What is robotic process automation?

It has been wondered whether Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are just buzzwords. What is RPA and what are the benefits of it? Robotic Process Automation refers to technology that can be used to automate routine tasks in various processes. The original core idea of RPA was to mimic the tasks performed by humans. Manual work phases that do not require particular decision-making skills or expertise are a constant drain on a company’s employee resources, which could be spent on more challenging tasks. In situations like these, RPA can free up to 90 % of work time from manual tasks, allowing employees to spend more time on productive tasks.

How does a software robot work?

A robot is a software application installed on a workstation or virtual server, which can be programmed to perform various workflows within a company's existing applications. Robots use the same user interfaces as humans, so their workflows mainly consist of logging into applications, moving files and folders, copy-pasting data, filling in forms and more. In most cases there is no need to make any changes to the applications where the robot will operate. This makes the implementation and development of robots much easier.

Robots are able to perform certain tasks independently, like sorting e-mail messages based on their contents. Alternatively, robots can work together with humans, so that humans can direct robot’s work in more detail. The robot will still perform the manual and repetitive parts of the task, for example retrieving various types of data from different systems. Human can easily specify the information that is needed and after receiving these specifications, the robot will begin to perform the retrieval tasks and will notify when the task is complete and where the data is stored.

Our free RPA Buyer’s Guide contains tips on implementing an RPA solution.

What are the benefits of RPA?

In addition to significant cost savings, RPA provides other benefits as well. Allowing employees to focus on areas, such as developing business and customer services, or solving more demanding issues, will have a positive effect on employee satisfaction. RPA will also allow companies to commence projects that require a large amount of work hours. Robots can work on these projects that would otherwise be too time-consuming. Robots do not make typos and they never get tired of manual work. They do not care about their work environment and even report their own errors to their users.
A robot is not suitable for all tasks, however. Human experts and professionals will still be needed in the future for tasks requiring human intelligence, but robots can serve humans along the way as tireless helpers.

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RPA customer experiences

Staria has implemented RPA solutions of all sizes for both Staria’s internal needs and external customers. Here are the experiences of three customers.

Kiinteistömaailma - Getting the company's CRM in order

The goal of the RPA project for Kiinteistömaailma was to organize the company's CRM system. A robot named Hubert reviewed the company's customer register and removed duplicate contact details, as it was programmed to do. “The greatest benefited is having an orderly customer register, thanks to which real estate agents can easily find their own customers. There was a large number of duplicates in our system, and the project was so huge that not even a year of employee hours would have been enough”, states Mirka Mäkinen, Director of Development for Kiinteistömaailma’s information systems.

Read the entire Kiinteistömaailma customer story here>>

Newsec - Employee satisfaction and efficiency

Newsec started with an ambitious project. A robot named Ruttunen was tasked to invoice sauna shifts and parking reservations by copying information from a digital maintenance log into the invoicing system. “Employee satisfaction was the main reason for commencing the project, however. We wanted to free up our experts’ time for more significant tasks”, states Lauri Pulkka, Development Manager at Newsec.

Hämeen Autovaruste - Increasing the efficiency of manual projects

The employees of Hämeen Autovaruste became interested in RPA, because they identified several sectors where the addition of a robot could facilitate manual work. “The robot performs the following tasks: Enters purchase invoices into the system, saves journal vouchers, runs reports, retrieves e-invoicing addresses for corporate customers from online sources into the customer register, finds business IDs for customer information, and marks companies that are no longer in operation”, lists Jaana Järvelä, Financial Manager at Hämeen Autovaruste.

Find out more RPA implementation from our free Robotic Process Automation Implementation Guide.

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