There’s a new kid on the block and it is named Robotic Process Automation. After the success of RPA in a variety of sectors and industries, businesses globally are rushing to embrace it. And one among these is the BPO industry. BPOs today understand that their world is changing. BPOs amongst many others are exploring alternatives to labor arbitrage. It blends well with their business model and complements their core competencies.
RPA is itself a type of outsourcing where instead of assigning work to a human being you are outsourcing the same to a software robot. RPA also threatens existing BPO relationships because of its efficiency and increased usability.
Earlier, more work meant more workers were needed to shoulder the load and more job opportunities. Even if the work was outsourced, it meant that more workers would be doing these outsourced jobs. Not anymore because RPA has changed the equation. When it comes to repetitive mundane work like copying and pasting, RPA can handle more transactions with fewer errors. After all robots are best suited for rule based repetitive work.
When we talk about robots replacing humans and taking up physical space, they are sophisticated machines with far superior processing potential than humans. If a BPO provider is embracing benefits of RPA or any other transformative technology, they will have plenty of business whereas those who do not innovate will lose out and fall behind.
RPA can help BPO providers speed up and offer great new services to clients at much reduced cost. Everything may not change overnight but RPA can lead to small incremental improvements over a period of time.
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Case for RPA Adoption:
Chief Information Officers are under increased pressure to drive down costs and increase output in the dynamic business landscape. RPA can help businesses solve these problems and meet these requirements.
The case for RPA is stronger with the benefits that can be reaped such as:
- Cost Savings: Robots approximately cost one-third of the price of offshore full time employees and one-fifth of the price of an onshore full time employee.
- Accuracy: Since human intervention is minimal and human errors are eliminated, accuracy improves.
- Availability: Software robots are available round the clock which increases productivity.
- Compliance: RPA is programmed to follow standard operating procedures without lapses in productivity.
Application of RPA in BPO Industry tasks
- To offer differentiated solutions
BPOs are using RPA to offer differentiated solutions to forward thinking clients. Customers are looking for flexible, unique and innovative service providers. You are more likely to obtain and retain new customers if you are finding avenues through which you can provide technology they need and want as part of your services. You will be favorably viewed in the eyes of customers if you are embracing new technological shifts and well versed with recent trends to serve them better.
- To control costs
RPA software offers the opportunity to outsourcers and their clients to achieve economies of scale. It helps to engage the labor force in work that requires less effort and more analytical thinking while allocating mundane laborious repetitive work to the robots. In this way, the value added work is better taken care of and operating costs are reduced. What is the volume of operating costs in question? 25-50% of the operating costs are reduced by the adoption of RPA as per a study by Institute of Robotic Process Automation.
- Smaller and more accurate workforce
Automation allows for an alternative to the traditional labor arbitrage model that most people are familiar with. The robots are ready to do any sort of repetitive menial tasks around the clock. With minimum human intervention here, the work is done at a faster pace and is free of errors. Therefore, a smaller workforce gets you more accuracy and saves both time and costs. The numbers have startling revelations; for instance, deploying offshore full time employees costs three times more than RPA.
- To facilitate automated information exchange
In a data driven world, data integrity is important and top of the mind for companies globally. To gather the information and draw out insights they require, businesses have to create information highways between systems, something which can be time consuming and error ridden, if done manually. RPA can help businesses, especially BPOs to automate these information highways thus helping them save time and serve their customers better.
- Consistency in process
RPA helps to bring about consistency in process. Even well trained staff at some of the leading call centers can go about the same process in multiple ways. The experience a customer has with multiple call center executives can be different and depends on which day the customer speaks to whom. RPA helps in homogenizing the experience. RPA takes care of those processes that are repetitive in nature and require precision of such a high standard which even the most competent individuals would fail to match.
- Pilots, investments and works projects
Recently BPOs have actualized RPA to pilot ventures and different works ventures. Outsourcers are coming up with unmistakable practices and investing vigorously in new innovations and strategies to make possible for robots even the toughest of jobs.
As per the Gartner report, eight of the fifteen biggest specialist organizations have marked arrangements or are marking arrangements to incorporate RPA into their procedures, frameworks, applications and infrastructural setup.
So as to keep pace and remain significant, BPOs must consider how to incorporate RPA into their setups. It helps operational efficiencies as well as brings exactness and cuts costs. RPA changes the way we engage business guides, learning specialists and judgement based part staff by letting go of the everyday mundane tasks and enabling them to focus their endeavors on avenues which can’t be broken into rules.
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