The Deloitte Approach to Robotic Process Automation

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Robotic Process Automation explained

A revolution in business processes

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) tools can help organisations improve operational efficiency and effectiveness quicker and at a lower cost than other automation approaches. RPA is versatile and flexible enough to be used in businesses of all sizes, from start-ups to enterprise organisations.

Interest and activity in RPA is growing and we are increasingly seeing deployments reaching enterprise scale and operating on processes across the organisation.

RPA is a software-based technology utilising software robots to mimic human execution of a business process. The bots can capture and interpret existing IT applications to enable transaction processing, data manipulation and communication across multiple IT systems.

With RPA, organisations stand to gain from financial benefits due to the lower cost of a robot licence compared to a typical salary. Today firms are also seeing non-financial benefits including improved accuracy, timeliness, and operational flexibility.

The Deloitte approach to RPA

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Process discovery: which typical tasks are suitable for RPA deployment?

RPA is best suited for tasks and processes with repeatable, predictable interactions with IT applications. These tasks typically lack the value to warrant automation via core systems transformation or if core systems transformation is not due to be implemented soon. RPA tools can improve the efficiency of these processes and the effectiveness of services without requiring a change to the underlining systems.

RPA software ‘robots’ perform routine business processes by emulating the way that people interact with applications through a user interface and following simple rules to make decisions. Software robots can execute end-to-end processes without human interaction except in the handling of exceptions.
RPA can be used to automate tasks that are:

  • Repetitive
  • Prone to error
  • Rules based
  • Involve digital data
  • Time critical and seasonal

Top 5 benefits of an RPA solution

The core benefits of RPA solutions go beyond cost reduction and include:

  • Decreased cycle times and improved throughput
  • Improved accuracy, flexibility and scalability
  • Greater employee morale – enabling teams to focus on higher value tasks that truly require human judgement
  • More time to dedicate to innovation and customer experience
  • Detailed data capture
     

Automation at work - ideal industries for RPA implementation

Several organisations are leveraging the benefits of RPA. Here are the top industries that show the most potential for RPA to change the way they do business:

  • Financial services
  • Banking
  • BPP
  • Insurance
  • Healthcare
  • Telecom
  • Manufacturing
  • Public sector
  • Retail
  • BPA

A variety of business functions can benefit from Robotic process automation (RPA) amongst which allow processes automation:

  • Compliance
  • HR onboarding
  • Accounting
  • Claims processing
  • Customer Care centres

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