26 Apr AmdoSoft Systems GmbH: New possibilities for RPA
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is now more and more an integral part of many automation and digitalisation concepts in companies and public administrations. But this alone is not enough. RPA must also constantly reinvent and develop itself. While taking on repetitive and data-rich tasks remains the core competence of an RPA bot, the possibilities are expanding. With collaborative approaches and networking with other systems, it is possible to get even more out of RPA.
Previous strength: Automating monotonous tasks
RPA solutions like AmdoSoft’s b4 Bot help to process large amounts of data quickly and without errors, as long as the associated processes are easy to define and often repeated. This way, accounting, logistics and warehousing, but also customer administration and HR management can be supported and the skilled workers there can be relieved. Instead of having to process one and the same task over and over again, as in the past, the specialists can now concentrate on the more complex processes. The bot, meanwhile, takes over the hard work – even around the clock if necessary, without breaks, without sick leave and without holiday entitlements.
New perspective: business workflows
However, not all business processes are simple and repetitive. More complex and demanding workflows that would have overwhelmed the simple RPA bots in the past should also be automated efficiently today. However, this requires some adjustments in the respective RPA tools as well as support from other technologies. For example, in order to cognitively capture, analyse and process documents, an RPA bot needs the appropriate complementary capabilities. Complex processes require holistic orchestration so that many individual work steps can be harmonised in a meaningful way. Often, a single RPA solution can no longer map this alone. That’s why RPA must often no longer be thought of as a stand-alone solution, but rather in conjunction with the diverse possibilities that modern digital technologies open up for us.
Networked systems and AI support
Conventional Robotic Process Automation has nothing to do with artificial intelligence in the strict sense. Normal RPA bots do not learn, but work tightly through their tasks based on previously determined flow charts. Give our b4 bot a million emails and instruct it to extract all the billing information from them and it will do it – and it will do it faster and more accurately than any human. But the more individual and abstract the input information is, the harder it is for the bot. This is where the networked systems approach comes in. Upstream machine learning programmes or AI-based applications such as chatbots can filter and order diffuse information in such a way that RPA bots can then process it. For example, an intelligent chatbot in dialogue with a customer could find out exactly the query information that an RPA bot needs to find the right answer in a large database.
More speed, more data and more work for robot colleagues
One of the great challenges for digital companies is the constant exponential development of storage capacities and transmission speeds. With the new 5G standard, we are now facing another significant evolutionary step. Soon, even more data will be filled into even larger databases in even less time using mobile devices. Data that can be used, but that human employees simply cannot handle. By then at the latest, software robots will be indispensable for all companies that want to move with the times. And by then at the latest, RPA systems must be so powerful that they can no longer simply handle the simplest processes. RPA must become more versatile, more flexible and more cooperative.
