- Now that you know the key drivers of automation potential,
you might ask yourself,
"Are there functional areas I should focus on"
"where RPA will make the most impact?"
and, "Do opportunities for automation vary by industry?"
These are great questions
which I help enterprises answer all the time,
but not knowing which function or industry you're from,
I'll provide more general answers
that you can use as a launching point.
First, what sort of functional areas
are best suited for RPA?
If you've been paying attention,
you probably already know,
but the short answer is, that RPA can be applied
to pretty much any transactional process.
Some examples of where I've seen RPA implemented are,
customer service, human resources,
procurement, finance and accounting,
data management, and internal auditing.
In each of these areas there are repetitive
and transactional tasks that are
prime opportunities for RPA.
To expand on that, the functional areas
in which I've seen the most RPA opportunities are,
human resources, finance and accounting, and procurement.
To start, HR and payroll processes
are prime candidates for RPA.
In fact, the entire hire to retire spectrum
is ripe with opportunity.
This is because HR tends to require information management
and standardization across a large variety
of systems and applications.
Think of a talent acquisition process, for example,
which might involve several applications itself,
ranging from personnel databases and file managers
to salary and compensation analysis tools.
Payroll and pay integration are also
great candidates for automation.
They're often full of rote calculations on legacy systems
like mainframes.
There are also vast opportunities
in finance and accounting
where the processes are also rule based,
requiring high degrees of accuracy and speed,
which RPA is designed for.
Some common F and A areas are
order management, billing, regulatory compliance,
accounting, and reconciliation.
Finally, procurement is a prime area
thanks to the abundance of structured documents and data.
Think of work like invoice processing,
spend data management, purchase order management,
and contract management,
which often involve communicating and validating data
across different databases and ordering systems.
I'll stop there, but I hope you get the point.
If you understand RPA well,
you'll see opportunities everywhere.
On to the second topic of this lesson.
How do opportunities vary by industry?
As I described earlier, all companies today
are part technology companies
in the sense that they rely on technology
to compete and survive.
This means that opportunities for RPA are abundant.
To give an example, I've seen RPA campaigns flourish
in the banking and financial services industries,
where a bulk of transactional back office processes
are ripe for automation.
Some of the largest banks in the world
are using RPA to automate account opening and closure,
reconciliations and report generation.
I've also seen RPA pay dividends and regulatory compliance,
where automation solutions help them meet deadlines
and avoid fines.
And in anti-money laundering and know your customer checks
to validate customer data.
The healthcare industry is also a large adopter of RPA.
Many of the largest hospital systems are using automation
to simply information management and payment cycles,
which translates well to the overall patient experience.
For example, there are many use cases of RPA
around care delivery support,
such as the automation of patient reports
and information management for clinicians.
If you've worked in the back office
of a healthcare organization,
you know there's tons of different applications
and databases that need to be crosschecked
and referenced when working with patient data
and this is to say nothing of revenue cycle management,
insurance claim processing,
and account reconciliation.
All are ripe for RPA.
In addition to healthcare and finance,
I've seen RPA add significant value
in supply chain verticals,
travel companies, logistics firms,
entertainment studios, police forces,
and many, many more.
Again, not knowing the industry and functional area
you're from, I hope I shared enough examples
to inform you and inspire you
to go hunting for opportunities in your own organization.