RPA is also known as a digital labor (virtual intellectual worker), and it is said that it contributes greatly to business efficiency of companies and organizations. RPA, which exceeds the human processing ability by overwhelming accuracy and high speed, is expected to become an excellent “worker” capable of efficient processing of complicated operations and greatly contributes to improvement of productivity.

So why RPA can dramatically improve operational efficiency and increase productivity? and how should human beings manage and control RPA? This article shows you in an easy-to-understand manner.

Improvement in work efficiency realized by RPA

In general, it is said that introducing RPA can greatly contribute to improving work efficiency. Because it is often used to automate so-called white-colored routine tasks, the reason is that speed and accuracy are greatly improved over human beings.

Let’s pick up three major items of work efficiency that can be realized by RPA.

Improvement in the operational quality and speed

RPA is not subject to constraints such as “working hours” or “holidays” like human beings. In other words, RPA can work on operations at any time, 24 hours a day and 365 days a year. Also, RPA can process quickly and more accurately than human beings.

In addition to being able to handle a large number of tasks, it does not cause errors such as typing errors or transcription errors, so it is expected that the accuracy and reliability of operations will be greatly improved.

Improve business productivity

By leaving simple routine work to RPA, you can work on different tasks. This will increase the work efficiency and improve the productivity.

Also, you will be released from the routine work, so that you can focus on higher valued works. In addition, even if you are suffering from human resource shortages, you can expect improvement in operations by introducing RPA.

Improve the reliability of work

If you do manual work offline, not only will you make mistakes, but there is a possibility that malicious corruption may occur. On the other hand, RPA does not cause mistakes, it does not do cheating on impulse like human beings.

Furthermore, even if a human being interrupts in the middle of the workflow, it is possible to follow that log later because we are recording all the work. For these reasons, it is thought that security related to business will be greatly improved.

Three important points in RPA control

As mentioned above, it is possible to realize various operational efficiency by introducing RPA.

The RPA introduction is not the goal. In the next step for applying it to dozens to hundreds of units, or expanding it to the whole company, it is necessary to prepare a mechanism such as management of the utilization system and workflow management for safe and efficient operations.

The followings are the three points which are considered to be particularly important in RPA management method and internal control method

Error and backup system

When some changes are made to the existing system, it is necessary for human beings to confirm and respond to problems such as compatibility and collaboration. In case of upgrading the mission critical system or changing the use destination of the cloud service, if the RPA side’s response is delayed, the processing may cause an error and cause troubles

Since RPA is specialized in the processing of routine tasks, it will cause errors if exceptional operations such as atypical jobs to be handled by human beings are not seperated from those to be automated. Furthermore, RPA may cause some errors due to natural disasters and other factors.

In order to deal with such situations, it is important to prepare human backup system, such as setting up an RPA management team and predefining how to respond when an error occurs.

It is also necessary to be able to check the place and contents of the error later. The extensive RPA management function is also important such as that execution status is easy to check, execution logs are output finely,etc.

Information leak due to unauthorized use

Because RPA records all the work logs, it is possible to follow the situation even when unexpected errors or unintended work are done. It is necessary to confirm when an unauthorized use by a user without permission of execution occurs.

In particular, when introducing RPA to operations dealing with personal information, it is important to periodically check and make sure that there is no unauthorized access.

Also, if you can set up user privileges and executable workflow in detail, you will be able to prevent malicious users from misuse or accidentally executing them. If it is a management tool that can manage such user management and execution control, it will be able to operate with more peace of mind.

Risk of depending on a single administrator

You should avoid depending on a single administrator to run RPA and manage workflow. This is because if the person in charge leaves the site due to personnel change or retirement, you may not be able to grasp when and where RPA is being executed.

In other words, it leads to the increase of stray robots. In the event of unexpected problems, there is a risk that it will be difficult to investigate the cause or improve the situation. Therefore, let’s implement and operate RPA while sharing information on the team.

RPA exerts power by controlling

As we have stated so far, RPA automates tasks based on the processes ordered by humans, and it does not take completely independent actions. In other words, the risk will be large without human supervision.

In addition, detailed tuning accompanying changes in business contents is required from time to time. In other words, RPA will exert its potential by humans managing and controlling.

Conclusion

By making good use of RPA, it brings many benefits such as improving work efficiency. On the other hand, do not forget that if you do not manage properly it will involve a lot of risk.

When considering the introduction of RPA, it is essential not only to improve operational efficiency but also to look at such risks and internal controls.