Looking beyond the technical features of RPA (Robotic Process Automation) technology at the business problems that can be resolved in SME / SMB organisations can provide an effective context for considering automation.
The business can only scale with Headcount growth
As businesses develop beyond their initial founders the mechanism to grow is often achieved by recruiting more and increasing the company headcount. This is like getting a bigger and bigger flywheel. More work, more people, more risk from any blip in growth, more administrative overhead to manage the bigger team.
RPA provides an alternative approach to achieving the growth, by using software robots to complete business process work that needs to be performed on computer systems. Yes, adding more robots does cost money but it is much easier to scale technology up or down than it is to adjust workforce levels.
Business systems need modernising but they are core processes
Cost, risk, time and disruption are often given as reasons not to upgrade existing business systems. A working system may meet the requirements of the business process but it might be in-efficient to operate or difficult to integrate with newer systems.
As RPA software robots can interact with the existing GUI (or API) of any system without requiring any changes in the technology, building automations can be an effect approach to the continue use of older systems with staff manual activity focused on newer systems.
Although software robots can provide an effective means to continue using old software, they can also be used to aid a migration / transfer to a new system by supporting parallel operation of the two applications without requiring any increased effort from staff to operate the processes.
Staff cost of operating business processes is too high
There are often business processes that an SME / SMB company would like to perform but they require too much staff effort to make the activity commercially attractive.
One of the features of RPA solutions is that each software robot delivers a lot of potential capacity to complete work. Automating a core process will have provided the main justification for the cost of the software robot, hence the incremental cost for additional automations that utilise the spare capacity are effectively much lower.
By utilising the low cost capacity of the software robot a process that would not be viable for staff to perform can become practical if it is automated.
Such processes could be reconciliation tasks, quality consistency checking tasks or add on service to a client who may perceive increased value.
Errors / Mistakes having a big impact on reputation
Plenty of studies have discovered that people make in the region of 2% to 5% of errors when performing repetitive tasks. The problem can be if such issues reach clients, who often through the power of social media, can impact the reputation of the company. This particularly true for small or medium businesses that do not have the scale to overwhelm any negative experience.
RPA software robots deliver consistent results. They do not make errors. Yes, a software robot could stop working but that would halt the processing until the issue was resolved. In most circumstances it is better for a task to performed late than it is for a task to be performed leaving an error.
Retention of staff with business knowledge
As SME / SMB organisations grow there is a need to retain the business knowledge that staff members develop through performing their roles. Many staff will wish to progress their careers and perform interesting work. One way to enable staff to evolve is to remove the simpler “Admin” type tasks from their workload.
The simpler tasks still need to be performed. The challenge is that recruiting people to perform “Boring” work is increasing difficult with many entrants to the workforce having high aspirations about the activities they will perform.
RPA using software robots provides a practical solution to performance of the “Admin” tasks. Investing in the automation sends a positive message “Automation because you are worth it”.
Compliance is a burden and its value is not appreciated
Laws and regulations can place compliance tasks on businesses which are often not valued. Many such tasks will most of the time be an irritant as they are trying to prevent the occasional “Fraud” / “Unreasonable” activity.
For an SME there is often not the economies of scale to achieve the compliance efficiently.
RPA delivers a low cost mechanism to perform the routine compliance tasks consistently.
Adoption of RPA by SME / SMB
Some SME businesses are already leveraging the benefits of RPA, but there are many SMEs who have yet to discover what RPA could achieve for their operations.
#businessbeyondautomation
Article Author
David Martin
Managing Director, Ether Solutions
https://www.ether-solutions.co.uk/
