5 Reasons RPA Should be your Digital Transformation Starting Point

For many organizations, robotic process automation (RPA) is the driver of digital transformation. According to research from Deloitte that was conducted in 2017, 53 percent of organizations are already using RPA, and this number is expected to increase to 72 percent in 2020. Additionally, business research institute APQC found that RPA was the “nucleus” of 69 percent of digital strategies. They also found that the number of RPA projects per organization nearly doubled from 2017 to 2018 (8.6 in 2017 to 14.9 in 2018).

RPA encourages companies to rethink how they are managing their processes and how they can digitize their core procedures, making them more modern and efficient and allowing them to switch from paper-based processes to automated ones. RPA takes over procedures that were previously manual, pulls out the important bits of information and makes business decisions based on the information it examines and your company’s unique business rules. This means that you’re not just rethinking the procedure but improving the quality of information that's available and taking more business-driven action on that information.

RPA is often one of the first steps toward digital transformation and is often the simplest way to start to achieve digital transformation. So, why start with RPA?

1. RPA can be implemented quickly and provides rapid results. It easily expands across the enterprise, allowing for implementation in other departments and the addition of other software integration tools and functionality. For companies wondering about the benefits of digital transformation, RPA gives them a quick snapshot of the possibilities.
2. RPA can be implemented with other business tools, such as your ERP solution. Take a look at your existing software solutions. Some vendors, like MetaViewer from Metafile, have created RPA systems that tightly integrate with ERP systems and other company tools.
3. It allows for employee time to be reallocated to more pertinent tasks, freeing them up to focus on bigger projects, which could mean more time for diving into more digital transformation.
4. It works continuously, 24/7, updating and sending information through the automated workflow as it receives data. This means that paperwork isn’t stacking up on anyone’s desks and there is no lag between when information enters your organization and when it moves on to the next workflow step.
5. It allows employees to see where hold-ups and slow-downs may be and which processes aren’t working as efficiently as they could be. This gives managers the opportunity to identify business patterns and track the performance of workflows that have been set up between the RPA solution and other systems by using data that RPA generates, leading to the expansion of companies’ digital strategies.

Because RPA is so versatile, companies are consistently finding success and achieving substantial ROI and can tailor RPA solutions to their specific priorities and business rules, utilizing an RPA implementation team to reformulate procedures to be sure that RPA is working as efficiently as possible. Because of the continuous success of RPA, companies will become more likely to adopt other digitization applications in the future, leading to full-scale digital transformation.