How RPA Can Make Common Business Functions More Efficient

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Andreas Obermair

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Robotic process automation (RPA) is not a new technology, but more and more organizations are waking up to the potential it holds for streamlining business processes, increasing operational efficiencies, and releasing your workforce for higher valuer, less mundane tasks.  

RPA works by automating repetitive, structured, rule-based processes that are time-consuming and tedious for humans to complete, and that are typically prone to error. The benefits of automation include increased efficiency, reduced costs, improved accuracy, and higher employee and customer satisfaction.  

RPA can help deliver benefits across many business functions and industries. The RPA use cases are endless, far too many to cover in this article and we know you haven’t got all day so let’s look at four common business functions where RPA can generate a huge amount of value – customer service, human resources, supply chain and logistics, and finance and accounting. We’ll also explore RPA examples in real life, with success stories from our customers in each of the four sectors. 

RPA in Customer Service 

Customer service is a function where the human touch is critical – but robots still have an important role to play in facilitating engagement, and there are a number of RPA use case examples. By delegating mundane and repetitive tasks to robots, human agents can dedicate their time to customer interaction and dispute resolution. At the same time, crucial yet repetitive processes such as order processing, ticket management, inventory checks, and initial customer query handling can be automated. This enables a more efficient use of resources and enhances the overall customer experience. 

In call centers, RPA can efficiently route customers to the appropriate human agents and provide contextual information about the customer to the agent via a dashboard. This saves time searching through customer records and interactions from multiple systems while on a call. Some of the key benefits of automating appropriate processes of the customer journey include faster response times, higher customer satisfaction, and cost savings. 

A great example of the benefits of RPA is German health insurer AOK. Through automation, Roboyo helped AOK become more customer-centric by improving their responsiveness to customer applications, queries, and claims across its multiple channels. Working together, we automated the handling of high volumes of customer claims resulting in enhanced efficiency and service for their valued customers.  

The result is that formerly manual transactions are now automated, with claim verification times reduced to under a minute. Automations at AOK resulted in cost savings of €1.4m and delivered a year one return on investment (ROI) of 466%. In addition, customers receive a faster and error-free service and 600 AOK employees were freed from completing repetitive tasks and able to work on more valuable work.  

RPA in Finance and Accounting 

Finance and accounting is a function with many repetitive processes that require both accuracy and speed – the perfect playground for RPA with a multitude of use cases. Business-critical finance processes like invoice processing, data entry, and reconciliation are suitable tasks for automation because they include predictable inputs and outputs. In addition, the speed at which robots can process tasks can help organizations meet pressing monthly and end-of-year targets faster and with higher levels of accuracy.  

A great example is a US utility company that Roboyo helped to streamline their invoice process. They used to spend a lot of time and effort getting rid of duplicate invoices. It took 3 to 4 experienced workers 2 to 4 hours each, going through emails and 25 files, and putting data into one spreadsheet. But now, with Roboyo’s help, it’s 800% faster. This saves them around 31,400 hours of work and almost $950,000 every year!

RPA in Human Resources 

RPA is increasingly being used by human resources (HR) teams to automate repetitive tasks like employee onboarding, payroll processing, and benefits administration. There are numerous RPA use case examples for HR: recording leave requests and absence incidents, supporting HR helpdesks and employee self-service portals, and helping HR teams meet compliance with regulations by automating checks and audits.  

Roboyo worked with the Queensland University of Technology to update its backend HR resources to support contract extensions, new appointments, and sessional hiring for more than 80,000 employees. The university’s small, 6-person HR team needed to eliminate repetitive manual processes and duplication of work, as well as fix compliance issues and reduce costs.  

We supported the digitization of the university’s manual processes with intelligent automation (IA) and RPA to improve the onboarding experience for faculty staff. This resulted in a cost saving of 50% and processing times that are 86% faster than before. The automation solution was designed and delivered in just 8 weeks. 

RPA in Supply Chain and Logistics 

RPA can support the optimization of complex supply chain and logistics operations through tasks such as order processing and tracking, inventory management, and shipment tracking and scheduling.  

Examples of RPA in supply chain logistics include supporting communications with suppliers and customers by automating updates when orders pass through key gateways. Warehouse logistics are well suited to automation because they typically follow strict schedules and procedures. 

Roboyo partnered with a global sports apparel company to roll out multiple back-office automation and drive operational efficiency. By introducing a digital workforce in the company’s accounting, finance, IT, and procurement departments, Roboyo enabled them to get things done 4.5 times faster and handle over 7,000 tasks in less than 16 hours. This saved them more than 3,000 hours of employee time. Plus, with 100% data accuracy, manual error was eliminated.

Conclusion 

RPA is a part of the digital transformation toolkit for an increasing number of organizations in a broad range of industries, and helps them to automate repetitive, rules-based processes as they strive for increased efficiency and competitiveness.  

We’ve talked about four examples in this article but there are hundreds more. There are RPA use cases in IT operations, such as automated password resets and simple problem resolution, software testing, log analysis, and system monitoring. Robotic process automation banking examples include the creation of new accounts, account reconciliation, and helping institutions meet regulatory compliance through automated returns.  

In our opinion, every industry and business function has the potential to reap the rewards of a strategic automation solution. It’s simply a matter of understanding your objectives and having the right technology stack in place. With the right approach, RPA and intelligent automation can be a game-changer for your business, making processes more efficient and driving next level success! 

To find out how your organization can benefit from RPA, please reach out to the Roboyo team. The chances are we’ve used RPA to help an organization like yours save a lot of time and money.

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