Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Applications in the Real World

Emily Daniel
5 min readDec 27, 2021

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) possesses the digital skillset just like humans. RPA bots can be viewed as a type of digital workforce that is capable of interacting with any application or system. For instance, these bots are capable of scraping internet material, calculating, copying and pasting, opening and transferring files, and extracting unstructured data, among other activities. Additionally, the bots’ capacity to adapt to any workflow or interface increases their significance because they eliminate the need to modify company applications, systems, or existing processes in order to automate.

RPA bots are incredibly simple to manage, utilize, and distribute. It’s as simple to manage as making a video on a phone, anyone can easily configure RPA bots. Transferring files around at work is as easy as using the play and stop, drag and drop buttons. These bots are extremely beneficial for scheduling, replicating, customizing, and performing business operations across the organization. According to Statists, the RPA market value is expected to reach 3 billion USD by 2022.

Industrial Use cases of the RPA

Several industries are taking full advantage of the RPA system, the ones with the prominent names are:

RPA in the Insurance Industry

For the insurance industry, it is critical to collect significant data and automate repetitive activities. The insurance business employs the following RPA use cases to ensure a superior client experience:

Claims Processing

RPA eliminates paper-based operations, which enhances the whole process’s quality and accuracy. RPA combined with artificially intelligent technologies dramatically decreases workload and ensures customer satisfaction.

Updates to Regulatory Compliance

Insurance companies that are more straightforward rely on a variety of compliance rules and procedures. For example, HIPAA privacy regulations and PCI standards differ, and banks can assist their clients in adhering to these compliance standards by utilizing automated notifications and updates via RPA tactics.

Mitigation of Risk

RPA enables risk minimization by accurately processing data from both internal and external sources. This enables work to be completed more quickly and with complete precision.

RPA in the Telecommunications

Speed, affordability, and technology are the three critical elements in the telecom business. They can benefit from RPA in the following critical areas:

Enhancement of Productivity and Scalability

Due to its capacity to process enormous amounts of data, robotic process automation is the optimal go-to-market approach for the telecoms business. Being able to automate back-office activities frees up personnel to focus on more vital tasks.

The Advantages of First Call Resolution

RPA enables software bots to quickly access data, allowing telecom agents to address consumer expectations on the initial call without performing frequent follow-ups. RPA increases FCR rates, resulting in increased customer retention and loyalty

PRA in the Banking Sector

RPA helps banks save money on manpower and operational expenditures. Additionally, it significantly lowers errors and human chores. For example, banking automation with RPA technology saves processing costs by 30% to 70% by reducing turnaround time. Banking institutions can benefit from RPA in the following ways:

Enhancement of Customer Service

RPA enables banks to reduce turnaround time on customer onboarding, verification of customer details, account and loan inquiries. This assists banks in retaining customers and fostering consumer loyalty.

Accounts Payable and Closure Processes Automated

Traditionally, the accounts payable process reflects obtaining invoices from vendors via OCR (Optical Character Recognition), confirming the data in the fields supplied, and then processing it. RPA automates the entire procedure and credits the vendor’s account automatically.

Additionally, RPA sends automated messages to consumers reminding them to provide required papers and accurately conducts account closing functions.

Enabling Know-Your-Customer (KYC) And Compliance Banks

Certain banks invest up to millions each year in KYC compliance. RPA is used to collect, validate, and process customer data.

Detection of Fraud

With the advent of RPA, potential frauds are spotted in advance. Automating has enabled banks to identify and flag accounts that are likely to pose a problem. Banks can then conduct a review of these accounts and launch an investigation into possible fraud.

RPA to Assist Payroll Automation

Processing payroll each month is a time-consuming, repetitive operation for any organization’s human resources team, and it also needs a high amount of data input efforts. This could result in data inaccuracies, resulting in payment delays and employee unhappiness.

Keeping Customer Data Consistent

RPA can be used to assess the consistency of employee data across several systems, as well as timesheets, load earning, and deductions.

Generate Accurate Payslips

Additionally, it can automate paycheck generation, benefits administration, and reimbursements. RPA may automate payroll operations from start to finish, avoiding inaccuracies and delays.

RPA in Hotel Reservations

In hotel reservations, RPA helps to automate the processes that were required human labour and used to consume a lot of time:

Eliminating Manual Labor

Before these hotel reservations employed that automated process, they used to do the work manually. In this, the reservation department used to receive emails from the travel agent. They would open the emails and recognize the travel agency, following which they recover all the booking details. They would then enter all the information into their opera portal’s location-specific section. After that, a confirmation was sent to the travel agent and the same is attached to the portal.

Work that is Automated

RPA enables the bot to read all unread emails from the travel agent received by the calling agent. The bots separate the emails which contain booking information and then extract the data. The bot distinguishes between single and multiple bookings, as well as between two variants of each template. Following that, booking details will be taken from the templates and filled in on the Opera portal according to the location selected. The bot extracts the confirmation number and sends the email containing the number to the travel agency. The bot then turns the confirmation email into a PDF and attaches it to the reservation’s attachment area. Following the booking, the bot saves details such as the process’s UUID, the date and time, the guest’s name, and the agent’s name to an excel file for easier backtracking. This process is repeated till the time there is no fresh mail in the inbox.

Key Takeaways

RPA technology is being increasingly deployed to perform time-taking tasks within business operations. As RPA software frees employees from manual tasks, automation can be implemented in any field where such actions can be verified. By employing robotic process automation, businesses can guarantee a higher ROI that can benefit them in the longer run.

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Emily Daniel

Emily is a tech writer, with expertise in entrepreneurship, and business marketing. She has a knack for technology, & loves to dig out the latest trends in AI.