According to 98% of IT business leaders, automation helps in achieving superior business benefits.
Studies show that employees are 31% more productive in workplaces enhanced with automation. Such workplaces are also 33% more user-friendly which is conducive to higher productivity.
Similar to the Industrial and computer revolution, AI (Artificial Intelligence) and RPA (Robotic Process Automation) are the breakthrough technologies of the 21st century, capable of automating repetitive tasks. On one hand, workflow automation frees up employees and drives them towards performing more creative tasks, on the other hand, it helps employers in saving costs, eliminating errors and achieving scale.
Difficulties with Traditional Workflows
Organizational workflow suffers on account of several distractions that the team members face on a regular basis such as extensive onboarding documents, apps switching, uncertainty in seeking help from others, etc. These disruptions affect proficiency and creativity. Implementation of advanced technologies will empower the workforce with a culture of minimal interruptions and efficient knowledge sharing for better performance. Relying on input and output sources of company intelligence will help in building such culture. Siloed data also slows down workflows and has the risk of errors when data from multiple disparate sources is consolidated. Input sources refer to apps, documents, team knowledge, etc. Output sources are support tickets and processes.
Inefficient processes cause dissatisfaction among teams and need immediate attention. With AI and RPA capabilities, organizations can streamline siloed data, operations, applications across all departments. The primary function of Intelligent Process Automation (IPA) is to automate processes involving unstructured content such as emails, images, contracts, etc. It enables workflow automation such as critical analysis of contract and financial documents, processing of mortgages, invoices, quotes and customer and employee on-boarding activities.
Four Principles for Improvement
Workflow excellence can be achieved through incorporating four principles into technology: Nestability, Assignability, Ad hoc requests management and simplicity. Nestability allows workflows to be embedded within one another leading to several subprocesses within the parent workflow. Assignability refers to automation of repetitive tasks through automated workflow software for unleashing creativity and satisfaction. Ad hoc requests management allows accommodation of ad hoc questions anytime during the ongoing process. This feature allows chat facility in the workflow so that team members can ask questions in the middle of the process. Simplicity in the workflow design allows easy platform integration to provide flexibility and user-friendliness.
How Automation Helps
AI can analyze complex unstructured data and extract meaningful, relevant information. With Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology, it is possible to automate any online or offline business processes leading to time-savings, disburdening unnecessary tasks, project tracking, etc.
Intelligent Process automation, which uses AI and RPA in tandem, can help achieve these for principles for improved workflows. It also brings about 30%-60% reduction in operational costs in several repetitive tasks such as manual data entry, email management, lease abstraction, etc. In addition to cost savings, AI and RPA improve process cycle time, accuracy, operational scalability and customer satisfaction. Automation also relieves employees of time-consuming, tedious tasks so they can turn their attention to higher value tasks and activities. Thus, AI and RPA enhance workflows and this positively impacts employee efficiency and business ROI.
IPA has great potential in several industries and is slowly being adopted more widely. For e.g. manual email response and processing of documents such as invoices, multi-format quotes, lease papers, etc. are costly and time-consuming. AI in tandem with RPA can provide superior content intelligence and automation through automating unstructured content analysis and structured content extraction. This significantly brings down costs and accelerate processes with greater accuracy.
There are several tasks which can be automated leveraging RPA and AI. With AI technology, you can train our RAPFlow platform to handle repetitive tasks and automate workflows. It shows wide range of extensibility to integrate with any existing system through public-facing APIs. For e.g. HR related tasks such as gathering candidate’s information, dispatching offer letters through email integrations, solving queries through knowledge base and chat facility, etc. can be automated with greater accuracy and productivity. Workflow automation frees up employees to focus on core businesses problems. Elimination of process interruptions leads to better utilization of time and resources with increased ROI.
If you would like to explore how implementing AI can help your business, the Rapid Acceleration Partners AI team would be glad to help you. Our next-gen, AI-powered content intelligence platform RAPFlow in tandem with our RPA solution RAPBot, provide end-to-end workflow automation capabilities that can be deployed in just week. Our platform also has specific applications and you can build your own use case that easily integrates with your existing systems. Please book a demo to explore our solutions.
