In February 2019, Singapore’s Institute of Technical Education (ITE) signed a Memorandum of Understanding to partner Automation Anywhere, a Robotic Process Automation (RPA) company, to train students.  The aim is to equip students with RPA knowledge and skills, and prepare them to join a workforce that increasingly places emphasis on digital transformation.

What exactly is RPA and how will it impact your business?

RPA is an emerging form of business process automation technology based on the notion of software robots or artificial intelligence (AI) workers.  Imagine the daily routine of punching a series of keystrokes on your keyboard to retrieve certain information from your database, these repeated sets of actions performed by a user can be automated with precision with zero downtime.

The application of RPA allows employees in a company to configure computer software or a “robot” to capture and interpret existing applications for processing a transaction, manipulating data, triggering responses and communicating with other digital systems.

Emerging technologies are reshaping every industry, like artificial intelligence and automation drive productivity gains and new modes of work.  Technologies such as RPA are anticipated to create new jobs requiring higher-level cognitive thinking and creativity, requirements at which humans uniquely excel and which drive the greatest employee satisfaction.

What are some of the advantages of adopting RPA for your business?

  1. Reduced costs: RPA can work 24/7, 365days a year without taking any break, which results in increased productivity
  2. Lower operational risk: RPA reduces the rate of errors thereby providing a lower level of operational risk
  3. Improved customer experience: deploying RPA frees up your high-value resources for them to be put back on the front line defining your customer success
  4. Flexible implementation: robots in the RPA imitate the human actions and perform the rule-based task, and can be deployed in most industries
  5. Business scalability: RPA provides the ability to easily scale up or down your business operations as needed especially for companies with seasonality concerns
  6. Leverages on existing IT systems:  this one of the greatest advantages of RPA in comparison to other automation solutions
  7. Better record keeping: Robots always document what was done, leaving a clear audit and control track, and allows for easy recovery after unexpected shutdowns

With the many benefits highlighted, it will only be a matter of time businesses start adopting RPA or other innovations.  Are you ready for potential work redefinition in the near future or become victims of Robotic Invasion?