Robotic Process Automation

This article is based on Robotic Processing Automation webinar with Mr. Noviadi Suryadarma the Regional OPS Manager in GoJek as the speaker.

Robotic Process Automation is a technology that allows robots in the form of software to do repetitive task on the rules that has been set by the engineer. Some duties that in the past often done manually by human using the user interface that employs keyboard and mouse, now can be automated using robot. The engineer program the RPA robot to duplicate the human behavior but with more accuracy, speed, and consistency. It can do repetitive task in orderly fashion as long as it is programmed correctly.

RPA itself stands for:

· Robotic: an entity that has the capability to mimic human actions

· Process: A sequence of steps that lead to a meaningful activity of task is called process

· Automation: Tasks that happen automatically without human interaction

The evolution of RPA can be seen from figure below

Nowadays, RPA robots are used in various fields because they can do specific tasks that require high accuracy, example are as follows:

· Extract structured data from documents

· Log into and run applications

· Open emails and attachments

· Fill in forms

· Read and write to databases

· Make calculations

· Connect to other systems

Despite the advantage of RPA robots compared to human when doing repetitive tasks, there might be some tasks that still needs human verification or task that has not been able to be fully automated. The following are some ways human and robots can work together:

The work that is done by joint cooperation between robots and humans can be described as:

· On demand: the human user manually triggers the robot when needed.

· Side by side: the robot works behind the scene while human acts as controller.

· Interactive: The user engages with the robot before, during, and after the business operation.

· Always on: The robot starts the process automatically without needing human to trigger the robot

· Interconnected: a coordinated collection of process run and react to each other

RPA has been proved to be useful in some industries such as:

Benefit of RPA to the industry:

· Scale faster by speeding the decision-making speed

· Reducing cost by automating time consuming activities

· Growing revenue by reducing cycle time and capturing additional revenue streams

· Enhancing customer experience by providing better consumer service

· Improving compliance to the regulations by ensuring the automation to follow the business regulation

· Building foundation for AI by collecting, cleaning and organizing data