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More CIOs are turning to an emerging technology practice called robotic process automation (RPA) to streamline enterprise operations and reduce costs. With RPA, businesses can automate mundane rules-based business processes, enabling business users to devote more time to higher-value tasks. Others see RPA fitting into a larger context, as they take a more deliberate path to adoption, seeking to understand RPA's potential to work alongside machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) tools.
Here CIO.com takes a look at what robotic process automation really is, and how CIOs can make the most of RPA in alignment with business goals.
What is robotic process automation?
RPA is an application of technology aimed at automating business processes. Using RPA tools, a company can configure software, or a “robot,” to capture and interpret applications for processing a transaction, manipulating data, triggering responses and communicating with other digital systems, according to the Institute for Robotic Process Automation and Artificial Intelligence.
Inclusion of the term "automation" may cause some to confuse RPA with ML and AI. RPA can include ML or AI, but it is governed by set business logic and structured inputs, and its rules don't deviate, whereas ML and AI technologies can be trained to make judgments about unstructured inputs.
RPA scenarios span a wide spectrum, ranging from something as simple as generating an automatic response to an email to deploying thousands of bots, each programmed to complete a specific task, to automate jobs in an ERP system. Insurers use RPA to pipe policy management data into a claims processing application, rather than having humans type them in from their computers.
Enterprises are looking to RPA to automate legacy business processes because their talent, technology and time resources are constrained, Dave Kuder, a principal with Deloitte Consulting LLP, told CIO.com. With RPA, CIOs can complete in days...