Over the years, humans have been the driving force of all business. They still are, though, with the support of technological brilliance. With the increasing demands of customers, businesses are overloaded with repetitive and time-consuming processes. To overcome the mundane task obstacles, they started to look for automation solutions and adopt Robotic Process Automation, aka RPA.
RPA has slowly become integral to every small, mid, and large business operation worldwide. RPA can automate various tasks in customer service and support desks, including incident management, user administration, billing queries, and record updates. It has been the new business driving force that can solve, manage, and execute every business process within the best practice.
This article will focus on Robotic Process Automation, or RPA, and its different types, discussing scenarios where each is useful.
Table of Contents
What is Robotic Process Automation (RPA)?
Robotic Process Automation, or RPA, is a software program designed to imitate human-like responses and execute tasks quickly and efficiently. Bots are a primary example of RPA. The ultimate goal of RPA is to streamline workflows and increase efficiency while automating repetitive and rule-based tasks within business processes.
Although RPA has numerous examples, Web Scraping remains the easiest and most effective among various industries.
Website scraping extracts data from websites, serving diverse purposes like market research, competitor analysis, or lead generation. RPA streamlines data extraction from numerous sources. It ensures the data collection, organization, and presentation become efficient and coherent.
RPA Work Cycle – How it Works?
Here’s a brief of the RPA work cycle. It will help you understand the process step by step.
Understand the Process – By analyzing existing workflows, RPA software can identify patterns and optimize processes without altering underlying systems.
Define Suitable Tasks – To implement RPA, evaluate tasks for suitability. Rule-based, structured, and repetitive tasks are best for implementation.
Bot Development – It involves creating bots or robots that mimic human interactions with systems.
Monitoring and Optimization – After deploying RPA bots, their performance is monitored to identify areas for improvement and ensure adaptation to changes in the operating environment.
Integrating with Existing Systems – RPA can integrate with various systems, including legacy systems, databases, web applications, and more, without requiring changes to existing technology.
Automating Triggers – There are multiple ways to trigger RPA processes. They can be set to run at specific times. You can initiate them by a user action or by external events such as receiving an email or a file. This level of flexibility allows for on-demand and automated processing.
Types of Robotic Process Automation
A clear understanding of the different types of Robotic Process Automation offers an overview of the technology’s potential. It allows business owners to identify which processes would benefit from automation and which should remain manual.
Here’s a list of six different types of RPA:
Attended RPA
The user invokes this bot type, which is best for detecting difficult-to-program triggers. Employees who need to interact with customers and simultaneously perform manual tasks can use attended automation for end-to-end assistance. The automation can function as a representative and execute necessary operations. If required, it can seek guidance from the employee.
For example: HR Onboarding and Customer Service!
When a customer calls to inquire about their account balance or a candidate contacts HR for a process update, the attended bot swiftly retrieves the necessary information from multiple systems and presents it to the customer service agent. It allows the agent to concentrate on delivering exceptional service to the customer.
Unattended RPA
Unattended RPA is a familiar and renowned RPA type. Teams use this approach to identify simple, predictable processes that can be automated to take over repetitive tasks.
Unsupervised bots are ideal for data entry, payroll, invoicing, etc. They can replace tedious human-computer tasks, freeing up personnel for more valuable roles.
For example: Supply Chain Management and Invoice Processing!
The bot extracts information from invoices, validates it against predefined rules, and enters the data into the financial system, eliminating manual data entry and reducing processing time. It follows a similar process for supply chain management.
Traditional RPA
Traditional RPA is the software program used for simple tasks that don’t involve decision-making. These types of bots are popular as rule-based systems. They need clear guidelines for task execution, login, data collection, and transfer.
Robotic process automation typically involves bots that follow pre-defined rules. They are best for simple tasks. Furthermore, you can quickly scale these bots to perform thousands of automated processes.
For example: Data entry and Validation!
A traditional RPA bot can extract invoice details, verify them against predefined rules, and update the accounting system with minimal human intervention.
Cognitive RPA
Cognitive RPA is a more advanced form of RPA that can recognize images, handwritten text, and human speech. It is best used for tasks such as document digitization, automating client communication, and analyzing unstructured data.
Irrespective of their powerful capabilities, cognitive robots must be custom-developed and require a specialized AI and machine learning team for a specific use case.
For example: Intelligent Document Processing!
Bots equipped with machine learning algorithms can analyze legal documents, identify critical clauses, and categorize documents based on their content. It saves officials significant time in end-to-end document review.
Hybrid RPA
Hybrid Robotic Process Automation is the mixture of attended and unattended RPA types that automate both back-office and front-office activities. It is an excellent option when you require human intervention, decision-making, and highly repetitive tasks.
It enables businesses to combine front and back-office duties, providing the best of both worlds. Hybrid RPA setups have the advantage of overcoming RPA’s limitations and augmenting bots with the cognitive abilities of human workers.
For example: Inventory Management in Retail!
A hybrid RPA is a perfect retail solution that can comprehensively streamline inventory management. The attended bots assist store employees with tasks like order tracking and stock level updates, while unattended bots handle inventory replenishment and order fulfillment processes.
API-driven RPA
API-driven RPA defines a specialized automation methodology wherein bots interact with external systems and applications via APIs. This approach provides a remarkably reusable, stable, and secure means for the transmission and reception of data.
API-driven RPA bots offer several benefits, including integration with internal and external systems, real-time data exchange, and increased security.
For example, ECommerce Order Fulfilment!
In eCommerce, bots can use API-driven RPA to automatically retrieve and process order information, generate shipping labels, and update order statuses without manual intervention from external systems like order management and shipping platforms.
Different tasks require different types of Robotic Process Automation. Selecting the right one depends on your existing workflows and business needs. You can hire RPA experts for end-to-end assistance!
Bottom Line!
Versatility and agility are two primary strengths of Robotic Process Automation (RPA). The technology is flexible enough to fit around many different processes and use cases only when selecting the appropriate RPA bots. In the upcoming years, relying solely on bots or humans will not suffice to drive businesses forward. Combining these two will be vital for leading enterprises in the future.
If you wish to learn and enable RPA in your existing business, contact Metizsoft Solutions today!
