Sargis Harutyunyan, Director of Softline Armenia, and Svetlana Anisimova, General Director of UiPath in Russia and the CIS, discussed IT trends in business process automation.

Sargis Harutyunyan

IT technologies are evolving at a tremendous speed, partly due to the development of business and related needs. Today, one of the basic needs of business all over the world, including Armenia, is the automation of business processes. This is due to the fact that the business strives to reduce routine work, accelerate the solution of other more important business tasks and reduce costs.

There are many solutions to solve this problem, I will highlight RPA (Robotic Process Automation) technology, which belongs to the latest achievements of the IT industry and is one of the basic ones for automating business processes. RPA allows you to automate business processes through the use of software robots. They repeat routine user actions, freeing up time for more important and complex tasks. A robot is software that can simulate standard and repetitive operations performed by employees in information systems and applications.

In fact, software robots imitate human actions: they can see the elements of open applications; understand where buttons, input fields, text, tables and other elements of the interactive interface are located. Robots "know" what they need to do - they press a button, enter data, switch between applications. The main strength of software robots is their ability to interact with the user interface. This allows you to automate long-term end-to-end processes that involve many systems. You can robotize both standard office applications and complex ERP systems, and even self-written or legacy applications. Simply put, any systems and applications that a person can work with can be automated using robots.

Thanks to the analytical and project work done in many countries by Softline, it was possible to significantly change the business organization as a whole, modernize the corporate rules for processing business information and introduce RPA technology in companies from various industries. I would like to note that the mass implementation of RPA is now happening everywhere along with the introduction of ERP and EIM systems.

Our expert assessment shows that the majority of executives positively assess the effect of implementing RPA automation tools in a company and believe that RPA can change the existing business models of companies. In our estimation, the introduction of such technologies contributes to the growth of work efficiency and reduces personnel costs.

With RPA, you can take a fresh look at business processes. This technology automates many corporate functions, from the back office to remote IT infrastructure. I will note the main advantages of robotization:

- Employees can focus on more intelligent work, rather than on repetitive routine tasks.

- The possibility of an error is completely excluded. A person can incorrectly enter text and digital data, but the robot always acts according to the specified instructions and is never sealed.

- A robot is a digital employee who will cope with the work that can be done according to the instructions. It perfectly performs such operations as clicking on buttons, copying and recognizing text, inserting copied text into other systems and forms, building reports, performing actions in applications, working with scanned documents, working with databases and government systems, sending messages in messengers, performing other simple and routine operations.

- RPA significantly reduces the time required to perform a wide range of business processes, including revenue processing, customer service and any other processes that require access to several existing IT systems. The productivity of the enterprise increases as the work cycle time and transactions are reduced.

- Business analytics is more reliable and easily accessible. Every transaction made using RPA is recorded in the log. With the help of this data, you can comprehensively analyze any completed processes.

Today, development companies offer a variety of RPA services to optimize a wide range of business processes. Now, I would single out UiPath, the world leader in the robotic business process automation (RPA) market.

UiPath is a leading company in the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) marketplace, becoming the leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for several years and receiving top rankings from Forrester analysts. In 2020, more than 7,500 customers worldwide have chosen UiPath as an enterprise platform for robotic automation of their business processes.

I would like to note that our team is ready to tell you in more detail, advise and implement UiPath solutions. All that is required is to visit to our website, fill out the form and our specialists will contact you.

Svetlana Anisimova

Speaking about RPA, I will highlight two main effects of the introduction of robotics - RPA provides businesses with reduced costs and increased efficiency of work processes.

The advantages of RPA technologies have already been noted, I will highlight the areas of use of RPA. Finance and accounting departments use RPA to eliminate human errors and optimize data entry time: processing charges, receipts, invoicing are all tasks for a robot.

In customer service centers and in customer service applications, robots can assist support staff by increasing their productivity. Thus, human resources can be reallocated to address more complex issues. The robot will find information about the client in all systems at once and will provide the support employee with all the information with the history of his service. Thus, the contact center employee spends his resources on helping the client, and not on working with business applications and searching for information.

HR departments rely on robots to process employees, vacations, leaves, transfers, and layoffs. For example, processing requests from employees using RPA allows you to automatically generate and provide the necessary certificates and documents. Robots can search and process resumes and candidates' responses - the list of tasks is not limited.

RPA also provides enterprise application integration, simplifying the workflow for sales teams. With automated robotization, sales teams are shortening sales cycles and increasing conversion rates.

RPA also enables the integration of enterprise applications, simplifying the workflow for sales departments. Thanks to automated robotics, sales departments reduce sales cycles and increase conversion rates.

IT professionals rely on RPA to deploy applications and monitor network devices. RPA is an ideal solution for remote IT infrastructure management because it can find and fix problems faster than a human, and can do it 24/7.

Let's consider several real-life examples of solutions for robotizing business processes in banks.

A “smart” robot for handling customer complaints 24/7. This solution helps to process customer requests that arise when working with ATMs. For banks, this function is very important for forming the most comfortable client path. The robot helps the bank automate the ATM claims process. It checks their correctness, then identifies the client's data, identifies and filters out repeated requests, checks the filling in of mandatory fields and the compliance of the information declared by the client with data from the bank's systems: analyzes statements on master accounts and cards, electronic ATM logs, and also forms an order for payment.

Robotization of processing incoming calls. This solution helps to reduce the waiting time and processing of incoming requests to one day. What is important, this solution reduces personnel costs.

Regular loading of documents from bank-clients. This business process is also one of the most common, usually companies are more interested in bank statements. Banks themselves rarely provide APIs to clients, so RPA is beyond competition here compared to other technologies. Research shows that with the help of robots, banks can save up to 75% on operational processes, increasing the productivity and quality of their work.

Software robots are quickly set up, and projects to implement robotization take much less time than developing new banking systems or functionality from scratch. In addition, RPA platforms allow you to use libraries of ready-made solutions, which further simplifies robotization.

Routine operations in IT systems. Examples of such repetitive processes: data entry from scanned copies, reporting and updating of reference books. RPA copes with such tasks very well if business processes are constant and well-regulated.

Document approval. In large companies and banks, in particular, the approval of newly created documents with stakeholders is a separate big business process. It is usually handled by a specially dedicated employee who enters the documents for approval into a special system, then adds all the approvers there and indicates the necessary additional data (type of project, responsible person, etc.).

In conclusion, I would like to note that before thinking about implementing software robots, it is necessary to study your business processes and understand that they meet the minimum requirements for robotization: first of all, these are regular, well-formalized processes that often change over time. If the processes meet these criteria, the use of robots is a great way to save time and money for the company and not resort to complex development or refinement of internal systems.