International Journal of Computer Techniques -– Volume 5 Issue 6, Nov – Dec 2018

RESEARCH ARTICLE OPEN ACCESS

A Study of Robotic Process Automation

Use Cases Today for Tomorrow's Business
Yuvaraja Devarajan
(Information Technology Professional, California, USA)
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Abstract:
Historically,most of the companies across various industry domains,implemented multiple IT tools and
processes (workflows), that often had a mix of automated and manual steps. These manual steps
performed across these industries constantly required lot of manpower, generated human errors, reduced
employee motivation due to mundane repetitive tasks, degraded productivity, increased operational
expenses etc. The automated steps performed, had its own downside due to the implementation of
multiple IT automation solutions adding up license/development/maintenance cost, increased integration
timelines, continuous patching of code to accommodate underlying business logic changes. Businesses
today and over the years had been constantly looking for IT solutions that could holistically augment their
user’s performance improving customer satisfaction, increase productivity and quality, reduce costs etc.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has recently emerged as a game-changing technology outperforming
multiple solutions that evolved from Business Process Management (BPM) industry over the decades.
Robotic Process Automation, since its inception, due to its capability to automate rudimentary rules-based
tasks that are repetitive and manual, found its way across multiple industry domains, extending the use
cases and continuing to evolve with business requirements. This paper study RPA’s application across
various industry domains, benefits of RPA, and future of RPA.

Keywords —Robotic Process Automation, RPA,Cognitive Automation.

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autonomous execution of a combination of
I. INTRODUCTION processes, activities, transactions, and tasks in one
In today's fast paced work environment, its or more unrelated software systems to deliver a
critical for businesses to think better ways of result or service with human exception management”
engaging their employees, strategizing solutions to (IEEE Corporate Advisory Group 2017).
avoid rudimentary manual repetitive human Robotic Process Automation is a versatile, non-
workloads, in order to generate maximum invasive, scalable technology that can be readily
throughput.Robotic Process Automation, or RPA, is applied to automate use cases across many different
a new solution in business process management departments and industry processes. This study will
technology leveraging artificial intelligence and review the significance of RPA across various
machine learning which helps businesses industry domains specifically,
accomplish the above said goal. • Banking
The IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics • Audit
Engineers) Standards Association defines Robotic • Insurance
Process Automation (RPA): “A preconfigured • Retail
software instance that uses business rules and
• Manufacturing
predefined activity choreography to complete the

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 International Journal of Computer Techniques -– Volume 5 Issue 6, Nov – Dec 2018
Across these industries, RPA could cover challenges and helping organizations to grow into
application areas / use cases in various
rious business digital workplaces.
functions not limited to,
• Sales
III. BENEFITS OF RPA
• Finance
• Operations
• Procurement RPA can help businesses solve their systematic
automation challenges that are repetitive
repetit and rule-
• HR
based. It is a way of creating a virtual workforce
• Customer Support
that brings in extended capacity to businesses to
• IT gain a competitive edge in customer satisfaction
and enterprise agility. These Software Robots or
II. WHY RPA IMPLEMENTATIONS
ONS ARE ON THE Bots offers a magnitude of benefits, includi
including,
RISE? • Accuracy – To err is human; RPA can
significantly improve the accuracy of
Research studies across all the industry domains business operations since they are
on Strategic agenda for their businesses show impervious to human error.
Continuous improvement and Automation as top • Consistency – RPA can automate any
priority items. business process that is repeatable, and
rule based. It can execute business
processes
esses with extreme precision at very
high velocity that even smartest humans
cannot.
• Reliability – RPA with its inbuilt
capabilities including Monitoring and
Analytics, can offer detailed Audit logs
that allows users to oversee the health of
their systems and processes. If any
unexpected errors occur, the processes
could be configured to notify required
personnel and handle them appropriately
with specific workflows.
Fig 1. Strategic Priorities for Business (Adapted from [11]) • Scalability – RPA tools offer centralized
management of Bots that allows
businesses to Scale
ale up / down quick. With
For any organization, even the simplest
implest use of a simplified Bot architecture and ensuring
right technology can dramatically improve their the bots are audited in regular intervals
business efficiency and productivity. One way to post deployment, scaling up/down RPA
assure that your technology/system delivers desired infrastructure would be simple.
value to your business is to align it with your • Reduced Costs – In general, RPA Bots
strategic business priorities. Majority of global
g cost way less than a full-time
full employee.
organizations have already started their RPA By deploying bots to automate mundane
journey / have RPA on their roadmap since RPA business processes, RPA can significantly
evolved and proved itself as a solution that can reduce operation cost.
deliver significant productivity improvement and
Automate many of their rudimentary business tasks.
Due to its versatility, RPA is becoming a critical
software in solving systematic automation

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 International Journal of Computer Techniques -– Volume 5 Issue 6, Nov – Dec 2018
businesses can get more work done by
their human team members as well.
• Improved Transparency – RPA bots can
detect poor data integrity errors and
enable standardization. This leads to
transparency in any industry by
identifying significant errors hampering
both management decisions and
operational performance
• Improved Compliance – RPA Bots
execute processes per instructions they
have been configured to follow and
provide an audit trail for each step.
Furthermore, if any step in a specific
process need to be reviewed, bots have
ability to play back their actions. This
controlled nature of botsincreases
transparency and eliminates fraud.
• Improved Reporting – RPA generates
Fig 2. Benefits of RPA
significant amount of data that allows
organizations to analyse and identify
• Non-Invasive – RPA is designed to mimic process bottlenecks / inefficiencies. This
human action; hence the technology operational insight provided by bots
interacts with data within the presentation allows organizations to streamline
layer of platforms and applications. This existing business processes.
allows companies to implement RPA • Improved Quality – RPA enables
without making any significant changes to businesses to streamline and standardize
their legacy systems. This also brings in their processes which reduce data errors.
significant savings as it reduces the need This reduction in errors lead to high
for consistent IT development and quality data, that enables more reliable
technical workforce analysis.
• Improved Productivity – RPA with its
ability to autonomously execute business IV. RPA IN INDUSTRY
processes 365 x 24 x 7 with high
efficiency and accuracy can bring in
In order to remain competitive in this rapidly
significant business productivity gains.
evolving ecosystem, every industry need to make
Bots cut down the time it takes to do
significant investment in disruptive technologies
mundane repetitive tasks and outperform
that could maximize their efficiency while keeping
humans as virtual workforce.
the costs low and offer best possible user
• Improved Employee Morale – RPA can
experience to their customers. RPA is one of the
relieve employees of repetitive
disruptive technologies that companies across
mundanetasks, so they can focus on more
various industries want to implement.We will
engaging and challenging activities. Most
review its significance in some of the industries
employees have better morale when they
below,
invest their time and talent in jobs that are
more interesting and less routine. Since A. RPA in Banking
better morale improves productivity,

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 International Journal of Computer Techniques -– Volume 5 Issue 6, Nov – Dec 2018
Banking industry deals with enormous amount of • Report Generation – RPA can help banks
data every single day and its critical for banks collect information from various sources,
across the globe to deal with this sensitive dataset validate them, organize it in required format
with high level of accuracy and quick turnaround with high level of accuracy and share the
time. RPA can minimize the manual processing reports with required stakeholders.
data errors by automating various processes • Account opening / closure – Account
including, opening, and closing involves a set of
• Customer service – RPA can help in predefined tasks that could be automated
resolving low priority customer queries and with RPA. All known exception scenarios
lets human employees focus on high priority could be configured as well. RPA can
customer service issues. maintain all required compliance audit logs
• Accounts Payables – RPA can help throughout this process.
automating the vendor invoice processing B. RPA in Audit
and payment to vendor account post
reconciliation & validation. Accounting/Auditing firms also deals with
massive volume of data that are analysed/audited by
• Accounts Receivables – RPA can automate
a variety of processes that are repetitive & time
processing incoming payments and clearing
consuming and that do not require audit judgment.
customer dues.
RPA can help in variety of Audit processes
• General Ledger – RPA can help automating
including,
the collection of financial data, assets,
• Data Collection and Cleansing – Auditing
liabilities, revenue, expenses and update GL
involves collection of data from various
with right information.
sources and validate the data for
• Credit Underwriting – RPA can automate
completion, duplication etc. RPA can
verification of income/expense/exposure of
automate this data collection and
credit applicant against internal and external
manipulation / cleansing process with
databases.
high level of accuracy.
• Compliance – RPA generates full audit
• Controls testing – RPA could be utilized
trials of every process executed which
in automating a variety of controls testing
significantly improves the quality of
including auditing segregation of duties,
compliance process.
exception reporting, access related
• Credit card processing – RPA can automate controls, change management controls etc.
various time-consuming processes like
• Risk Assessment – RPA can automate the
document collection, credit checks,
data collection, classification of data and
background check and quickly determine if
identify core trends as part of the annual
the customer is eligible for credit card.
risk assessment process.
• Consumer Loan processing – Most of the
• Reconciliation – RPA can automate data
consumer loans including Auto, Mortgage,
collection from various sources and
personal involves credit checks,
reconcile data against preconfigured rules
employment check and verification. RPA
with high level of accuracy. RPA can
could accelerate this process based on
reconcile huge volume of data
predefined rules and enable quick decision
consistently which is real tedious work for
making.
the human partners.
• Fraud detection – RPA can quickly perform
• Audit PMO – RPA can handle a
if-then analysis on the customer transactions
variety of tasks including identifying open
and detect anomalies that could facilitate
items, sending reminders at required
fraud detection.
intervals / criteria, tracking the progress
against plan, automating reports etc.

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 International Journal of Computer Techniques -– Volume 5 Issue 6, Nov – Dec 2018
C. RPA in Insurance • Customer Support – RPA can efficiently
Insurance companies across the globe is heavily track orders and provide required updates
inundated with manual back office processes. This to the customers at pre-set intervals. It can
necessitates insurance companies to automate also automate feedback collection from
various processes to meet rapid customer growth customers ensuring customer satisfaction.
and improve their processing time. Some of the • Returns processing – RPA can help
potential automation processes includes, automating return management, inventory
• Claims processing – RPA can expedite adjustment and customer credit process
the claims processing by gathering effectively.
required information from various sources • Product categorization & Pricing
and integrate all this disparate information Comparison – RPA can assist
with high level of accuracy. harmonizing SKU data from various data
• Underwriting – RPA can collect sources and allows comparing price
information from various internal & information to facilitate better decision
external data sources and perform risk making.
assessment quickly with high level of • Accounting & Finance – RPA can assist
accuracy. automating numerous manual tasks in
• Appeals processing – RPA can automate accounting including Accounts payables,
extracting data from policy and claims Accounts receivables, reconciliation,
decision document in-order to expedite financial closing, financial filing etc.
appeals processing. • Marketing analysis – RPA can be utilized
• Data collection and cleansing – RPA can in variety of analysis functions including,
automate extracting required data from Campaign analysis, Consumer behaviour
internal and external data sources. RPA analysis etc.,
can cleanse this data, format and remove • Demand planning – RPA can automate
duplicates, fill required information in collection of planning data, cleanse the
forms ensuring high data quality. data, run simulations, identify exceptions
• New policy opening / policy cancellation and communicate plan data to required
– RPA can follow predefined rules and stakeholders.
checklists to automate various processes • Logistics and Supply chain – RPA can be
involved in policy opening and utilized to monitor the inventory levels,
cancellation. It also maintains detailed track shipment information and
audit trail of all processes involved for communicate with customers / vendors
compliance purposes. based on preconfigured events. RPA can
• Business process analytics – RPA automate a variety of use cases in
allows monitoring and recording every Inventory management, Freight
task it executes which gives valuable management and Vendor management.
insights including number of documents
E. RPA in Manufacturing
processed, exceptions generated etc. This
insight allows further process Manufacturing companies constantly look for
improvements and decision making. technologies that improve speed, scale and simplify
their manufacturing operations. RPA can help
D. RPA in Retail manufacturing industry in a variety of processes
Retail industry utilizes numerous processes that including,
are performed manually, and retail companies are • Bill of Materials – RPA can help in
on constant look out for technologies to improve efficiently managing information from
their accuracy and productivity. RPA can help Bill of Materials data comprising of
automating various retail processes including, nested multilevel raw materials,

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 International Journal of Computer Techniques -– Volume 5 Issue 6, Nov – Dec 2018
components and subcomponents for new solutions that could automate business processes
product creation. that are non-rule-based utilizing structured /
• Customer service - RPA can help in unstructured / semi-structured data.
resolving low priority customer queries by RPA technology is going through a radical
bringing in required data from various change being embedded with Artificial Intelligence,
sources and can facilitate automated email Machine Learning and various other cognitive
communication with users technologies. RPA embedded with above-said
• Logistics – RPA can automate transport technologies is being referred as Cognitive
management effectively monitoring goods Automation, Intelligent Automation, Smart Process
in transit. It can also provide valuable Automation etc. This evolution would enable RPA
insights in terms of carriers, insurance with,
companies etc based on the statistical data • Processing of structured / unstructured /
set. semi-structured data using variety of
• ERP Automation – RPA can facilitate Cognitive technologies including OCR
automating ERP tasks like generating a (Optical character recognition), Text
variety of reports including payables, analytics and data mining.
receivables, pricing etc. It can also • Ability to integrate NLP (Natural
automate tasks across ERP functions not language processing) capability to
limited to Inventory management, Vendor enhance human interaction which could
management, Customer management, expand its horizon and integrate well with
Accounts payables, Accounts receivables, human workforce.
GL, HR etc. • Built in Machine Learning, it can learn to
• Data Migration – RPA can assist in adapt to / handle extensive list of
digitizing and migrating information from scenarios than just pre-configured list of
legacy data sources into ERP system with scenarios with business rules.
high level of accuracy. With the integration of Machine Learning, AI,
• Manufacturing Analytics – RPA can Big Data and Cloud, businesses would be able to
provide detailed process statistics significantly improve quality, operational
including successful execution, process scalability and employee efficiency.
bottlenecks and exceptions triggered. This
valuable insight can help refining
VI. CONCLUSION
manufacturing processes.
• Compliance – RPA system would build Robotic Process Automation is gaining
audit trails of every process executed momentum across industries and evolving every
which significantly improves the day as a technology of choice for all executives
compliance process. who want to bring speed and agility in their
business operations. Organizations who wanted to
V. FUTURE OF RPA transform their business processes and maximize
the outcome of RPA, would need to break down
Robotic process Automation evolved as futuristic their back-office processes and analyze specific
tool in automating rule based repetitive business use-cases that could be automated. RPA
tasks. This helped business automate a variety of implementation is more than just a technology
their business processes that utilizes structured data implementation, it not only automates business
and matured business rules. With global demand for processes; it allows business to identify business
talented business users in the rise, tremendous process bottlenecks and simplify / standardize
growth in unstructured data, evolution of new business processes. As the adoption of RPA
business processes, companies are looking for matures, businesses can look for more use-cases to

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 International Journal of Computer Techniques -– Volume 5 Issue 6, Nov – Dec 2018
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