I believe RPA is the no longer a choice but a necessity for Business Recovery, especially when looking at a potential COVID-19 second wave. To be frank, the current situation is unlike any other in the industrialized world’s history. It’s true that there have been many pandemics that have greatly altered human life. This one has a unique impact for many reasons, primarily because it has taken place during the Information Age. There is no question productivity has been affected immensely across every industry.
Think for a minute, how MUCH more the impact would be if people were not able to “work from home” and keep some level of business continuity.
Without the infrastructure that was put in place by businesses for employees to get remote connectivity and without the advent of robust web meeting tools like Zoom, WebEx and GoToMeeting, productivity would be almost at a standstill.
While, this has been helpful, businesses are nowhere close to 100% efficiency. This crisis has exposed large gaps in business operations that are ripe for automation.
Some of them include:
- Employee Offboarding/Onboarding
- Invoice processing
- Accounts Receivable
- Automated Receiving of Goods
- Inventory management/reconciliation
- Compliance activities
- Accounting Functions
- IT Audits
As this phase of the crisis begins to wind down and as the slow “opening up” of world economy takes place, the need for Business Recovery and planning for the 2nd wave of Coronavirus are top of mind.
Businesses are going to be faced with some difficult decisions over the next few months. That is why I believe RPA is the ideal the technology to deal with this challenge. The primary reason for this is that RPA is adaptable. It is an integration platform that can apply an infinite set of tools to fix a problem.
Using a tool like the UiPath Enterprise Platform decreases the “time to market” for a robust solution. Even to create a simple bot that inputs data into an application can be done very quickly. We develop most of our bots in 2-4 weeks. In some cases, a matter of days. Unlike other technology initiatives that can go on for months if not years before seeing an ROI, RPA can achieve results rapidly.
Prior to the global-scale impact of Covid-19, a majority of companies hadn’t implemented an automation platform, but many were evaluating one.
I am advocating that THIS MOMENT is the optimal time to embrace RPA. We are about to enter into a break in the storm before the next phases occur.
Without question Business Recovery is going to take place. That will involve getting operations back on track and attempting to move the business forward. These plans should include an automation strategy. Right now, a good majority of businesses are losing vast amounts of money. So much so, that when the economy rebounds, even to some degree, it could be months, if not years, before they reach their pre-COVID levels. This will impact the rate at which companies can hire back previous staff. This will cause a delay and backlog of tasks – just to name a couple of ways in which demonstrate the impact.
To me, this is the ideal time to re-evaluate the business and plan accordingly for the choppy waters that lie ahead. RPA can quickly and adeptly navigate the business, regardless of what challenges it faces.
It is important that companies take some time, sooner rather than later, to really do a deep dive in exploring areas where automation could be implemented now to weather the storms of the future and keep business moving along, as normally as possible, regardless of the external impacts.
Peter S. Camp is the CTO and Founder of CampTek Software. He has been developing RPA Applications for over 15 years. For further questions, discussion or inquiry about CampTek Software Services, contact info@campteksoftware.com.
