A Complete Guide to Robotic Process

Automation

By Aitomation`s COO Saad Ehsan

Preface

This book is primarily a compilation of the best Robotic Automation material out there. The

book is meant for people who are trying to understand what Robotic Process Automation is and

how it can be used in their respective business.

Acknowledgment

I would like to thank my colleague’s Shaharyar Ahsan (Chief Marketing Officer) and Umair

Ahsan (Chief Executive officer) for helping me put together this E-book.

Contents What is Robotic process Automation? .......................................................................................................... 5

Top 5 reasons why you should automate your business process. ................................................................. 6

BPA,where it works and where it doesn’t ................................................................................................... 11

AREAS WHERE BPA IS PRODUCING GREAT RESULTS .............................................................. 12

Difficult decision-making that is machine-addressable .......................................................................... 12

Sensor-based tracking and alerts ............................................................................................................. 13

Self-service employee portals ................................................................................................................. 13

Manual tasks that are risky or may cause injury ..................................................................................... 13

IT back office processes .......................................................................................................................... 13

Research .................................................................................................................................................. 14

WHEN AUTOMATION ISN’T A GOOD IDEA .................................................................................. 14

Don’t fear rise of robots .............................................................................................................................. 16

Automation can make IT departments more strategic ........................................................................ 17

Case Studies and Use-Cases ....................................................................................................................... 18

Data entry automation ............................................................................................................................. 18

Real estate data entry work ..................................................................................................................... 20

Automation of website ............................................................................................................................ 22

References .................................................................................................................................................. 24

What is Robotic process Automation?

A software 'robot' is a software application that replicates the actions of a human being

interacting with the user interface of a computer system. For example, the execution of data entry

into a computer system - or indeed a full end-to-end business process - would be a typical

activity for a software robot. The software robot operates on the user interface(UI) in the same

way that a human would; this is a significant departure from traditional forms of IT integration

which have historically been based on Application Programming Interfaces (or APIs) - that is to

say, machine-to-machine forms of communication based on data layers which operate at an

architectural layer beneath the UI.

A quiet revolution with a potential impact on the IT workforce reminiscent of outsourcing may

be under way in the form of robotic process automation.

Geared toward automating a variety of business and computing processes typically handled by

humans, RPA will stir passions at organizations that deploy the technology, with its potential to

slash jobs, shake up the relevant skills mix, and if implemented strategically, stave off the specter

of outsourcing.

The reason: Thanks to advances in software and artificial intelligence, automation has its sights

on higher-value tasks than ever before -- and it’s already having an impact at organizations

currently deploying these systems.

What exactly is robotic process automation?

Robotic process automation (RPA) is the application of technology that allows employees in a

company to configure computer software or a “robot” to capture and interpret existing

applications for processing a transaction, manipulating data, triggering responses and

communicating with other digital systems.

Any company that uses labor on a large scale for general knowledge process work, where people

are performing high-volume, highly transactional process functions, will boost their capabilities

and save money and time with robotic process automation software.

Just as industrial robots are remaking the manufacturing industry by creating higher production

rates and improved quality, RPA “robots” are revolutionizing the way we think about and

administer business processes, IT support processes, workflow processes, remote infrastructure

and back-office work. RPA provides dramatic improvements in accuracy and cycle time and

increased productivity in transaction processing while it elevates the nature of work by removing

people from dull, repetitive tasks.

The technology of RPA can be applied specifically to a wide range of industries.

Process automation

Technologies like presentation-layer automation software – a technology that mimics the steps of

a rules-based, non-subjective process without compromising the existing IT architecture – are

able to consistently carry out prescribed functions and easily scale up or down to meet demand.

Process automation can expedite back-office tasks in finance, procurement, supply chain

management, accounting, customer service and human resources, including data entry, purchase

order issuing, creation of online access credentials, or business processes that require “swivel-

chair” access to multiple existing systems.

IT support and management

Automated processes in the remote management of IT infrastructures can consistently investigate

and solve problems for faster process throughput. RPA can improve service desk operations and

the monitoring of network devices. Separating scalability from human resources allows a

company to handle short-term demand without extra recruiting or training.

Automated assistant

As in voice recognition software or automated online assistants, developments in how machines

process language, retrieve information and structure basic content mean that RPA can provide

answers to employees or customers in natural language rather than in software code. This

technology can help to conserve resources for large call centers and for customer interaction

centers.

As RPA brings more technologically-advanced solutions to businesses around the world,

operating models that adopt automation, whether in-house or offshored, will cut costs, drive

efficiency and improve quality.

Top 5 reasons why you should automate your business process.

Do you get a lot of emails requesting approval? Do you use a lot of paper forms to track

processes and tasks? Do you know there are bottlenecks, but don’t have the data to prove where

they are? Do you wish you could change a process quickly, but are buried in hierarchy?

You are experiencing the stress and tension of an un-automated workflow. A business process

workflow is simply a predictable and repetitive sequence that travels from initiation to

completion.

What would happen to your inbox if you could simply hit an ‘Approve’ button for all requests

that came in? What if you could get rid of all paper forms forever? What if you could deeply

analyze any business process to know how long it takes and where the hangups are? What if you

could instantly improve a process and have it updated for everyone in your organization? What if

your business process wasn’t dependent on a process owner, but worked seamlessly in the

background?

Here are the five best reasons to ditch your paper forms and email requests and start automating

your business processes.

1. Streamline communication in your business process:

Emails, sticky notes, and water cooler comments are impossible to organize around a single

repeated process. An automated workflow means a simple, streamlined communication process

with one dashboard to see all of your requests. Each initiated workflow has its own line of

communication to account for any irregularities and discussion in the business process. The work

just flows – no email addresses required.

2. Enforce accountability :

When you automate your workflow, you create an owner for each step of the process. Initiations,

approvals, rejections, and input are all bound to an individual who performed the action. By

enabling that level of information transparency in your business process, you enforce

accountability on yourself and your colleagues. A great workflow management system will also

give you insight into who gets their job done quickly and who needs help to handle the load.

3. Minimize costs due to manual errors and inefficiency:

With an automated workflow, you bypass the expensive costs associated with errors and

inefficiencies when a person is expected to own a business process. Late payments, slow sales

approvals, and payments for goods never received all become very expensive errors. Your

automated business process can show you the current state of any item and make sure these

careless mistakes don’t take place.

4. Develop an insight into the evolution and repercussions of your business process:

Imagine you have automated your business processes, streamlined your employee base to use

this new system, and things have been flowing smoothly for the last 2 months. Now think of

what you could do with all the data that has been accumulating? You could know how many

requests came in, how many were approved, how many rejected, how long each one took, and

which step in the process takes the longest.

Since the mode of communication is streamlined and accumulation of data is centralised in an

automated workflow tool, you get insights that tell you if your current business process is

bottling up at some point – if it’s actually making life easy for your employees or if it’s making

things more complicated. This is probably the best input you can have for all your business

process management needs.

5. Establish a clear approval hierarchy :

Organization hierarchy is seldom the same as the approval hierarchy for a business process. A

well-implemented business process workflow tool, will not only have these approval hierarchies

codified into itself, but will also ensure that each process has its own specific hierarchy as

deemed by it. The boss doesn’t have to be on every step (unless she wants to) and you don’t have

to have secret pre-meetings in the bathroom before getting a project approved!

An automated business process workflow is exactly the thing you have been dreaming about. Get

started with your own and see what you’ve been missing.

"If you want to go fast go alone...if you want to go further..go together"

If the industry wins, we are all happy.

BPA,where it works and where it doesn’t

Technology is the enabler of business process automation (BPA), and it can automate workflows

to the point where human intervention is unnecessary. Automation can save time and money,

delight customers who no longer have to wait in line for a person to assist them with a

transaction, and preclude human error.

But not every business process is a good fit for automation, so it’s incumbent upon companies to

determine which processes are best suited to automation and which ones are best handled by

humans. How do companies select which business processes to automate?

Companies start by looking at the strategic and operating drivers for process improvement in

their organizations and industries. For instance, in today’s global market, nearly every company

is feeling pressure to get goods to market quickly and to be first to market whenever possible. In

a highly price-competitive environment, companies are also under great pressure to economize

their operations to improve their margins, since it isn’t always possible to raise prices.

Consequently, companies look to automate business processes that are time- and resource-

intensive operationally, that are subject to human error, and that can be accelerated with

automated process improvements achievable through machines and technology. If automating

business processes speeds product to market, improves revenue capture, or reduces operating

expenses so margins can improve if pricing needs to be kept flat, so much the better.

AREAS WHERE BPA IS PRODUCING GREAT RESULTS

Role and repetitive tasks

Assembly work on the manufacturing floor, automated project management task and status

software updates, auto security monitoring and lockdowns of facilities, time tracking, and

automated process flows for order filling, inventory management, shipping, purchasing, and

billing are examples of rote and repetitive business processes that are predictable and

manageable through automation. By reducing the manual work in these business processes, the

tasks can be done uniformly and with a dramatically reduced chance of human error. Human

resources are also freed up to do work that demands more critical thinking.

Difficult decision-making that is machine-addressable

A great example is the credit or loan desk in a bank branch or back office. A customer comes in

and wants to be qualified for a credit card or a loan. An employee in lending who has the loan

app process down but has only a limited background in underwriting uses software automation in

the loan approval process to run a financial analysis and credit check of the customer. Almost

instantaneously, the loan officer is able to tell the customer the amount of a loan she qualifies for

and under what interest rate and other conditions.

Meanwhile, in the bank’s card services area, a processing clerk is automatically notified at his

desk by fraud detection software whenever a potentially suspicious fraud pattern emerges. He

immediately locks down the card and calls the cardholder.

Without the help of automated decision-making, neither the loan officer nor the card service

clerk would be able to act on these business scenarios so quickly. The company saves money; it

reduces the risk of an employee making a decision on credit that might not be sound; and it

pleases the customer because she gets an answer right away.

Sensor-based tracking and alerts

Companies are beginning to leverage Internet of Things (IoT) technology like sensors and

networks to propel their automation. The goal for companies is to achieve end-to-end visibility

of vital business processes that occur outside the enterprise walls. Examples include the

placement of sensors on cargo-bearing containers that track container movements and issue alerts

when container seals are broken, or when the temperature and humidity environmental

conditions malfunction in containers carrying medicine or foodstuffs.

Self-service employee portals

From anywhere and at any time, employees can now make changes to their 401k investment

options, other HR elections, and even take online training courses that further their career

development. The system registers these changes and tracks progress without the requirement of

a trainer or an HR person to facilitate the process.

Manual tasks that are risky or may cause injury

Increasingly, companies want to avoid sending employees to do hazardous or risky jobs.

Automation contained in unmanned trucks, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and robots can

perform and report on many of these tasks. The job might be to scout a difficult and treacherous

patch of rugged terrain, or to enter a highly radioactive facility, or to walk miles of concrete

aisles in a warehouse day in, day out — when a robot can do the walking and pick the orders for

you.

IT back office processes

Nighttime data center operations and batch processing are largely automated in most companies.

This eliminates the need for most nighttime IT operations staff, with staff only being called into

action via auto alert if a processing situation arises that requires human intervention.

Research

The benefits of automated database searches that use big data as well as traditional records are

just beginning to be recognized for their ability to replace functions that were formerly and

laboriously done by staff. Among the research repositories being tapped with automated business

processes are crime records, legal case law, life sciences research, weather and climate research,

insurance and financial risk analysis databases, manufacturing/engineering parts cross references

and healthcare records and demographics.

Document management

This has been incorporated in business processes that range from purchase order and order

processing to budget approvals. Electronic requests, signatures, approvals, and archiving are all

orchestrated into an end-to-end, paperless workflow.

WHEN AUTOMATION ISN’T A GOOD IDEA

Companies with the highest mastery of BPA understand when automation can get in the way of

vital business processes. One cardinal rule is to think very carefully before introducing

automation to your customer-facing processes.

A customer might appreciate being able to automatically book a hotel or a travel reservation

without having to wait to speak with a human agent, but she is considerably less appreciative of

complicated call attendant automation with multi-layered, drill-down phone trees, and sometimes

a phone disconnect at the end of the process. In the customer’s mind, this is the company telling

her that it doesn’t want to be engaged with unless the customer is planning to buy something.

Decisions that humans need to make are not suited to total automation. For example, last year, I

visited with the CIO of a major European credit card processor. The company had just automated

its data center for total system failover and disaster recovery. Despite this fully automated

capability, the CIO insisted that the business process wrapping around the automation include a

final human decision that would be made by a senior executive on whether to push the disaster

recovery and failover button.

Some companies that have introduced voice- and visual-based automation discovered that the

automation’s sensory and/or translational mechanisms are unable to capture and respond to all of

the varieties of information coming in from the physical environment that they are expected to

interpret. Natural language translators (e.g., from English to Spanish) are a prime example.

Enunciation and translation aren’t always perfect, so you run the risk of introducing

miscommunication that can generate an error in a business process.

The optical sensors on automated vehicles can miss vital environmental cues, resulting in

accidents. In these cases, the environments that optical automation operates in should be tightly

circumscribed so that less information is left to interpretation.

Don’t fear rise of robots

"Robotic process automation (RPA), artificial intelligence, machine learning and autonomics —

which can automate a number of IT tasks and enable those outside of IT to create software and

intelligently manage IT infrastructure — have been touted as an alternative to traditional human-

based IT services outsourcing for years. This automation of IT and business functions

traditionally performed by skilled professionals has been called a job killer.

But a recent survey reveals that IT workers are not worried about the impact of RPA, artificial

intelligence, or other forms of automation on their job security. The survey, conducted by

Spiceworks and commissioned by Arago (an enterprise IT automation provider), targeted 196 IT

workers at the administrative level of medium to large enterprises who were not purchase

decision makers.

Automation can make IT departments more strategic

Nearly all respondents (93 percent) said that automated tools do not put their jobs at risk and a

similar number (91 percent) do not believe that automated IT tools are the beginning of an AI

takeover In fact, 88 percent said that automation either has or likely will free up their time to

focus on more strategic initiatives. The biggest anticipated benefits of increased automation were

increased free time to focus on important IT initiatives (88 percent), increased efficiency (85

percent), faster problem solving (54 percent), and a reduction in errors or compliance

reinforcement (54 percent).

The majority of IT workers surveyed said they already use traditional automation in some

capacity. The most common automation processes or tools being used are group policies (91

percent), custom scripts or process (81 percent), and deployment or update tools (63 percent).

An overwhelming majority (85 percent) indicated that intellectually stimulating and learning or

development activities are most important to their job satisfaction. Today, their time is split

between menial and more stimulating tasks—most often troubleshooting or assisting users (92

percent), modernizing technology (92 percent), routine maintenance (91 percent), future IT

planning and strategy (84 percent), and ticket documentation and reporting (75 percent). Their

most preferred tasks are creating innovative technology or solutions (72 percent) and strategic

planning (60 percent) and their least favorite work is ticket documentation and reporting (59

percent) and routine maintenance (39 percent).

Those surveyed said that they would prefer to spend their free time during the workday

innovating around technology and solutions (72 percent), modernizing existing technology (63

percent), and undergoing training or other development (55 percent)."

Case Studies and Use-Cases

Data entry automation

Context:

In many many offices and workplaces, you would find countless papers and/or people who have

to get information form one source, manipulate it and copy it to another. Aitomation was

appointed to automate the task of one such office place and here are our findings:

Problems:

Almost all employees spend 1 -3 hours daily for some redundant and repetitive work such as

looking up data and copy pasting it. Few employees were specially hired to make sure that the

data is correct and that they had to manually copy paste data from various soruces or look up

from paper documents. There was no proper way of handling errors. All of this was time

consuming, frustrating for employees and with so many errors it was very inefficient.

Process:

The process was simple but due to human inefficiency and human errors, it was very slow.

1 – Read from source (either paper or computer)

2 – Manipulate data (from spreadsheet formulas to various other software)

3 – Use the new data to input into appropriate place

4 – Verify the data

5 – If problem exists, the process cannot be properly tracked.

Goal:

To streamline the process in a way that all human resource is used to optimize the process rather

than slow it. Make sure there are checks at various steps to make sure there are no errors. To

automate all of the tasks at hand from manual to data entry automation.

Real estate data entry work

Context

In the real estate business, property listings have to be updated on a daily basis. Mostly, this data

is gathered from multiple websites and then compiled into one Excel file for the Real Estate

agent. After having worked with a lot of Real estate companies, we at Aitomation realized that

there is a need to streamline this process meanwhile making it cost friendlier and efficient.

Challenges and concerns

A lot of real estate specialists were skeptics as to whether AItomation could really replace

manual labor with their technology and were resistant at first to try out our technology. Lake

County Real Estate Company that gathers data from 70 different websites consulted Aitomation,

after Aitomation`s proposal to their real estate needs.

After consultation with the company Aitomation found the following process for this particular

company.

Process

1. Visits a particular real estate website.

2. Searches for property listings.

3. Only takes those listings which are marked as “available”.

4. Starts gathering data about that particular property listing. The following data is collected

1. unit number,

2. list price,

3. bed & bath,

4. square feet,

5. address,

6. Zip code.

5. Does this for all other property listings available on that website.

6. Finally repeats the process for all other websites which our customer has specified.

Goal

Lake County Real Estate company after discussion sessions with Aitomation wanted to know if

this process could be automated. Since Aitomation had worked on similar projects for different

clients already, our developers got to work right away and provided our client with the perfect

solution and were able to automate the entire 6 processes. The process outlined above was

automated with our technology in a little over 2 weeks time.

Benefits

It took 2.5 minutes for an employee to retrieve data of one property listing from a particular

website and then to save it in Excel. For 70 websites it took them 29 man hours per day. Our

software does the same thing in 2.5 hours. Previously the work had a cost of $11,520 per month.

Aitomation helped him save $7500 per month.

Automation of website

Automation at its best

A website completely run by a computer

Context

To showcase our technology we at Aitomation undertook a bold project. A whole website that

requires no human input a website that is being completely run by a computer. The name of this

computer run website is 10bestquotes.com. Following is close look at how this is done.

This is how 10bestquotes works.

Process

1. The computer 10bestquotes.com/wp/login.php.

2. The computer enters the username and password.

3. Then clicks on “add new post”.

4. Then enters the name of the person in the tile of the WordPress new post. (the name of

the person is pre-given to the software )

5. Then the computer visits 10 different websites, looks for quotes by the said person and

retrieves 10 quotes. (The computer checks for repetitive posts, if a post is repeated, it was

immediately discarded in favor of one that is not).

6. The computer then numbers these quotes from 1 to 10.

7. Then pastes this data on the wordpress data entry fields.

8. Then the computer SEO optimizes this post. Enters the focus keyword, writes

metadescription.

9. Then the computer will select the category (genre)that this said person belongs to e.g

humour, philosophy etc

10. The computer then adds tags to the post. This is done by a quick Google search.

11. A featured image of the person will be taken to be displayed alongside the quotes.

12. The “featured image” feature on wordpress is clicked and the picture is uploaded there.

13. The title for the picture that is just uploaded is filled.

14. Lastly, the computer schedules its posts to be uploaded at given times.

References

http://www.aitomation.com/

http://aitomation.com/portfolio/data-entry-automation/

http://aitomation.com/portfolio/real-estate-data-entry-work/

http://aitomation.com/portfolio/automation-of-website/

http://www.infoworld.com/article/2898108/robotics/robotic-process-automation-new-it-job-killer.html

http://www.irpanetwork.com/what-is-robotic-process-automation/

http://www.zdnet.com/article/business-process-automation-where-it-works-and-where-it-doesnt/

http://www.cio.com/article/3014300/robotics/it-pros-don-t-fear-rise-of-the-robots.html

https://kissflow.com/process_playbook/5-reasons-why-you-should-automate-your-business-process/