UI Path

Knowledge Check of Robotic Process Automation or RPA

1. A robot that matches the phone number of a caller to the support line and gathers data in real-time
to present to the agent is most likely...

Ans: Attended Robot.

★ Explanation: Although the agent doesn't actually start the robot, it is functioning on the agent's computer
and it is triggered by events that cannot be scheduled in advance.

2. A robot that takes care of the generic email address of a company (contact@ABC.com), by filtering emails and
forwarding them towards the relevant teams, is most likely...

Ans: Unattended Robot.

★ Explanation: As the rationale is to save as much time by working around the clock and
since it's not the address of a certain person, this robot is most likely unattended.

3. A robot that is taking the daily sales reports closed each evening and builds a unique simplified report for the
senior management's morning read is most likely...

Ans: Unattended Robot.

★ Explanation: The robot probably works outside business hours so it's an Unattended Robot, most likely.

4. What do these robots have in common?

Ans: Rule-based, Repetitive and standardized input.

★ Explanation: The processes that can be automated are rule-based, repetitive, and the input data is standardized.
The robots are able to make decisions if these are clearly stated in the business logic.
A high exception rate would need human intervention and affect the robot productivity.

5. What are the components of a business process?

Ans: Inputs-Process Flows-Source Applications-Outputs.

6. Consider the following 3 processes.
What would be your first, second and third choice for automation from the point of view of effectiveness and efficiency (low effort and costs, high benefits)?

Translating customer emails from different languages to English

Password reset process triggered by email and using a dedicated web application

Reading and preparing for payment handwritten invoices

Ans:
First Choice-Translating customer emails from different languages to English.

Second Choice-Password reset process triggered by email and using a dedicated web application.

Third Choice-Reading and preparing for payment handwritten invoices.

★ Explanation: Translating customer emails uses a single application, so it's the first choice.
Password reset and reading invoices both use 2 applications, yet password reset is more straightforward in terms of business logic,
and the the technologies used have lower exception rate.

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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.

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Introduction to Robotic Process Automation or RPA

☛ RPA, or Robotic Process Automation, is the technology that enables computer software to emulate and integrate actions typically performed by human interacting with digital systems.

☛ It can mimics human actions, it is quick to implement and powerful to scale without making mistakes, also without taking rest.

☛ It Operates any application and reads, actions data in structured form.

☛ The computer software that executes the operations is called a robot.

☛ RPA robots are able to capture data, run applications, trigger responses and communicate with other systems.

☛ RPA primarily targets processes which are

♦ Highly manual,

♦ Repetitive,

♦ Rule-based, with low exceptions rate and

♦ Standard electronic readable input.

Following are some of the real examples of RPA or Robotic Process Automation

♦ Payroll processing

↬ It refers to the actions that companies take to pay their employees-keeping track of their presence, of their salaries,
bonuses and taxes.

↬ Payroll processing needs manual intervention month after month, every year.

↬ An RPA system can be used to extract the details that are required from handwritten time sheets and calculate the pay
from their stipulated contracts and pay them as well (by even ordering the necessary bank transactions).

♦ Client Information Updates

↬ Any organization that has implemented a CRM faces all sorts of related issues-the client-base is spread across many geographies,
there are frequent calls to the back-end databases,and updates and changes are coming from all sources.

↬ RPA can process these requests in batches instead of one after the other,reducing the load on the back-end systems and
ensuring better performance and data quality across the whole application.

♦ Renewal Process

↬ Irrespective of industry, the client renewal process is in general a complex process,but not necessarily due to exceptions and complications, but rather to the number of operations and the synchronization between different departments and systems.

↬ Robots can take over the entire process, starting with the standardized communication with client,processing the changes,
drafting the documents and updating the internal systems accordingly.

♦ Statement Reconciliation

↬ Financial statement reconciliation covers all the operations (done mostly by the accounting teams)of matching orders,
payments, losses, margins, and so on, with accounts and financial statements.

It is a common process that an organization needs to manage in order to ensure clean records and reliable financial documents.

↬ This process is well handled by the RPA software robots. Once they are set up,they can seamlessly replace the human beings
who would have to do these jobs, from the beginning to the end.

♦ Customer Complaint Processing

↬ Irrespective of industry,customer complaints are always on the radar.Their number and substance is an important indicator of the business health and good predictor of the future of the company.

↬ Through RPA, customer complaints can be categorized based on keywords and other criteria, and possible solutions can be
suggested to the customers right away.

By doing so, the customer complaints can be answered 24 x 7 instead of 8 hours a day and only 5 days a week.


Robotic Process Automation or RPA is non-invasive

↬ It does not require any major IT architecture changes or deep integration with the underlying systems.
RPA offers a reliable, fast and cost-efficient solution for a “light-weight” integration into processes and IT assets.


Robotic Process Automation or RPA is easy to scale

↬ The amount of work involved by a process can vary, as changes are likely to occur in most business environments.
If an RPA solution is used, companies can easily adapt by scaling the solution up or down, depending on the requirements.


There are 2 types of robots, from the point of view of human intervention

1.Attended Robots

2.Unattended Robots

1.Attended Robots

↬ These robots work on the same workstations as humans and execute some tasks of the entire process,
after which they require human intervention.

Attended Robots are generally used in business scenarios that require input or decision making from the human user,
or when a well-defined schedule cannot be applied due to the volatility of the process.

Following are the some specific scenarios in which Attended Robots are preferable?

↬ The automated process relies on data that needs to be validated by humans.

↬ The robot assists the human directly in performing his tasks(a robot filling in data for a call center operator)

↬ The automated task cannot be scheduled beforehand and needs manual triggering (a robot that gathers data
in real-time about a customer calling the support line)

How Attended Robots should be?

↬ Responsive: When triggered (either manually, or automatically), the Attended Robot needs to do his part
in order to enable the human to take care of the non-automated tasks.

↬ User-friendly: The human user needs to be able to operate the robot easily.

↬ Flexibility: The Attended Robot needs to be able to navigate between different applications and environments.

2.Unattended Robots

↬ These robots work independently of any human interaction.Also they work on separate virtual work stations.

Unattended Robots are generally used in manual, repetitive, highly rule-based back office activities,
which do not require any human intervention.

Following are the some specific scenarios in which Unattended Robots are preferable?

↬ Tasks must be completed continuously in a batch-mode model(a robot that validates bank payments).

↬ Large amounts of data have to be gathered, sorted, analyzed, and distributed
among key players in an organization (a robot processing claims for a health insurance company).

↬ The output of the automated process is needed as an input for humans in their work
(a robot that processes financial statements from subsidiaries from different countries).

How unattended Robots should be?

↬ Flexible to deploy on virtual or remote environments: since the human intervention is minimal(or absent),
the Unattended Robots are generally deployed to virtual or remote environments.

↬ Easy to scale: the Unattended Robots need to accommodate variation of task and data volumes.

↬ Accurate: again, because human intervention lacks or is minimal, the outputs have to be reliable.

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

Thank you for visiting this blog☕️

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