The Growing Popularity Of RPA - Robotics Process Automation

By Asifa Jiyabudeen, Welcome Mokgabudi and Ayan Bagchi

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) refers to business process automation where software robots (Bots) drive the existing applications in a similar manner human does. This basically means that Robotic Process Automation is a platform that orchestrates and operates other application software through the existing application’s user interface and in that sense, it is not integrated into the enterprise application. It is code-free, non-disruptive, non-invasive, and easy to use.

This new technology came into the industry to take on some tedious and complex business processes that were carried out by humans, through scaling and implementation of software robots (Bots). Robotics Process Automation implementation mimics humans’ actions in a similar manner to the physical robot does, the software robot can basically drive suitable processes much easier and efficiently when compared to actual employees. RPA serves as a virtual human working through a set of instructions and replicating the manual processes needed to perform tasks.

What type of repetitive tasks can it handle?

- - The process must be rule-based.
  - The process must be repeated at regular intervals, or have a pre-defined trigger.
  - The process must have defined inputs and outputs.
  - The task should have sufficient volume.

Leading RPA Software Tools

Although there are several different tools, the RPA market is mostly dominated by the below tools:

- - UiPath
  - Blue Prism
  - Automation Anywhere

Areas where RPA can be used

Finance & Banking
Insurance
Healthcare
Manufacturing
Retail

Why is RPA growing in popularity globally as well as locally?

Robotic Process Automation has grown exponentially over the past few years. The demand for RPA is increasing in the RPA market as it promises to replace repetitive, rule-based, mundane, manual digital tasks with software robots.

The reason RPA grows is that it sits on top of legacy systems and we do not need to integrate it into the system.

It is proven to be essential for every business to find means to grow, improve efficiency, and become flexible in developing, providing products and services especially when it is implemented correctly.

It is proven to eliminate mundane tasks, offers greater accuracy and greater cost savings. Another reason RPA is growing is that most companies these day’s use tools to perform their daily tasks which make it feasible to adopt RPA by streamlining and bringing together this tool’s interactions by the use of RPA.

The automation of such repetitive tasks liberates people to focus on what humans do best – innovate, collaborate and use their talent to solve business challenges.

The global RPA market size was estimated at USD 1.57 billion in 2020 and is expected to reach USD 1.89 billion in 2021.

How is Geeks4Learning and Reverside are contributing to the RPA space?

Geeks4Learning will train and fast track youth interested in RPA and make sure they are ready to handle big RPA implementations and solve real life problems. We also prepare internal and external workforce (Clients) by bridging the skill gap required for them to be successful in implementing RPA in their respective organizations.

Reverside’s RPA technical team and Centers of Excellence (CoE) will from time to time guide clients throughout the automation journey to ensure smooth transition from legacy systems to integrating digital workers and ensure that clients get everything right from the start and they actually see value in adopting RPA. We will also bring in some advanced and smart ways of implementing RPA solutions within the organizational infrastructure. We will also contribute into the RPA community and bring in some new good ideas on how things can be improved and we will also from time to time build some reusable components and submit it to the RPA community.

Interesting facts on RPA:

RPA alone is not sufficient to streamline and automate every business process end to end. Some business processes are complex, difficult, or not good candidates for RPA, in that case it is not feasible to automate such a process using RPA. The available solution we have is to use Intelligent Automation, the combination of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) which together are proven to be able to automate any kind of process rapidly end to end without any issues.

Asifa Jiyabudeen, Senior Technical Trainer at Geeks4Learning. She has over 7 years of experience in design, development, implementation, maintenance and training in both Java and RPA space.
Welcome is an RPA Developer at Riverside and a technical trainer at Geeks4Learning.
Ayan is a senior technical trainer at Geeks4Learning with plus 8 years of industry experience.