3 Killer Front Office RPA Use Cases

In a previous post, I wrote about “Back Office” or unattended use cases for RPA. In this post I will be talking about 3 RPA Use Cases for attended or “Front Office” processes. These are workflows where the RPA process is enhancing a human’s ability to make informed decisions on a computer.

This is a concept in which business centric contextual help is available for any application a human is interacting with. The process is quite simple but extremely powerful. For example, the best use case is in a call center where an agent may have to navigate multiple systems and/or portals as part of servicing the customer. Often times there are cases where they may not have adequate training or they are using a seldom used application. This leaves them without the proper support needed to make accurate decisions. Enter in RPA with its “Computer Vision” technology. It can identify what application they are using and what fields or areas of the application the user is in. The robot watches what application is being used and provides visual pointers on the screen, indicating the help that is available for specific areas of that screen. It is imperative that as part of building this process a “subject matter expert” teaches the robot or provides existing help about the application or applications that are being used.

We are all familiar with SSO (Single Sign On) but in some cases the tools are not robust enough to sign on to every application. Enter in RPA. It’s ability to identify any application and provide the proper credentials make this an excellent use case. I have worked with some clients for which this can save close to 45 minutes a day per employee. The concept is that instead of wasting valuable time to sign in and out of any number of applications, RPA can do this in little or no time.

This the “robot for every person” model. Anyone that uses a computer on a daily basis is absolutely performing any number of repetitive tasks that certainly can be automated. For example, moving an email to certain folders or even going into personal folders to grab a document. Moreover, there are an infinite number of things that can be automated on your desktop. At some point one can imagine a robot doing most of the menial tasks on a computer and freeing us all up to focus on higher value tasks.