What is RPA?
Objective: Define Robotic Process Automation and get started with Automation 360
Before we dive too deep into the technical implementations of Automation 360, it’s helpful to build a strong foundation on what robotic process automation is, and what robotic process automation is not. Robotic Process Automation (or RPA as it’s often referred to) is a technology that allows users to create, configure, and run software “bots” to emulate human interaction within their systems, to automate business processes. The specialized software bots in question provide value to organizations by automating high-volume, repetitive, rule-based tasks, in an auditable and reliable way while freeing up humans to focus on more cognitive tasks which may require subjective decision making or emotional intelligence.
Automation 360 bots can do everything from capturing data from applications (excel, text, forms, web, etc) to navigating websites, performing data entry, and even interfacing with web services. While that all sounds fun from a technology perspective, the value provided to organizations by RPA is immense. Organizations have maximum flexibility to scale up or down the number of bots working on any particular tasks as workload demands. This also allows organizations to get more done with the same staffing levels as certain tasks can be automated by bots to make the work for humans more effective and more efficient.
To Do
Take a look at the following video to learn a bit more on “What is RPA?”. Pay close attention to the benefits of RPA as you start to think about optimizing different processes within your own organization.
As a recap, to that video, we know that RPA bots are fast, accurate, can scale quickly, and have a ton of compatibility with existing systems – whether they are graphical user interface (GUI) driven or application programming interface (API) driven. For an organization, RPA bots can improve employee productivity, provide an improved customer experience, and have full auditing capabilities for increase compliance.
Sign up for the Getting Started with RPA learning trail on Automation Anywhere university.
This trail is designed for everyone who is new to Robotic Process Automation. The courses in this trail focus on basic RPA concepts and use cases as well as walk users through the process of building their first bot.
Check out this industry analyst report on RPA from HFS – Top 10 Robotic Process Automation Products 2020.
It will give you an overview of the RPA sector, and why Automation Anywhere’s product and roadmap stand out from the rest.
Summary
RPA bots are specialized software robots that automate high-volume, repetitive, rule-based tasks in an auditable and reliable way. These bots can help augment the tasks done by humans, and can relieve staff from monotonous, repetitive work – enabling them to focus on higher value tasks.
For more information on ‘What is RPA?’, check out the Resources column to the right.
