Robotic Process Automation helps sales operations, customer service, and big data offer broadest possibilities for pilot tests and early wins.
RPA has revolutionized the way companies operate, manage data, and serve customers. A survey conducted by Redwood Software reported 83% of IT decision-makers believe robotic automation is key to their company’s digital transformation strategy. Companies are investing heavily to automate repetitive tasks, indicating 59% of business processes being automated by 2022. RPA experts highlight that automation is likely to have a positive effect on the labor force and, more generally, the operational structure and the skills utilized.
With RPA playing a critical role in the digitalization process, it is vital that CIOs carefully consider how to incorporate automation into their strategy. Here are three crucial areas worth exploring to develop the company’s RPA journey.
Boosting Sales operations
‘Sales’ is the undisputed hero of any company’s operation and growth, irrespective of size or industry. RPA is capable of transforming and driving a host of sales centered activities, including invoice preparation, data replication, and delivery, with consistent updates of customer relationship management (CRM). Using automation tools for sales processes can be a boost for the process. For example, consider CRM and accounting records. Software robots handle these operational activities much faster and smoother with fewer errors. They can accurately include discounts received, purchased items, quantity, and total expenditure, by automating the transfer of data between systems. This will have desirable effects, such as earlier payments and greater clarity for customers. Consequently, cash flow and customer satisfaction will improve.
CIOs should ask these questions before incorporating RPA into portions of the sales process:
- Which processes have the potential to generate the most revenue post automation?
- Is it compliant with security systems?
- Does it integrate with the current CRM systems in place?
Helping Customer service operations
Perhaps the biggest misconception of RPA is the notion that will replace humans. In fact, RPA extends the capabilities of human workers. Mitigating this fear factor is not easy, as CIOs face the enormous challenge to advocate RPA to the workforce. Assisting customer service operations is the key to demonstrate the benefits of a human-automation partnership.
Customer service is one of the most complicated yet pivotal activities in a company, which is enhanced with the human-robot collaboration. Simple, high-frequency tasks, repetitive, such as updating and recording customer profiles, can be automated. For example, virtual agents take profile data from customers during bill payments, directing them to the designated person to handle the request with automatic triaging. This will reduce customer-waiting time, giving employees spare time to utilize their emotive communication skills. In addition, firms are looking forward to expanding front-end automation to enhance customer communication triggering a notification when it is time to follow up.
When considering implementing RPA, CIOs need to be sure to determine:
- Where can it best improve customer engagement?
- How to get your employees on board?
- How can it collect customer data?
Data manipulation and management
The most powerful capabilities of RPA are the ability to harness and organize vast compilations of unstructured data.
Data manipulation can be monotonous and arduous for some employees. The good thing about RPA is that it has zero emotions or no specific interests, leaving no scope for data manipulation.
In today’s digital era, the CIOs must analyze how to extract knowledge from the data continuously collected. RPA can smartly explain product performance journeys to comprehend which is performing best at a particular time of the year. Leveraging big data analytics through proper RPA installations helps pinpoint actionable tasks for improvement and optimization, exposing hidden patterns and deficiencies.
When considering RPA and big data challenges, CIOs must comprehend:
- How quickly can RPA be incorporated in the system to manage big data?
- How can we big data analytics help win the competition?
- What are the consumer trends displayed by structured data?
Choosing the right RPA use case
The functions listed above indeed do not encompass RPA’s entire application areas; the software has much broader prospects. However, whether the company is just embarking on the RPA journey or already reaping the rewards of automation, the three areas of customer service, sales operations, and data analysis offer abundant opportunities for pilot tests and early efforts.
