In our past few blogs, we have discussed in-depth about how Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has proven to be beneficial to telecom, banks, and manufacturing industries. We have discussed the routine tasks that the technology can automate across every industry.

In this blog, we are going to explore RPA further and discuss the creative ways in which companies are using it to automate their tasks.

#1 – Customer Service

It takes years to build a trustworthy relationship with the customer, but just a few seconds to break it. Good customer service is vital to ensure that the trust is not broken. Now, handling customers especially in an industry like bank and insurance can be an enormous task. It demands a quick analysis and resolution of the problem. A single lapse can spiral the problem beyond repair.

This is where RPA comes to rescue. RPA categorises the complaints under different headers. This segregation makes it easier for the customer service to resolve the queries faster. Sometimes RPA automatically sends responses for a set type of queries, thus minimising the efforts of the customer care team. With a negligible error rate in its working, it is a win-win situation for customers as well as the company.

Here is a blog which can help you in understanding on how RPA can address the challenges faced by customer support representatives.

#2 – Price Comparison

Generally, a company deals with multiple vendors at a time while purchasing a product. Before selecting a vendor, the company analyses and compares different prices before settling on the best one. They need to make sure that the product they get is of good quality and is priced at a competitive rate.

Researching on these parameters can be a cumbersome task because the prices fluctuate and new products are added to the market frequently. It can take days or even months to analyse the data manually. However, with RPA software, companies can analyse and gather information about the different sellers within hours, enabling the buyer to take a quick and informed decision.

[bctt tweet=”With RPA software, companies can analyse and gather information about the different sellers within hours, enabling the buyer to take a quick and informed decision.” username=”@UInsights”]

#3 – Supplier Onboarding

Onboarding a supplier involves gathering their information, entering their details such as account number, address, tax details etc. in the system. It starts getting cumbersome when the company grows and the supplier list increases. However, this can be resolved with the help of RPA. It helps in validating the supplier details on the basis of their credit scores and tax data and onboard them if the information meets the criteria set by the company.

#4 – Portfolio Management

Medellin-based Bancolombia is the largest bank in Colombia. Recently, it introduced a product called ‘invesbot’ that helps the clients to manage their portfolio more effectively. The robo-adviser is the first-of-its-kind in Colombia that encourages investors to experiment and learn to invest in the stock market. It received several accolades internationally. (Please note that the below video is in Spanish)

RPA can play a major role in portfolio management. From sending portfolio updates to the investor to alerting them of the market situation, RPA can help investors make an informed decision and manage their portfolio more efficiently.

#5 – HR Assistance

The Human Resource department deals with a large volume of employee data every day. From employee background details to reimbursements and payroll, everything is managed by the HR. Employees often complain about the lackadaisical approach of the HR towards their problems.

Thus, it is imperative to take help of RPA to ease the burden of the HR department and help them focus on strategic tasks such as reskilling the existing workforce, reinventing the work culture, and so on. RPA can take care of the daily operations such as guiding the employees through the process of logging their leaves in the system, providing updates on their reimbursement status, basic HR related queries and so on.

Here is a blog which can help you in understanding on how can RPA help companies rethink HR tasks.

#6 – Refund Assistance

A company’s reputation is determined by the way it engages with its customers. Some of the best brands have a reputation for processing refunds to dissatisfied customers within a few days. This helps in winning the customer’s trust despite the bad experience.

Giving refunds can be an exhaustive process. Sometimes the complaint gets missed in the sheer volume of data, which can cause delay and further lead to customer dissatisfaction. RPA can help in collecting information from disparate systems and store it in a centralised hub. This will help in streamlining the process and validating and processing the refund at a faster pace.

#7 – Sourcing CVs

Finding the right talent for your organisation is a difficult task. The HR team has to search for candidates with the right talent, shortlist them, assess their potential, and finally recruit them. The entire process can take days to weeks to even months depending upon the complexity of the role.

RPA can accelerate this process by aggregating the CVs from different sources and can even help the HR organise the assessment values and interview feedback in a centralised hub to help the hiring manager take an informed decision.

[bctt tweet=”RPA can accelerate HR process by aggregating the CVs from different sources.” username=”@UInsights”]

#8 – Extract information from unstandardized documents

Data comes in various format and through different medium. They are never uniform in format. This poses a challenge for the companies as they have to manually go through the entries and extract information out of it. By using Optical Character Recognition (OCR), RPA can extract the required information and enter it in a standardized format to process the data with negligible errors and at a faster pace.

#9 – From procurement to payment

Maintaining good relations with your vendors is as important as being on good terms with your employees and customers. Purchasing goods and processing invoices is a tedious process especially when there are multiple vendors involved.

To add to it, the strict compliance rules have mandated the need for documenting everything. Managing the entire process can be quite an enormous task. That’s where you need RPA. From onboarding suppliers, procuring goods from them to paying and updating their records, RPA manages it all with minimal supervision and negligible errors.

#10 – Claims Processing

You must have witnessed people complaining about the delay in claims processing by insurance companies. Claims processing is the core business of the insurance companies. Their reputation depends upon how efficiently and quickly they process the claims.

The process involves multiple tasks ranging from analysing the information received, validating it from various sources, and then processing it. The entire process is so cumbersome that there are bound to be lapses if done manually. By using RPA, you can automate the entire process by gathering information from disparate sources, validating them, and processing them. The best part is, in case of a regulatory change, the rules in RPA can be changed to adhere to the compliance rules.

#11 – Appeals Processing

Sometimes when the claim is rejected, the customer raises an appeal request to get the claim passed. This is an altogether different process that involves analysing the complaint, revalidating the documents, and then take a decision on the claim. The entire process can take days or even months to be resolved. RPA helps the insurance company to make an informed decision on the appeal.

[bctt tweet=”RPA helps the insurance company to make an informed decision on the appeal.” username=”@UInsights”]

#12 – Product categorisation and Updating Inventory

The market changes rapidly, and consumers demand new and trendy products. To keep up with all of this and to expand the market reach, companies introduce new products to stay relevant. When there are a large number of products or variants of a product, categorising them in correct headers is important. Besides this, it is also important to keep track of the products that are sold or unsold, and the quantities available.

By using RPA, you can find out the availability of a number of multiple products and manufacture more products in time. It not only saves your time in manually tracking and entering the information but also keeps your customer happy by keeping the items they desire in stock.

#13 – Reimbursement of Expenses

Employees tend to spend from their income for certain things such as transport and food when they are on an official trip. The company later reimburses the amount after validating the receipts. Sometimes the process can get delayed especially when there are too many reimbursement requests to be looked into or when the receipts are provided in various formats such as a hard copy or a soft copy.

In such cases, RPA assists the HR department by extracting information from the receipt irrespective of its format and validating the expense form. The automation enables the HR department to process the reimbursement within a short turnaround time.

#14 – Delivery Confirmation

It is important for an organisation to know if all the products have been shipped to their right addresses. RPA helps in reconciling the purchase orders against the shipments and updating the status in the system automatically. It also flags an issue in case there is a discrepancy between the two data.

#15 – Know Your Customer

A sum of about US$60 million is spent by an average financial firm per year on processes like KYC and client onboarding. This figure itself explains how vital the KYC process is for the business. Even a small lapse can spiral into a major problem in the future.

[bctt tweet=”KYC requires a lot of work and time owing to the multiple tasks involved in it. RPA can help us in automating this.” username=”@UInsights”]

KYC requires a lot of work and time owing to the multiple tasks involved in it. RPA automates the process by receiving the information provided by the client, consolidating information from disparate systems into a unified platform, reconciling the information gathered with the one received by the customer, and then approving it. By automating the entire process, financial organisations can save on time and efforts and minimize the chances of errors caused due to oversight.

#16 – Reporting

As a part of compliance, companies have to prepare a report about their various businesses or processes and present it to the board and other stakeholders to show its performance. Considering how important the reports are to the reputation of the company, it is important to ensure that there are no errors.

While there are systems to provide data, and templates to present them in a digestible format, what the companies require is accurate data with no error. RPA helps companies in preparing reports with accurate data. It gathers information from different sources, validates it, arranges it in an understandable format, and schedules it to be sent to different sources.