Robotic Process Automation

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a new technology aimed at creating software robots (bots) that behave like humans. By implementing RPA, businesses want to lower labor costs, boost productivity, lower error rates, and improve customer satisfaction. In several industries, RPA has become one of the most popular technologies. Users can define robots (or bots) that can simulate their interactions with applications that perform transactions, manipulate data, trigger replies, and communicate with other digital systems using RPA applications. Although the phrase RPA dates back to the mid-2000s, the underlying technologies such as computer vision and workflow automation have been evolving for quite some time. While RPA is still considered an emerging technology, it still relies on artificial intelligence (AI), screen scraping, and workflow automation technologies and raises them to a new level, considerably improving their capabilities.

RPA is a hybrid of artificial intelligence and automation: “The application of technology that allows people in a firm to configure computer software or a ‘robot’ to reason, collect and extract knowledge, identify patterns, learn and adapt to new situations or surroundings is known as RPA, a synonym for AI.” Furthermore, combining RPA and AI enables the development of complicated skills. While automation primarily tries to restructure and organize rule-based and repetitive operations, defining and dealing with exception instances remains a largely human process. AI can now assist automation software for operations that do not involve significant decision-making and analysis, such as natural language processing (NLP) or online customer service. The synchronization of these technologies is considered the future of RPA.

A system that operates without direct human interaction is referred to as automation. Many automated systems have one thing in common: they eliminate the human factor, resulting in increased precision, quality, and accuracy.

RPA, like all forms of automation, entails designing robotic software to accomplish tasks formerly performed by humans, but this time through interfacing with different systems. In a nutshell, RPA gives you the capabilities to automate rule-based, logical processes with well-defined and structured data and a predictable set of output values. RPA’s purpose is not to just aid humans in automating tasks; rather, it aspires to completely replace humans. While software like Excel makes calculations easier for humans, they still require human input. In RPA, the robot performs the majority of the calculations behind the scenes, with only human input and output.

The most intriguing aspect of RPA is that it does not cause any disruption to the underlying system. Every activity taken by a robot may be easily registered and audited, lowering the risk of non-compliance. Most traditional business process automation, on the other hand, may change data directly in a database. (Willcocks, Lacity, & A, 2015). Over the last five years, RPA applications have been documented in business processes such as accounts payable, accounts receivable, travel expenditures, fixed asset accounting, master data management, billing, and personnel records management, among others.

RPA is widely regarded as a simple form of artificial intelligence. Because of its ease of use, low cost, and quick installation, this type of automation is considered revolutionary. RPA is characterized as a software-based solution for the automation of rules-based processes including repeated manual operations, structured data, and planned results. Furthermore, RPA is a software application that interprets and captures current applications to facilitate communication across numerous IT platforms, data manipulation, and transaction processing.

REFERENCES

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