Robotic Process Automation - Essay Sample

Introduction

It is worth mentioning that Robotic Process Automation involves the use of specialized computer programs, referred to as software robots, to automate and standardize various repeatable business processes. In the past days, for example, senior accountants in large companies like The Volvo Group used to spend at least a considerable number of days in a month to validate financial reports from various business units and operation from other parts of the world. However, with the introduction of robotic process automation, this is a forgotten case (Dirican, 2015). This is because currently, the whole process that took almost four days each month is done within two minutes, thereby allowing the accountants time to focus on other duties like reconciling exceptions as well as improving the quality of the reports that they forward to the board and other senior management officials in the organization. It cannot be denied that automation has been helping in improving and reshaping the nature of various works since the time of the industrial revolution. However, the automation that has been observed in the finance departments of some of the largest companies across the world in the past years has been truly exceptional (Dirican, 2015). The aim of this paper is, therefore, to deeply discuss the three keys and the opportunities linked to each by demonstrating a knowledge of how they affect the finance function.

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The first key to be discussed is the impact of robotic process automation on the various business processes. Notably, this opportunity uses artificial intelligence to aid in handling large volumes of repetitive works. It, therefore, allows for efficient learning and processing of various patterns of data (Ravi and Kamaruddin, 2017). This can have a lot of performance benefits for the organization. The first opportunity is that robotic automation helps to reduce process cost. This is so because when repetitive and tedious tasks are handed over to the robotic automation, it helps to reduce the business cost in terms of payroll expenses. Secondly, there are reduced errors in the process because it had been observed that automation in finance and accounting help to improve the quality of output by reducing or eliminating human error. Lastly, it is important to mention that another importance of this opportunity on the business process is that it helps to reduce task completion time. This is true in that robots used in areas of finance as well as accounts payable helps to reduce the time of performing a given task significantly.

Another opportunity that robotic process has had on the various business finance and accounting departments hinge on technology as a significant driver. With the advancement in technology, robotic process automation has become a substantial component of these business departments (Tool, 2018). Firstly, technology has been used in this process by many businesses across the world over to help in credit card fraud detection. This is because the robotic process is used to detect the malicious use of a credit card. Also, robotic process technology can be used to improve the rate of invoice processing. With the use of artificial intelligence as well as machine learning, the robotic process is capable of handling the verification of vendors, the business as a whole, as well as other procurement partners (Carlson, 2012). For example, Volvo's first encounter with robotic automation process was with the company's accounts payable which managed to process about 2000 supplier invoices within a day. This was indeed a result of the technology. The last impact of technology on this opportunity is that robotic process automation has also been used in the creation of personal digital assistants such as the Siri in Apple and Cortana in Microsoft. The assistants have been open-sourced thereby allowing the development of a more advanced robotic process capabilities based on speech-recognition technology.

Robotic Process Automation is a process that helps companies and organizations to improve on their productivity as it can be instructed to perform rule-based and high-volume repetitive manual processes. Contrary to conventional thinking that RPA will displace most human employees, it has proved to be more helpful than earlier thought as it has accorded them an opportunity to make valuable contributions within an organization (Lacity and Willcocks, 2015). It is worth to note that, many professional accountants have had themselves freed in terms of time and effect, they can focus on the primary needs of their customers and other partners. The primary goal of most organizations is to improve on the services they provide to their customers, and the use of RPA offers the accountants the opportunity to focus on activities that add value to the organization as well as spending time with the customers as they have more time because of reduced administrative tasks. The staff working in an organization which has adopted RPA always tends to have adequate time and headspace which makes them come up with innovations that can improve productivity within an organization.

Moreover, the adoption of RPA has enabled people to improve on their personal lives as they are less burdened in performing their tasks and this improves efficiency. Additionally, the staff is greatly motivated as they do not have to perform a repetitive task and this enhances the quality of work within an organization (Lacity and Willcocks, 2015). Also, the use of RPA enables the accounting and financial professionals to allocate more time to strategic tasks that may lead to the delivery of quality services to their clients and customers. It can be noted that reduced errors as a result of the use of RPA enables the staff to focus on analyzing and improving outcomes majorly. The use of RPA in accounting also provides professional accountants to concentrate on qualitative tasks rather than the quantity of work.

It is worth to note that, the widespread digitization of labor may affect the financial professionals 'soft skills' in various ways. From the financial perspective, the digitization of various tasks of the financial professionals has proved to be useful in increasing the efficiency and productivity of an organization. The adoption of technology such as RPA in executing various accounting tasks saves the finance team from performing repetitive tasks and thus gives them time to improve the quality of their work. The automation of work within an organization enables the organizations to operate efficiently and increase the rate at which they execute processes, and this helps the workforce on having enough time to perform other tasks better (Willcocks et al., 2017). Moreover, digitization of labor provides the workforce with an opportunity to come up with better innovative ways which can spur the overall growth of an organization. Also, the data accuracy, improved speed in processes and increased volume of transaction among others are some of the notable benefits of increased automation of labor.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it should be restated that robotic process automation has greatly benefited the accounting and finance departments of the various organization all over the world. The widespread adoption of RPA will undoubtedly have a more significant impact on the modern workforce, and this will necessitate the labor to become more critical thinkers and analytical in ensuring that the needs of customers are met satisfactorily as the success of virtually all organization is anchored on building a strong relationship with customers (Dirican, 2015). RPA should not be seen as a threat to the human workforce but a tool to help increased efficiency and productivity in an organization. However, it should be understood that the process is still at its initial stages of massively impacting businesses. In this sense, it will continue to benefit financially, improved quality of data, reduced errors, improved task completion rate, among others will likely improve as more and more business organizations experiment with robotic process automation.

Reference

Carlson, B. ed., 2012. Technological systems and economic performance: the case of factory automation (Vol. 5). Springer Science & Business Media.

Dirican, C., 2015. The impacts of robotics, artificial intelligence on business and economics. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 195, pp.564-573.

Lacity, M. and Willcocks, L., 2015. What knowledge workers stand to gain from automation. Harvard Business Review, 19.

Ravi, V. and Kamaruddin, S., 2017, December. Big Data Analytics Enabled Smart Financial Services: Opportunities and Challenges. In International Conference on Big Data Analytics (pp. 15-39). Springer, Cham.

Tool, A., 2018. Emerging technologies.

Willcocks, L., Lacity, M. and Craig, A., 2017. Robotic process automation: strategic transformation lever for global business services? Journal of Information Technology Teaching Cases, 7(1), pp.17-28.