Caspar Herzberg |
This article was originally published in the Summer 2018 issue of The Record.
No matter what industry they’re in, every company wants to be the leader of the pack. Achieving that competitive edge can be challenging, particularly now that customers and vendors expect instant gratification, and employees want to be able to complete tasks more efficiently and accurately. Although expensive, robotic process automation (RPA) software is a long-term investment that can help companies meet these aims by aligning business processes with the needs of the people inside and outside of the organisation. RPA automates repetitive tasks, allowing enterprises to deliver information and services to customers and vendors faster and more seamlessly.
Automation makes business procedures more efficient, so employees have more time to work on product development and process improvement. This means companies can accelerate development or get goods and services into the hands of their customers faster than the competition.
By eliminating manual paper-based processes, RPA also cuts costs associated with manual data entry and physical storage. Companies can redirect this money towards strategic technological investments and put themselves miles above competitors.
RPA also enables enterprises to ensure that they’re complying with record retention and information governance laws. Storing information physically heightens the risk of security breaches, fraud and non-compliance. However, RPA ensures that there’s an audit trail of who worked on a document, what they did, when they did it and what happened to it after it was in their virtual possession.
Enterprises must be more strategic when making business decisions to surpass their fast-moving and tech-savvy competitors and become a household name in their industry. Automation solutions ensure that a company’s structured and unstructured information is automatically received, organised and indexed accurately so they have the intelligence they need to make calculated decisions for continued growth. This includes expanding the RPA solution into other departments within the organisation, such as accounts receivable, legal and human resources. These are all places where automation can make companies even more innovative and efficient, giving them a leg-up over others.
It’s vital that companies embrace opportunities to become best-in-class and RPA software gives them the edge they need to become the go-to for products and services in their industry sector.
Alyssa Putzer is marketing communications specialist for Metafile Information Systems