No business can remain static and expect consistent success. The market changes constantly, and so too do the requirements to succeed. Taking a critical view of one’s own processes from time to time is essential. Failing to do so could mean overlooking the value of a new technology or tool that can transform how you work. For example, consider the ongoing impact of RPA, or Robotic Process Automation, on many industries.

RPA offers an alternative to traditional work. Even in today’s highly digital business ecosystem, many processes rely on manual work and human-directed input. Platforms such as Tungsten RPA provide a way to modernize your processes and speed them up without sacrificing quality. Let’s compare how it stacks up against traditional work.

The Old: Manual Work and Touch-Heavy Processes

Many traditional workflows involve steps that require manual human intervention. These are often basic steps that never change from day to day. Despite their mundane nature, these efforts are critical for workflows farther downstream. For example, consider a single invoice that arrives via regular mail for a company. In a traditional invoice processing workflow, there could be dozens of manual steps.

After opening the mail, someone will need to scan the paperwork, which must go into a specific file system. The data on the page requires extraction—from the purchase order number to the supplier ID, the items invoiced and the total cost. All this must occur before we can even consider steps such as matching documents.

Customer service is another example. A worker may need to retrieve a customer’s file, look for specific information or make changes to the record. Those changes might need to populate databases across several systems. Traditionally, this is a task someone must do on their own.

Naturally, these workflows are slow. They are also prone to errors, especially the more often someone must manually transfer data. Even the most seasoned professionals may sometimes produce inefficient or inaccurate work. RPA software can assist these workers with a better approach.

The New: Automation Via Software Robots

RPA relies on software robots that can mimic how humans interact with web or software interfaces. These robots are pre-programmed, not powered by AI or machine learning. Instead, RPA bots are strictly rules-based. That functionality makes them so well-suited to the highly repetitive manual tasks we've just described.

Users can design an RPA robot to accomplish many tasks that support broader business processes. An intuitive robot designer such as the one found in Tungsten RPA enables even regular users to contribute to process automation. RPA can support automating the extraction or routing of data between different applications. It can even support connecting your legacy systems and more modern software.

Think of how many types of work in your office are the same every day. Now consider all the tasks that require accurate repetition of the same steps to serve customers, update records or maintain visibility into your finances. With RPA tools, streamlining these workfows is possible and a must for the future.

Why is RPA So Well-Suited to Replacing Manual Work?

The rules-based nature of RPA, combined with its ease of setup, contribute to its value. However, there are other reasons to invest in RPA to replace manual work, too. Chief among these reasons is its versatility.

With software robots, you do not need to invest in overhauling your entire software infrastructure. Even decommissioning a legacy system may be able to wait when RPA facilitates smooth movements of data between locations. Without the need to deploy extensive infrastructure changes, you can achieve a positive ROI and a real-world business impact on a shorter time scale. RPA is flexible and easy to adapt to different situations, and modifying robots when a process changes is easy. Perhaps most importantly, RPA can ultimately become a fundamental part of a broader effort towards workflow automation.

RPA Doesn't Mean Replacing Human Oversight

For some, turning over these tasks to a robot is a source of concern. However, RPA robots don’t necessitate a significant impact on headcount. On the contrary, when humans and robots work together, outcomes improve. Many RPA processes involve human-in-the-loop sections. These are points at which humans review the output of software robots, especially when rules about data anomalies trigger. This collaborative effort offers the best of both worlds: speed and accuracy from robots with the problem-solving insights of humans available for edge cases.

Case Study: Using Computer Vision to Accelerate Key Processes

Let's look at one brief example of how RPA can replace a manual process by connecting to another service. In the Tungsten Marketplace, users can find a robot ready to deploy by Quipu and connect to Google Cloud Vision. Using this robot, you can pass image data via an API to Google's cloud-based image recognition AI. The robot receives the response from Google and reports it to a database for the next steps.

With this, you can automate detecting text, faces, or other types of data found within an image. Consider a customer onboarding process that requires matching someone's supplied ID to a photo on file. With this robot and API access, you can detect a face on an ID card and quickly use that to empower a human comparison. With RPA, the tedious parts of feeding the data to Google and recording the outcome are streamlined. Users can take action, make decisions, and push that data to other automated processes.

Though just one example, this robot demonstrates how even small steps towards automation can provide you with significant impacts on available functionality.

Consider Your First Steps Towards Working Like Tomorrow

The speed of business today demands workflows that can keep up with the competition. Continuing to rely on manual efforts can limit your capabilities and introduce too many errors to critical data. Platforms such as Tungsten RPA and the ready-made solutions available in the Marketplace make a transformation possible. Today, it's easy to embrace easy-to-use RPA in ways that offer quick wins and valuable automation.

Leave tedious work in the past. With RPA, you can improve productivity and reduce the impact of menial work on morale. Explore more about this product now, or discover what functionality you can access quickly with help from the Marketplace.