing the same process. Virtual users perform the defined process without deviation and are programmed to handle variations or errors in an agreed way. This ensures that all customers receive the same standard of service
- A virtual user can complete a process far quicker than a human user and can work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week meaning greater productivity and improved turnaround times for customers. Additionally, virtual users enable concurrency meaning that a human user can get on with work where they can add value whilst the virtual user performs the repetitive element of the process at the same time with the result of further improved turnaround time for customers
- When pressures such as high volume processing productivity and accuracy targets are removed from humans, they are freed to focus on the tasks and aspects of their role where they can add value which includes having higher quality conversations with customers rather than shorter calls, all without negatively impacting overall productivity
Scalability
- Less recruitment required to support business growth, removing a key barrier to growth
- Less training is required to upskill any staff required to perform the remaining non-automated processes as there are fewer processes overall to learn
- As the business scales, margin and profitability also scale
- This significantly improves the business’s value multiplier during and after scaling
- As detailed above, operational process compliance is improved meaning fewer barriers to rapid scaling
Resilience:
- Virtual users can continue working no matter what other factors are impacting the human users such as extreme weather preventing travel to the office or a sickness epidemic within the office
- When a significant event does impact the business, virtual users can assist in the recovery e.g. processing backlog of orders or complaints following major system or operational outages
To find out more about automation, have a read of our blog Intelligent Automation: What is it?
About VKY Automation
VKY Automation are at the forefront of Intelligent Automation technology in Scotland and are the first independent Scottish business to achieve partner status with both Automation Anywhere and UI Path – 2 of the top software vendors in the global automation market. We understand how to get the most out of the technology and how to avoid the pitfalls. Scottish tech news site digit.fyi recently described VKY as one of the leading Intelligent Automation consultancies in Scotland. To find out more about Intelligent Automation and what it can do for you, please get in touch for a confidential and no obligation chat by emailing info@vkyautomation.com
