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A wide variety of business processes can be automated. There are several factors to consider.

The processes to look for are those that include routine, rules-based tasks, which require little or no subjective judgement. To get maximum cost-effectiveness, it is best to choose processes which are run in high volumes (many times a day by many employees).

Other factors to consider could be error prone processes, specifically those in which compliance plays a major role and non-compliance may lead to costly fines or painful brand damage.

See the ‘Selecting the right candidate for process automation’ brochure to learn more.

Research shows that more than 50% of enterprises are actively looking for an RPA solution.

The reasons are clear. According to the National Association of Software and Services Companies, RPA can already reduce operation costs as much as 65%, with ROI within as little as half a year.

Currently, most RPA vendors offer very narrow solutions, for either the front- or back-office, providing either virtual services or software, and able to either automate complete processes or partial processes, but not both.

NICE Robotic Automation is the exception, providing a solution suitable for every department, with its attended (agent assisted, desktop automation) and unattended (end-to-end, server-based) automation capabilities.

View EE’s case study webinar and see how this leading telco employs RPA to handle 32 different processes, using both attended and unattended automations, with the expectation to deliver about £1m per year of additional benefits from these processes.

Automated processes that don’t require any human intervention are called “unattended”.

They are performed quickly and efficiently by RPA robots from start to finish, freeing employees to handle more high-value activities which require their special ‘cognitive’ skills. These robots reside on a virtual server, pulling tasks from a queue, performing them quickly and accurately.

But there are processes which can’t be fully automated and do need human intervention. And other processes which you don’t want to automate at 100% as people’s involvement adds value. But since there’s still a lot of value to be had with process automation, also for these types of processes, automation can take place directly on the employee’s desktop and help perform desktop tasks. This is referred to as ‘attended’ automation, and it can also assist the agent by optimizing desktop processes and guiding them, in real-time, through complex scenarios. An example could be guidance for an up-sale process, or for regulatory compliance.

NICE uniquely provides both attended and unattended automation, maximizing productivity and supporting employees to increase sales, compliance and provide a more professional, quick and consistent customer service.

Read the white paper by Frost & Sullivan to dive deeper into the world of automation in customer service.

Monitoring, auditing and security are key factors when deploying RPA solutions. This includes securing both the RPA infrastructure itself and the information it uses.

Measures should be taken to ensure that Robots are doing what they are intended to do, and to monitor system health.
Such measures should include:

• Role-based or interdependent permissions for all changes to the system or retained data
• Report of robot success rate and failure reasons
• Automatic detection and alert when something has changed in the underlying applications the robots are automating
• Version control policies
• Audit of actions taken by different admin users
• Complete audit trail of robot actions
• Authentication of executable files and data encryption.

You first have to be sure to correctly identify those processes in your organization that can or should be automated (i.e., highly structured and routine tasks, which require little or no subjective judgement).

This means carefully mapping internal processes, for which you need maximum visibility into your employees’ daily activities.

The NICE Real-Time Activity Monitoring solution (for Desktop Analytics), provides insights using captured data on employee application use, to identify immediate and long-term optimization opportunities.

As a next step, NICE professional services can provide the business discovery, and hand-hold your people through the initial steps of the automation project. We train our customers to work with our Automation Studio tool, and make sure to build the required confidence so the customer will be self-sufficient with on-going projects.

Alternatively, you may choose to bring in a consulting and implementation partner to facilitate every step of your transformation project.