Automation is happening across all industries

1. Services

☝ Customer invoicing.

☝ Claim processing.

☝ Contact center processes: change of services, information updating, customer data gathering.

2. Financial

☝ Retail credit assessment and fraud prevention.

☝ Account settlement and payment clearance.

☝ Interrogation of public databases.

☝ Automatic account closures.

3. Healthcare

☝ Digitalizing and regular updating patient files.

☝ Inventory management.

☝ Invoice settlement.

4. Education

☝ Course registration and attendance management.

☝ Processing grades and report cards.

☝ Creating class schedules.

5. High Tech

☝ Client Process and service removal.

☝ Client data updating.

☝ Downtime complaint management.

6. Manufacturing

☝ Inventory management and procurement.

☝ Payment processing.

☝ Customer communication.

7. Retail

☝ Onboarding, offboarding and payroll.

☝ Inventory and contract management.

☝ Invoicing and returns processing.

☝ Sales analytics.

8. Government

☝ Benefit Claims.

☝ Fraud prevention.

☝ Payer data updating.

★ These above processes are already automated.

Before we can determine what processes can be automated,

let's define what is a business process and what are the implementation procedures.

What is a business process?

➤ A process is a set of interrelated or interacting activities that transforms inputs into outputs.
OR
➤ A process is a series of related tasks or methods that together turn inputs into outputs.

Following are the Components of a process

Inputs- the data that goes in the process.

Process Flows - the sequences of sub-processes or activities undertaken in the process.

Source Applications - the applications or systems used to perform the sub-processes or activities of the process.

Outputs - the result generated by the process.

★ Note: The outputs of a process can serve as inputs for other processes.

Organizations use processes because planning and executing them under controlled conditions can, among other things, improve compliance, ensure that operational needs are met, help in managing risks and drive improvement.

Process Example: Pre-boarding & Onboarding

To understand what a business process is during Pre-boarding and Onboarding,

let's go back to our HR automation project (HR Robot).

Here are the steps a HR representative will conduct during this phase:

Step-1:

An Identity Card is received via email.

The process components are:

Inputs - The received Identity Card.

Step-2:

The HR representative opens the email attachment and checks the new hire personal information.

The process components are:

Process Flows - the verification of the personal information and the documents fields population.

Step-3:

The HR representative will take the necessary personal information to be added on the employment contract,
medical insurance documents and will hand over the details to the IT department to create a user within the company's database.

The process components are:

Source Applications - file manager application - Computer File Explorer, OfficeSuite (Word, Excel),
Adobe Acrobat Reader (PDF) and other software (e.g. ERP)

Step-4:

Finally, the the documents will be stored in a secure location and will be send over to be signed via email.

The process components are:

Outputs - the result generated by the process.

★ UiPath aims to automate manual repetitive tasks to drive productivity, reduce human error and
accelerate consistency of processes and output.

What is a procedure?

➤ Essentially, a procedure complements a process and describes the way it is carried out.
OR
➤ A procedure is a prescribed way of undertaking a process or part of a process.

It explains

➤ who is responsible for each part of the process.
➤ When each part of the process needs to occur.
➤ How to handle exceptions and the specifications applicable to each part of the process.

Next, let's name few of the procedures that cascade from the Pre-boarding and Onboarding process example:

➤ Completing all the employee documents.

➤ Signing all the documents with the employee.

➤ Extracting data from the official documents to be added in the company's database.

➤ Sending the needed information to other departments.

What makes a process a good candidate for automation?

There are two sets of criteria you can use to determine the automation potential:

process fitness and automation complexity.

Process fitness

Here are the criteria you can evaluate how fit a process is for automation:

➤ Rule-based

The decisions made (including data interpretation) in the process can be captured in a pre-defined logic.
The exception rate is either low or can be included as well in the business logic.

➤ Automatable and/or repetitive process

We can differentiate 4 types of processes:

➢ Manual & non-repetitive: the process steps are performed by humans and can be different every time the process is executed.

➢Manual & repetitive: the steps in the process are performed by the user, and at least some of them are the same every time.

➢ Semi-automated & repetitive: some of the repetitive steps have already been automated (using macros, Outlook rules, and so on)

➢ Automated: there are processes that have been already automated using other technologies than RPA.

Processes that need to stay manual or are non-repetitive, due to the high exception rate or factors that cannot be integrated in a business logic, aren't good candidates for automation.

➤ Standard input

The input in the process should either be electronic and easily readable or readable using a technology
that can be associated with RPA (such as OCR).

A good example is an invoice having the fields pre-defined.

➤ Stable

Processes that have been the same for a certain period of time and no changes are expected within the next months are good candidates for automation, provided they meet the other criteria as well.

Automation Complexity

This set of criteria determines how hard it is to automate a process:

➢ RPA works by programming the robot to perform tasks at screen level (when the screen changes,
the logic has to be taught). The higher the number of screens,
the more elements have to be captured and configured prior to the process automation.

➢ Some applications are more easily automated (such as the Office suite, or Java),
others heavily increase the automation effort (Mainframe, for example).
And the more different the applications are, the number of screens will increase, as well (see previous point).

➢ An automation's complexity increases with the number of decision points in the business logic.
Basically, each one could multiply by two the number of scenarios.

➢ As previously stated, standard input is desirable.
Yet there are cases in which one standard input (such as an invoice) has to be configured for each supplier that will be affected by the automation. Moreover, non-standard input can be of different complexity grades, with free text being the most complex.

By using these factors in our automation potential assessment, we can split the processes into 4 categories:

1.No RPA

Processes where change is frequent, the system environment is volatile, and multiple manual (even non-digital) actions are required.

2.Semi-Automation

Processes that can be broken down into steps that can be clearly automated, and steps that need to stay manual (such as validations or usage of physical security tokens).

3. High-Cost RPA

Processes that are rather digital and can be automated, but use some technologies that are complex (such as OCR) or require advanced programming skills.

4. Zero-Touch Automation

Processes that are digital and involve a highly static system and process environment, so that they can be easily broken into instructions and simple triggers can be defined.

Note:- I will be updating this blog frequently.✍

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