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By Top 10 Industries That Benefit from Robotic Process Automation
RPA has emerged as a trending technology being implemented in various industries. Owing to its role in streamlining workflows, increasing productivity and reducing costs, more and more industries are searching for processes they can automate with RPA.
Automating repetitive tasks to enhance operational fluency is the primary application of RPA. By automating tasks, it can improve accuracy and productivity, which is driving its implementation across various sectors. There are several benefits of RPA that different industries can reap by successfully implementing this technology. Insurance, finance, healthcare, manufacturing, etc. are some of the popular industries already taking advantage of RPA, paving the way for others.
Significant Use Cases of RPA across Top Industries
The major benefits of RPA in different industries are the ones associated with efficiency, productivity and cost savings. Check out some of the industries that are heavily employing RPA in their work processes to transform their business operations.
1: Finance Industry
The need to handle data-intensive operations while maintaining stringent compliance has led the finance industry to adopt RPA solutions for different processes. Various complex and rule-based processes in the finance sector can be automated with RPA for better efficiency, improved accuracy, and reduced operational risks.
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Accounts Payable
The process of accounts payable includes tasks like extracting vendor information, matching invoices, taking approvals and processing payments. Automation of these tasks with RPA reduces errors and speeds up the process.
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Financial Planning
The finance industry has to deal with high volumes of data on a regular basis that can be processed to gain business insights. By providing better insights into historical data, RPA in finance can help generate forecasts and execute strategies for better financial planning.
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Fraud Detection
To keep up with the technological changes, more and more processes in the finance sector are being digitized. This has increased the risk of fraud, putting the sector at major risk. Automated systems analyze transaction patterns to identify and flag potentially fraudulent activities.
2: Healthcare Industry
The healthcare industry is striving hard to provide better and quality care to its patients without making things overly hectic for healthcare professionals. RPA in the healthcare sector provides an easy way to achieve these goals by automating different rule-based processes. When healthcare professionals are relieved from repetitive tasks, they can take better care of patients.
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Appointment Scheduling
RPA bots can be tasked with appointment scheduling on the basis of patients’ diagnoses and doctors’ availability. Automated systems can not only handle appointment scheduling efficiently but also be set up to send reminders, and follow-ups, for better patient engagement.
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Patient Registration
The complete process of patient registration from setting up accounts, verifying histories, processing bills, and managing claims can be automated with the implementation of RPA bots in healthcare. By speeding up the registration process, healthcare companies make a start at offering better patient care.
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Data Analysis
With better analysis of patient data, healthcare professionals can determine the best course of action to provide optimum care to the patients. RPA can help with the collection and processing of patient data from healthcare records and provide insight for better diagnosis and treatment.
3: Retail Industry
Delivering a memorable shopping experience to its customers is the key to success for retail stores. By implementing RPA in different business processes, retail companies can optimize supply chain management, streamline operations and provide maximum customer satisfaction and loyalty.
- Inventory Management
The foremost benefit of RPA in the retail industry is simplified inventory management. RPA bots can automatically track inventory levels and place orders in case of running out of stock. It also prevents overstocking of inventory by maintaining an optimum balance between supply and demand, reducing wastage.
- Personalized Experience
By understanding shoppers’ behavior on the basis of their purchase history, RPA can help retail owners provide personalized shopping experiences to their customers. Retail businesses can create targeted marketing campaigns based on user behavior and improve sales.
- Price Management
Managing product pricing is very important for retail businesses to stay competitive in the market. Automated systems can manage pricing and promotions across various channels, ensuring consistency. They can detect market demands, study competitors and offer accurate pricing structures for different products and services.
4: Manufacturing Industry
RPA in the manufacturing industry plays an important role in optimizing production efficiency, achieving quality control and managing the supply chain. Physical robots have been a part of the manufacturing industry for a long time, taking care of tasks on the plant floor. Software robots can be implemented to handle back-office processes for a complete revolution of the manufacturing sector.
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Bill of Materials
Manufacturing companies maintain a record of materials required to manufacture new products, known as bill of materials (BOM). Maintaining an accurate bill of materials is crucial to ensure that the manufacturing process does not come to a halt. RPA can help generate BOM with efficiency and accuracy.
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Quality Control
Preserving the quality of products manufactured is necessary for manufacturing companies to maintain their reputation in the market. RPA in manufacturing can help with quality control by checking products for defects, ensuring adherence to quality standards, and generating flags in case any defect is found.
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Maintenance Scheduling
RPA helps in optimizing production runs by scheduling proper maintenance of manufacturing equipment and machinery. It can schedule maintenance based on given criteria of time and efficiency and send notifications regarding pending maintenance. This way RPA can help minimize downtime and maximize output.
5: Telecommunications Industry
The telecommunication industry is focused on providing seamless connectivity to its customers to enhance their experience that ultimately drives revenue for this industry. As the customer base of the telecom industry keeps increasing by the day, automation in this sector can bring several advantages for efficient business management.
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Customer Onboarding
Whenever a new customer wishes to connect with a certain telecom service, the telecom company needs to collect important information regarding the customer, verify documents, create new accounts and configure new services. RPA can automate all these processes to make customer onboarding easier and more accurate.
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Network Management
Network management is important to offer better connectivity to telecom service users. As traffic increases, the necessity to maintain eminent network performance becomes more critical than ever. RPA helps in monitoring network performance, handling outages, and managing service requests.
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Billing and Collections
Telecom companies need to generate bills on the basis of the plans and services purchased by their customers. After generating bills, they send them to customers to collect payment and then update the payment status in their records. RPA in telecom can automate billing processes and manage collections, reducing errors and enhancing cash flow.
6: Insurance Industry
Claim processing, policy management, and handling customer interactions are certain repetitive tasks that insurance companies have to deal with frequently. Implementation of RPA in insurance leads to faster claims resolution, reduced administrative costs, and enhanced customer service.
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Claims Processing
Processing insurance claims requires collecting data from different sources, verifying the collected data and processing claims subject to successful verification. This process needs to be totally error-free to avoid claim denials. Automation can manage claims handling, from initial filing to final settlement, reducing processing time and errors.
- Policy Management
Policy management includes tasks such as collecting forms, verifying data, providing new policies, renewing the existing policies, canceling a policy, calculating cancelation charges and above all, feeding all the data into policy records. By automating these tasks with RPA, insurance companies can improve operational efficiency.
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Fraud Detection
Insurance companies often deal with fraudulent activities such as fake insurance claims, premium theft, planned loss, etc. While these activities are hard to detect by humans, RPA bots can detect fraudulent activities more efficiently and alert companies about the same.
7: Energy Industry
There is a great dependency on the energy and utilities industry in both commercial and residential sectors. It is therefore important for energy companies to operate efficiently without any downtime. RPA can help energy companies enhance the efficiency of business operations by streamlining different processes.
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Customer Onboarding
Different processes related to customer onboarding such as collecting and verifying information of potential customers, setting up their accounts, etc. can be automated using RPA in the energy industry.
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Meter Reading
Correct meter readings are important to provide optimum customer experience by avoiding overcharging. Similarly undercharging should be avoided as it can put energy companies at a loss. RPA can automate meter reading validation to reduce the possibility of errors.
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Bill Generation
According to meter readings, energy companies need to generate bills and then distribute the same for payment collection. From bill generation to sending and receiving bills to the customer, receiving payment and updating payment records, RPA can automate the complete billing process with improved accuracy.
8: Transportation Industry
Many back-office processes in the transportation sector take up a lot of time, bringing down work efficiency. By allowing RPA to take care of invoice processing, supply chain management, freight management, shipment scheduling, etc. in the transportation industry, it can achieve better productivity.
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Cargo Management
RPA can handle cargo management in the transportation industry determining the best route, tracking shipments, custom document processing, etc. By handling cargo management, RPA can free up logistics officials to focus on more complicated tasks.
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Shipment Tracking
RPA can make shipment scheduling and tracking easy by automating tasks such as shipment form filling, updating shipment status, etc. It can also provide customers with accurate details about pickup, shipping, and delivery of products for better satisfaction.
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Invoice Processing
Invoice processing is a time-consuming process that is also prone to errors when performed by humans. By automating data extraction, verification, and validation, RPA can help with invoice processing, making the process faster and free from errors.
9: Ecommerce Industry
With customers’ interest turning more towards online shopping, the ecommerce industry is experiencing a boom. To tackle the increasing workload efficiently, most ecommerce companies are turning towards automation.
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Inventory Management
Effective inventory management ensures that ecommerce companies are able to meet customer demand without causing wastage of resources. The day-to-day task of managing inventory can be automated with the use of RPA in ecommerce.
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Return Processing
Every ecommerce company should offer an excellent return policy to their customers to improve their shopping experience. RPA can help with return processing and update return orders for timely and accurate processing of refunds. By allowing customers to return products without any hassle, ecommerce companies can inspire them to purchase more.
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Better Customer Experience
RPA bots can handle customer complaints providing them with the apt solution for their issues. Ecommerce customers often face issues related to their order placement, shipment tracking, return requests, etc. Bots can provide a quick and effective reply to all such queries.
10: Real Estate Industry
The real estate industry is another major sector where RPA has found its application. Different monotonous processes in this industry can be automated with RPA allowing real estate companies to offer enhanced customer experience and grow their business.
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Tenant Onboarding
Many processes of tenant onboarding in the real estate industry can be automated with RPA. They can ensure document submission against a given checklist, schedule property viewings, perform background verification, and more to make tenant onboarding easier and more efficient.
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Portfolio Management
Real estate companies generally hold a large property portfolio that needs to be managed properly. They need to keep track of properties that have sold recently, identify properties with better chances of selling, add new properties to their portfolio, etc. RPA can help with efficient portfolio management.
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Document Management
Collecting relevant documents from buyers and sellers and verifying those documents for authenticity are some important tasks in the real estate business with no scope for error. By reducing human intervention, RPA can handle document management with better accuracy.
Conclusion
There is a race among different industries to make the most out of robotic process automation to improve business outcomes. From banking to finance, healthcare to ecommerce, almost every industry has discovered the benefits of RPA to enhance their business processes. Choosing the right processes to automate is the key to harnessing the full potential of this technology and bringing maximum benefits.
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