Assigning static labels to concepts that are inherently dynamic has a way of unfairly narrowing perceptions. You might see a non-descript car pull beside you at a red light, sneer at its plain lines and dull color, and never realize that a 500 horsepower behemoth sits under its hood. The same applies to RPA, a relatively generic acronym that packs quite the punch if you spend some time to take a closer look.
RPA, short for Robotic Process Automation, is much like that car, often hidden behind a plain and ordinary moniker that obscures an utterly transformative ability to redefine operations and reveal hidden value. To demonstrate our point, Embark has put together a handful of real-world examples that highlight the tremendous utility, efficiency, and sweeping applications that RPA brings to an enterprise’s toolkit, streamlining processes and freeing resources as it goes. Don’t be misled by a seemingly docile little acronym, because RPA is a formidable weapon in the fight for market share and competitive advantage.
RPA Success in Banking
A large domestic bank wanted to improve their case handling efficiency by at least 20% within their payment protection insurance operations. It was imperative that whatever solutions the company implemented would have to be absolutely seamless as not to affect customer outcomes or daily operations. After a thorough analysis of their existing processes and systems, integrating RPA into their transaction processing or, to be more precise, the period end processing and reporting within their accounts payable, would provide the most significant improvement.
To meet the bank’s specific needs, RPA software was designed and rolled out in a proof-of-concept to test effectiveness, yielding outstanding preliminarily results. Although the project is ongoing, over 50 bots have thus far been integrated into their systems, automating over 25,000 operational requests per week across ten different subprocesses.
As a result of the successful implementation, the bank has realized a 40% rise in processing throughput for the invoice processing with the RPA providing the equivalent work of 80 employees for the price of 30 staff members. No additional physical space was needed since the workforce didn’t require expansion, 40% of quality control deficiencies were eliminated, and the entire solution is entirely scalable to quickly and easily expand or contract according to demand. Simply put, similar results and flexibility are impossible to accomplish without the use of RPA.
Deploying Bots in Financial Services
Given the nature of large, well-established financial services corporations, invoicing can be spread out between different languages, currencies, and formats – including both paper and digital. To address the inevitable revenue leakage that results from such splintered and varied procedures, a financial services provider used RPA to overhaul their invoicing systems and streamline the process by automating formerly laborious, error-prone procedures.
To address such specific needs, RPA bots were configured to close, consolidate, and report within their legal and external reporting functions. Natural language processing (NLP) technology was integrated with roughly 50 bots to scan and process fee schedules and invoices for a global client base, giving the company the ability to normalize the entire workflow despite varying languages and document formats. As a result of the efforts, the automated solution is yielding 96% accuracy in digitizing the invoicing documents – a significant accomplishment given many are handwritten and in different languages – with a drop in revenue leakage to 3-4% over 20,000 separate transactions and 500 invoices.
Automated Telecom Processes
A telecommunications giant was getting buried beneath an endless series of manual Excel entries that were bogging down a variety of back office operations. They sought the efficiencies afforded by RPA to automate some of those manual processes and free valuable resources that could be devoted elsewhere.
After a thorough analysis of their systems and processes, a consulting team identified nearly 100 back office areas and positions as prime candidates for automation. Once the bots were designed and implemented, the telecom titan was able to reduce manual Excel entries by 25% in the first year. By the time implementation is complete, that figure will rise to 35% while the aggregate results of all the automated processes implemented thus far have created a 21% reduction in total costs within their finance department.
As an example of the value created by RPA, the company was able to parlay those cost efficiencies into the construction of two new financial centers to better support their long-term growth strategy. What might have started as a straightforward goal to streamline back-office operations by reducing manual Excel entries became a sweeping, value-creating initiative that will directly impact the future success of the company.
The previous examples provide compelling evidence for RPA’s effectiveness within an enterprise across wide-ranging applications, lending both cost and operational efficiencies along the way. However, these examples also demonstrate the absolute need to properly analyze existing processes and systems to find the areas in which RPA can provide the most impact. Embark can help you identify those operational pain points and inefficiencies, allowing you to make the very most of this transformative technology. Don’t be fooled by a simple-sounding acronym; RPA has horsepower to spare and Embark is just the team to help you leverage its potency.
