Automation is making its way into multiple aspects of business operations — everything from accounting to sales to other human resources back-office functions is handing over their repetitive tasks to technology. Allowing technology to take over menial work gives teams their time back and enables them to contribute to higher-value work. Robotic process automation (RPA) is one of these crucial technologies that’s helping modern businesses digitally transform and do more.

RPA is the term for automation technology that uses software or artificial intelligence (AI) to perform digital tasks humans would otherwise need to do. For example, categorizing technical support or billing queries and sending them to the correct department is something RPA takes care of. RPA delivers a number of benefits to the average business. Below are the top five.

1. Better Accuracy and Greater Efficiency

Taking humans out of the equation for many tasks removes the natural byproduct of human error. Especially concerning menial work, humans can cause errors in repetitive tasks that can lead to burdensome bottlenecks down the road. With RPA in charge of work that was once manual, you’ll see more accurate work, which directly translates into higher productivity and greater team efficiency.

RPA also doesn’t need to clock out for the day or go on vacation — meaning it can run 24/7 to complete high volumes of work in far less time than your human workers would be capable of.

2. Cut Time and Labor Costs

With greater efficiency comes cost savings in several categories. You’ll no longer pay human workers salaries or hourly wages to do what technology can do for much less of a cost. You’ll spend less time on repetitive tasks and inject profitability into your business as employees will get to spend their hours on work that contributes to strategy, innovation, improving the customer experience, and achieving long-term goals.

3. Ensured Security and Compliance

Manual operations often create loopholes and vulnerabilities in organizations. For example, if your manual processes involve processing payroll, a ton of sensitive information is associated with that operation. Humans risk misplacing data, accidentally leaking data, or intentionally compromising data. RPA ensures your business suffers no data loss and compromises security because you can set the security parameters for your RPA solution.

You’ll also reduce risk across your business in a general sense by not having humans touch so many parts of each process. Removing the human element from a workflow automatically improves your compliance factor.

4. Smarter Growth Decisions

You can only make plans as far as your eye can see, and with manual business processes, that’s not that far. RPA enables you to instantly collect data about your workflows and outcomes to see what areas need improvement, what is driving your profitability, and what could be different. Only with this unique level of visibility can you make the most intelligent decisions for your business about finances, personnel, product development, sales, and more.

5. Happier Customers

With your employees freed from manual work that ties them down, they can better attend to customer needs, get ahead of problems before they escalate, and generally improve the way your business handles customer interactions. Customer demands are evolving in almost every industry, requiring a more robust, digital approach to customer service. RPA gives you this digital leg up, and it also enables your team to generate insightful reports on customer activity and requirements so you can evolve your business to meet changing demand.

Today’s businesses that are looking to scale for the future must consider automation if they want to do so with any level of productivity, efficiency, or profitability. RPA is a perfect place to start when considering automation technologies. Contact the experts at All Star today with any questions about RPA or automation.