Where RPA falls short

There are many RPA (robotic process automation) solutions out there in the market today. The reason for this is quite simple, companies are looking to automate to save time and overall cost. Once upon a time RPA achieved that purpose, however, while it may be easy to implement, it is no longer the viable option. In this post, I will go over what RPA is, its benefits, drawbacks, and where the future of automation is going.

First, what is RPA? Robotic process automation is the process of compiling many actions a user would do to complete a task. No, it isn’t a physical robot or Dalek from Doctor Who, but that would be pretty cool. So, for instance, if the process to add clients to Salesforce CRM was the same every time, someone could record the clicks and mouse movements of a user throughout the process. Then, a computer would emulate those actions, thus creating an automation. Since the process is repeatable, the robot could handle that no problem.

The benefit of RPA is that it is easy to implement since the user would just need to record what they do in their current day-to-day. Once implemented, that person could just click a button and the robot would handle all the clicking and movement to get the task done.

The benefits of integrating RPA are truly felt immediately upfront, however, in the end RPA’s limitations are not only hindering but damaging to daily workflow processes. Below are just some examples:

1. Can only copy movements & clicks.
2. Optical Character Recognition (OCR) Outdated
3. Can only follow input rules or commands.

It can only emulate clicks and movements, not everything a human does. It can’t read text in an image or PDF document, let alone understand what that text means. It can handle identical tasks, but what if there is a difference or edge case that needs to be considered? 

RPA struggles to understand back-end processes such as data analysis, integrations, reading documents (PDF, CSV, or TXT), so when it comes to investing in an automation solution, companies are valuing their choice in intelligent process automation! This is where the future of automation is going.

This is where Automation Hero comes in, our Hero Platform_ is saving you time and money, because we’re providing you a true AI capable of handling the advanced tasks such as analysis, decision making, and workflow processes! Let’s look at a few examples of how  Automation Hero provides amazing ROI.

RPA vs automated invoice processing

Invoice processing, currently companies have some options handling this, but these options are normally time consuming and costly.

1. Designating an employee or team to use their entire time and energy to review each incoming invoice.
2. Outsourcing, designating this assignment to a third party, and this can lead to accrued costs based on the number of invoices.

Both of these options sound great  for the short term, but as your business scales they become less and less viable. Our Hero Platform_ is an end-to-end solution designed with an AI that can read and understand almost any invoice workflow process! Furthermore, there are no accrued fees based on the number of invoices or workflow processes, so you don’t have to worry if the workflow will scale with your business. 

Bots can’t process or categorize

Text extraction, as we mentioned earlier, there is absolutely no way RPA could read an email, and perform an appropriate action based on the data it analyzed. Automation Hero’s platform doesn’t have that limitation. Below are capabilities of a true AI or as we like to say Intelligent process automation:

1. OCR (Optical character recognition), this includes files, emails, handwritten, and images.
2. Integrate with modern business workflow software like Salesforce or Gmail.
3. Update or Notify, this means our Hero Platform can take the information it was tasked to collect, and update that information using a workflow. This can also be timed based or nearly instantaneous

Example: Client that has been with your business for about 10 years, and needs some information updated (address, name, and phone number). Integrating our Hero 

Integrating our Hero Platform_ allows that customer’s information to be updated simply from them sending an email with the new information! Yes, it’s that simple and no worries about updating incorrectly. There’s a time set function, so you can design a review process in between if you choose. Keeping that human-in-the-loop is always on our mind! 

Now, these aren’t the only use cases which require a more advanced automation. Whatever it is, Automation Hero is here to help!