4 Key Trends that are Impacting the Transformation of Today’s RPA into Affordable Hyperautomation, Making it a Strong Driving Force in Digital Transformation.
Conventional RPA technologies are now inadequate in responding to more complex and sophisticated automation applications. Hyperautomation combines the power of intelligence and unified RPA and Business Process Automation (BPA) in order to deliver cognitive automation across a broad range of functions within an enterprise. Democratizing the Hyperautomation and making it affordable and applicable to companies and applications of all sizes will further enhance and expedite the use of RPA on a global basis.
1. Unification of RPA with Business Process Management
Conventional usages of RPA have been to automate repetitive tasks and workflows that are typically part of a larger business process that delivers more holistic and end-to-end goals and functions. However, by integrating multiple RPAs, we have the opportunity to also automate end-to-end business processes (BPA). In other words, we can use RPA to automate tasks and workflows (microlevel automation using low-code platforms ) and integrate multiple, related RPAs to automate end-to-end processes (macrolevel automation using no-code platforms). We call this new capability RPA/BPA.
As an example, invoice processing, accounts payable scheduling, and payment disbursement are three stages of an end-to-end accounts payable process which represents an organizational function of an accounting department. Each stage can be automated by RPA (microlevel). Integrating the three RPAs using BPA technologies at a macrolevel will deliver an end-to-end business process automation (BPA).
2. Cognitive Automation
Integration of RPA with AI, Conversational AI, analytics and decision-making engines will enhance the use of RPA for more complex and sophisticated workflows and processes, such as enterprise content management and compliance, intelligent virtual agent for cognitive self-service, etc.
Cognitive automation solutions utilize advanced technologies such as Natural Language Processing/Understanding (NLP/NLU), Machine Learning (ML) for automated decision making and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for document processing.
3. Democratization of RPA
Today’s enterprises recognize RPA benefits and its ROIs; however, what makes them hesitant in using RPA is the cost and applicability of RPA to their operating and IT environment. There is currently a void in the market created by the lack of highly affordable RPA solutions, flexible price models that can align with customers’ specific usage of RPA, and the vendors that lack flexibility and agility in customization of RPA to adapt to customers’ infrastructure.
Democratization means to make automation affordable and applicable to companies and applications of all sizes.
4. RPA Powering Solutions in Workforce Optimization (WFO) and Customer Experience Management (CXM)
Most RPA usage is siloed and dedicated to back office applications. Software and cloud solutions in workforce optimization and customer experience management have become extremely valuable for today’s enterprises.
Considering the importance of WFO and CXM for any enterprise, RPA/BPA can transform WFO and CXM to their next level of performance by offering a range of cognitive automation such as intelligent automation of front office transactions and interactions, agent performance augmentation and compliance, 24/7 automated self-service and more.