The global community has been at the receiving end of serious disruption by the COVID-19 pandemic. While the economy is trying to withstand the jolts and revamp future operations, Robotic process automation emerges as a game-changer in automation.
In 2020, the world woke up to the unexpected outbreak of COVID-19. While the battle has not ended yet, it has pushed financial markets, businesses and industries to a long haul of operational slowdown and stemming recession.
Enterprises and individuals are gradually coming to terms with work from home and other safety protocols. However, some tasks cannot be managed well by the staff working remotely. With limited access to office, customer contact, and workforce, organizations are finding it extremely challenging to keep the operations running with resilience, scalability, and adaptability.
Hence, digitization is prominently becoming an attractive option to manage work with dispersed workforces, engaging customers, and empowering critical business processes.
What Is Robotic Process Automation?
Robotic Process Automation is defined as a technology that mimics human actions with the help of software robots to achieve automation of highly repetitive, low-skill and large volume human tasks. An RPA bot is driven by pre-defined inputs to accumulate data through the user interface and interpret responses leading to automation with greater speed and no human error.
The Rise In Popularity Of RPA
At the face of the current crisis, many large organizations across the globe are now looking to optimize digitization of routine processes for reduced dependency on the human workforce, cost efficiency, and preparedness for future impact.
As per the latest forecast from Gartner Inc., Global RPA software revenue is anticipated to reach $1.89 billion in 2021, almost 20% over 2020. And despite the economic crisis in a pandemic situation, the RPA market is still expected to surge at double-digit rates by 2024. Also, more than half of the new RPA systems are projected to be deployed by non-IT clients.
What RPA Offers In The Current Situation?
RPA might not be a cure-all, but it can help fill the gaps left in operations because of remote work.
- Help access critical tools and applications.
- Support employees with problems concerning internal processes.
- Enhance self-service capabilities.
- Back Office and operational process automation
- Increase customer experience.
- Help optimize costs.
RPA To Mitigate The COVID-19 Effects In Different Sectors
1. Banking
RPA potential can be explored in several areas in the banking sector to minimize the effects of COVID-19 turbulence. As branches operate with reduced staff members, RPA can be of great importance to divert major traffic of routine enquiries about accounts to RPA software or bots.
Also, RPA can enable the setting-up of the remote workplace by automating processes like new equipment registration, creating new users for VPN, etc. Banks can also modify their operating models with RPA to automate product delivery using smart forms, and digital analysis of loan requests, opening new accounts, credit card applications, etc.
Various world-renowned banks like OCBC, DBS, ICICI, HDFC, etc. have corroborated the relevance of RPA for banking institutions.
2. Supply Chain
Organizations can deploy RPA to automate stock monitoring, order processing, payment, procurement risk monitoring, transportation scheduling, logistics and inventory management.
Let’s Consider The Use Case Of Schneider Electric:
The global leader set up a new supply chain to speed up supply between the European distribution centre and remote sites during the COVID-19 crisis. Since these sites were not connected through their ERP, the organization automated order processing with RPA. This not only bypassed the need to have a human workforce but also reduced the overall processing time. Any potential errors can be easily located when the order is processed by RPA software.
1. Aviation
When the airlines are striving to restart after the catastrophic effects of the pandemic, RPA can help the industry streamline processes like data retrieval from legacy systems, identification of revenue leakages (e.g. fair rule violations by travel agents while issuing tickets or refunds), supply chain automation, booking, billing, baggage automation, billing settlements, and crew scheduling, etc.
For example, restrictions on international travel lead to Scandinavian Airlines cancelling many flights just as other airlines did. To control cash outflow, the airlines had to issue e-Vouchers. And to free the staff from this tedious task, the airline deployed RPA software to process voucher-request, cancellation, and bookings.
2. Healthcare
Healthcare has evidently been the most burdened sector during the pandemic because of the acute scarcity of manual workforce. On top of it, critical COVID-19 processes like testing, diagnosis, screening, etc., continue to impact the response time to the pandemic. Thus leveraging RPA to accurately automate these processes makes it an ideal use case of RPA in the healthcare industry.
Testing acceleration by recording and sending patient data, automated mobile survey for primary diagnosis, contact tracing are only glimpses of RPA employability in the healthcare system.
Conclusion
In the end, RPA has capabilities to bring in much needed operational efficiency, cost-effectiveness and agility to significantly relieve businesses from a few of the disruptive challenges during and post COVID-19 times.
