How Is RPA Functioning At The Center Of The Hyper Automation Wave?

While the headline seems a lot intriguing, it’s certainly interesting to note about how would things function if Robotic Process Automation (RPA) would be playing a pivotal role in hyper automation in the post COVID era. Hyperautomation refers to the use of a combination of technologies to automate, simplify, discover, design, measure, and manage workflows and processes across the enterprise.

Although, times have been quite difficult in the current scenario, it has been noticed that leaders who have been slow in adopting automation technologies — such as Robotic Process Automation ( RPA), Artificial Intelligence ( AI), and Machine Learning (ML)—have started to leverage them as a way of cutting costs during economic turmoil, providing faster customer service, and revamping their distributed work operations.

Under all such circumstances, Robotics is playing a key role which is paving the way for a brighter world in the upcoming days. These days hospitals are rapidly deploying new technologies to support their staff better, and they also have been facilitating a lot of changes that concern automation.

Narendran Thillaisthanam, Vice President, Emerging Technologies, Vuram holds the view that, “Hyperautomation is a rallying cry to bring business and IT together to achieve end-end automation.

Think of hyper-automation as a bridge: On the one side of the bridge is routine work, mundane, high touch work. On the other side is AI powered, self-learning, autonomous systems that partner with humans to solve a customer problem.”

Reports have stated that CIOs have been increasingly working on these lines and Thillaisthanam believes that.

“In building such a future, CIOs should consider RPA for two reasons:

For one, traditional RPA systems are powerful in automating routine and mundane tasks (the left side of the bridge). No doubt RPA projects provide the fastest payback. The success of RPA projects often brings a culture of automation across multiple departments, breaking down the siloes.

Second, next-gen RPA systems blend the capabilities of traditional BPM, AI, Analytics, and even Process Mining capabilities – making it easier for CIOs to pick their hyper-automation toolset.

In other words, use traditional RPA systems to erect the pillars of the hyper-automation bridge – quickly and cost-effectively. Next, use the next-gen RPA systems to lay the roads across these pillars.”

Does hyper-automation feature as one of the top technology trends? Alok Bansal, MD and Country Head, Visionet India, says, “Hyperautomation is one of the top technology trends of 2020 as listed by several experts across the world. When organisations adopt digital as a way of life, hyper-automation is a key which turns high-touch processes into low-touch and eventually no-touch processes. The advent of RPA has become a beacon of hope for businesses looking to increase performance and profitability, and rising costs. Use of automations / applying algorithms to perform routine, repeated, high-volume and rule-based activities, the system eases the pressure on humans.RPA eases the burden on humans by using software that manages the mundane, repetitive, high-volume, and rules-based tasks such as transferring sales data to spreadsheets, processing invoices, completion of the KYC process, collection and categorization of product information, etc.

Amid all this, how can hyper-automation help in maximising the potential for automation for companies, Bansal continues, “Hyperautomation focuses on maximising the potential for automation for an enterprise and now-a-days, most of the companies wish to scale automation rapidly. Business leaders are augmenting their workforces with software robots, and are seeing the benefits almost immediately. They are creating millions of hours of digital capacity, driving fast productivity gains for every employee, and delivering much improved customer experiences. Adding process and task mining, creating the Automation Hub open to contribution from all layers and departments in a company, launching task automation for non-technical individuals etc are contributing to a real ‘automation first’ era that will allow us to see deployments at scale everywhere. Recently an article stated that the ‘RPA hype is over’ and few assumed that RPA is dead, but the truth is far from it. RPA is just getting started and Hyperautomation is the future. With RPA at its core, hyper-automation will bring complementary technology that will take automation beyond a task-centric focus.