50 ways to love your robot – by Genfour boss

To celebrate National Robot Week, Genfour has compiled 50 reasons to respect and welcome our robotic companions to the workplace. Article, published exclusively on Robotics and Automation News, courtesy of James Hall, CEO of Genfour

Technological change is surging at unprecedented new speeds, and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are at the forefront of this development.

As we enter the fourth industrial revolution, the working relationship between man and machine is becoming ever more intertwined, creating new jobs and reshaping the traditional structure of the workplace. 

In honor of these technological advances, April 2^nd – April 10^th is National Robot Week (NRW) 2016 – a weeklong celebration of robots and the astounding developments in engineering and robotics over recent years. NRW hosts a number of robot-centered conferences, observations and competitions across America to educate and inform the public.

Established in 2010 by iRobot, NRW was created to increase public awareness of the importance and impact robotics are already having, and will have in the future.

The events will run in schools, libraries and universities and aim to inspire children and young people to become involved in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math-related fields (STEM).

So, in celebration of National Robot Week 2016, we have put together 50 reasons why you, and your departments, should welcome the arrival of the robots as well as what they can do for your business:

1. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is IT system and process agnostic
2. RPA is 100% accurate, eliminating the risk of human error
3. Inflation-agnostic RPA enables you to do more, for less
4. Automating back office processes significantly reduces complaints
5. RPA reduces handoffs and handovers
6. RPA is quick to build, agile and can be hosted in the cloud
7. RPA is quick to implement
8. Automated activity allows for business growth with no additional headcount
9. RPA provides an insight into processes such as volumes, trends and customer input errors
10. Robots are reliable – they turn up for work every day. That’s 100% attendance, and 100%  utilization
11. RPA is non-invasive – it works through any front end GUI, just as a human agent would
12. With RPA, small changes are managed simply and quickly
13. RPA achieves ROI quickly, with an average payback time of 3-9 months
14. RPA can process from global (versus regional) perspectives and is language agnostic
15. RPA can be used for ‘partial’ process automation, where humans can continue to complete trickier tasks, while the robot tackles the simple, repetitive tasks
16. RPA is a more cost effective alternative to traditional IT initiatives
17. Implementing RPA reduces the span of control
18. RPA is significantly cheaper than onshore or offshore FTE
19. RPA allows humans to focus on higher skilled work or customer-facing activities
20. Automated activity allows for business growth with no additional headcount
21. Robots are VMS and can be scheduled according to demand
22. Virtually all routine reporting can be generated by a robot
23. RPA enables tighter compliance with centralized control, which provides increased auditability and reduces cost
24. Automated activity makes longer working hours possible, without HR headaches. Depending on the system availability, robots can be utilized 24/7
25. Using RPA work queues we can quickly scale transactional processing across a number of robots
26. RPA control room features are accessible and understandable. Operations managers can control their own ‘virtual team’
27. Business exceptions can help to highlight process issues or gaps. RPA can be used to track trends to help flag and reduce fraud
28. With RPA, organizations can scale their workforce at short notice. If planned and used correctly, robots can eradicate overtime requirements
29. RPA can be used in regression test business applications
30. Automated processes are represented as flowcharts, enabling business users to validate and understand them
31. Automating back office processes significantly reduces overhead – robots don’t require HR or office space
32. RPA fits into a typical IT release management process this includes planning, scheduling and controlling an automation build through different stages and environments
33. RPA can incorporate analytics along with processing
34. Using RPA work queues, we can quickly scale transactional processing across a number of robots.
35. RPA provides the opportunity to move work from offshore to onshore
36. RPA sits on a virtual infrastructure in a secure data center and can interface with systems that have no existing APIs.
37. RPA mitigates processes that are prone to high error or breach rates
38. A high software development capability is not needed to ‘teach’ the robots and developers don’t require a technical background
39. RPA avoids long drawn out it changes and informs potential it programs
40. RPA works well with legacy systems, mainframe applications and various input and output methods including SFTP
41. System exceptions can help highlight persistent application issues
42. RPA can be started by various ‘triggers’, e.g. a certain time on a clock, an embedded schedule, a human controller or a specific email or work piece being received
43. Automated processes are quick to implement and get even quicker with the more processes that are automated
44. RPA enables quicker turnaround times – 3 x quicker than a human
45. Although the nature of RPA is non-invasive it can call upon web services, APIS and has ‘out of the box’ activities for working with MS Office, email and databases
46. RPA unblocks bottle necks and relieves the pressure on your human workforce during peak periods
47. RPA delivers consistent processes, on time, every time reducing the effort required for quality checking and eliminating the risk of typing errors
48. RPA doesn’t deviate from the given process (i.e. no human error), however cut out unnecessary steps in a process
49. Invisible rules can be built in to the process and changed frequently, e.g. fraud velocity rules – only key individuals need to know what these are at any time and are not visible to operational staff as embedded in the automated process
50. RPA eliminates non-value add work e.g. multi checking levels or authorization points