Intelligent Process Automation (IPA) is a process by which companies are training robots or computer applications to simulate routine or repetitive responses that would generally be given by employees, resulting in faster time to market and boosted business returns. IPA robots perform tasks by interacting with in house digital resources to carry out a business process just like humans do. Unlike humans, robots never get tired or sleep and perform regular error-free tasks and cost much less.

Most repetitive human user actions are simulated by Intelligent Process Automation (IPA) robots while logging into applications, copying and pasting data, moving files and folders, filling out forms and extracting structured and semi-structured data from documents.

As the world is going digital with the advent of innovative technologies like IoT, Big Data, NLP and Machine Learning, Intelligent Process Automation software robots offer added vantage points. These rule following applications do not get tired, making no mistakes with compliance and consistency. Properly instructed and trained IPA robots lead to improved compliance with reliable execution of tasks and reduce risks.

Intelligent Process Automation (IPA) has thus been implemented by businesses in modern times to solve various business problems and needs to reduce costs and result in profitability. We will now discuss in this blog the several use cases for applicability of IPA for businesses in today’s time:

Customer Support

Customer service and Intelligent Process Automation (IPA) are the two terms that no business today can afford to ignore. The right use of modern technologies to address the needs of the customers brings in trust and ensure profitability with boosted business return. Impatient customers of today demand swift responses and immediate grievance redressal. In this scenario, it is humanly impossible to deliver to the sheer quantum of customers owing to human limitations to handle such a huge number and the only solution to cater to this is to ensure an implementation of automated rule-based solution. Automated customer support systems have enabled businesses to answer to regular queries and FAQs of customers with initial swift responses, giving more leverage to human side of interventions.

Processing Invoices

Invoice processing can be a tedious and time-consuming task requiring high precision and accuracy. Such repetitive manual task can often result in delayed and inaccurate payments. According to a research conducted by Aberdeen Group, a technology service company, it takes around 4.1 days to 16.3 days for companies to process an invoice from receipt through payment approval. This delay is often a result of high manual effort involved in processing the task. IPA software robots helps in automating error reconciliation, data inputs and even decision making required by finance staff for invoice processing. Automation thus helps in limiting errors in such processes and reduce the need for manual intervention in these cases.

Payroll Transactions

Payroll processing repetitively every month is a time-consuming and recurring task for each organization's HR team, and this also requires significant data entry efforts. This often results in data inaccuracies that can cause delays in payment and staff discontent. IPA can check the consistency of employee data across multiple systems, validate timesheets and deductions. It can also automate salary formulating processes and manage benefits and payments. IPA can automate end-to-end payroll transactions to avoid inaccuracies and delays.

Comparing Prices

Companies generally engage in large purchases to offer varied services or products. The cost of these purchases can affect the company's revenue or profits and hence companies tend to research online for making informed decisions. This exploration for right decision making can take a long time and involves complex processes, which is the reason why many companies are now adopting IPA. The right IPA solution can not only compare prices from different vendors but can also compare product attributes and quality. Companies employing IPA can now buy the best services or products at the best prices possible.

Customer Information Storage

IPA can help you store, organize and categorize all types of customer information to ensure easy access to everything. The system can automatically categorize different data sets such as contact information, purchase history, preferences or personal information. The system can display all information to customer support team, sales representatives and similar employees. There is no need to enter this information manually or worry about its accuracy. IPA can always be depended for accuracy in contrast to employees and has a lower error margin. IPA can thus help you reduce repetitive task saving you from unnecessary stress and labor involvement.

Recruitment Process

Recruitment is another prime candidate for implementation of IPA system in large organizations. IPA can aid the recruitment process by helping the HR team to source resumes from a range of online platforms, analyze the exact skillsets, derive value, sort through spams and unwanted applications. It helps the HR team to gain access to the right skills pertaining to candidates with much reduced effort and cost efficiency. IPA not just filters unwanted applications but also helps HR to sort through the right resumes and have access to every application exactly suited to the job requirement. IPA helps the HR team throughout the recruitment process from screening to assessment to final onboarding and administration.

Conclusion:

We have now seen that IPA can be implemented in several interesting ways. Your employees can gradually be accustomed to adapt to the technology with ease and can help them work productively. Are you still confused about implementing IPA led automation? It's the right to get in touch with us to craft the right IPA strategy and set up a sustainable, scalable and cost-effective IPA environment as well as determine the right business process candidate for implementing Intelligent Process Automation (IPA). You can drop us an email at marketing@espire.com.

You can read related blogs on (IPA) RPA in our blog section:

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