How AI and RPA are being used to Automate Digital Tasks
Organizations are persistently looking for ways to attain three things instantaneously:
- Achieve customer satisfaction that leads to customer loyalty,
- Increase employee morale that also leads to employee devotion, and
- Reduce the costs of operations.
While this may seem like an unachievable task, it has become possible. Thanks to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Robotic Process Automation (RPA). The combination of these two innovative techniques has resulted in better results in achieving the three aforementioned goals.
The right way of deploying both technologies perfectly is to use them with the right organizational structure. Let’s look at them both for better understanding.
RPA: Enhancing People with Process Automation
RPA is a robotic software that aids in automating and standardizing the business process, which follows repeated tasks. A programmed task set for RPA robots will perform it the same way every time. There is no room for improvisation in how it is performed. These robots are not capable of learning new techniques as a result of repetition.
Consider RPA bots as virtual assistants to employees. This does not reduce the employee number but rather helps them in offloading mundane tasks. These robots complete the same tasks efficiently, which would make a human rather bored. Therefore, increasing efficiency overall for an organization.
The following ways have proved beneficial for organizations that use RPA to augment their employees:
- Enhancing Accuracy: human errors are minimized, therefore, reducing associated costs.
- Better Compliance: audit trails are created easily, which follows rules with precision.
- Increased Efficiency: tasks completed with RPA bots are completed 4 to 5 times faster than done by a human.
- Reliability: minimized delays because bots work round-the-clock.
- Higher Employee Morale: since employees do not have to spend time on monotonous tasks, they are free to focus on being productive.
Let us analyze an example.
Consider a financial institution that has a great Fraud Detection process. Using an RPA bot can enhance the efficiency of this process since they are great for automating forthright tasks. An agent will initiate the process by detecting a fraud alert after interacting with the customer. Once the agent and the customer come to a conclusion, the agent closes the case by filling out a standard form.
Following strict SLAs, the agent sends emails to the concerned departments as per the standard of procedures. The financial institution automates the wrap-up process by deploying RPA robots. Since these tasks were repetitive, stressful, lengthy, and time-consuming, using RPA is the best option. The agent is now free to work on the next case, which increases the efficiency and accuracy of both the agent and the process.
Considering businesses, which have a more complex process require additional technology. Artificial Intelligence can help in this regard.
Enhancing Automation with Artificial Intelligence When compared with RPA robots, AI is a simulation of human intelligence using machines. These processes include:
- Learning: procuring required information along with the rules for its routine.
- Reasoning: reaching conclusions based on rules and context.
- Self-correction: improvising based on system failures and successes.
The most popular and widely used AI applications include machine vision, chatbots, image recognition, and sentiment analysis, and speech recognition. AI aims at replacing human labor while automating end-to-end encryptions. The main difference between RPA and AI is that RPA is attended to automation while AI is unattended automation.
RPA robots work on structured inputs and logic while AI creates its own logic using unstructured inputs. When organizations aim to combine the two, it can create a self-sufficient process that works in favor of the employees as well as the mission and vision of the organization.
Organizations are designed on both structured and unstructured data that requires the deployment of both RPA robots and AI to work at full capacity. This is the only way to automate the process from start to finish.
Enabling End-to-End Automation
A fully autonomous structure is the secret of providing self-service options that most customers desire. Consider the example of a bank that has an autonomous structure for opening a bank account. The deployment of RPA bots and AI can save the bank a lot of human involvement cost and gain them a highly satisfied customer.
The availability of a chatbot (AI) can verify the type of bank account a customer needs and directs the customer to the required form. Once the form is filled, it is passed on to another robot (RPA) that initiates the bank opening process. Back-end tasks like credit history and verification process through social networks can be done through both AI and RPA bots.
An OCR robot verifies the documentation that is provided by the customer and in case of discrepancies, human involvement is adducted. Based on the response provided by the human input, the robot evolves and adapts to a similar response in the future. Once all the documentation is verified, the bank account is opened successfully and confirmation emails sent to the required parties.