Covering Disruptive Technology Powering Business in The Digital Age

Written By: Emily Yan and Allison Freedman, Product Marketing Managers – Keysight Technologies

In a world where companies are under immense pressure to improve their bottom line, finding ways to boost productivity while reducing costs has become a top priority.  A recent study by McKinsey has revealed that the United States could grow its cumulative GDP by a staggering USD $10 trillion by 2030 if productivity is boosted to past historical rates. With the emergence of robotic process automation (RPA) 2.0, technology can help. This intelligent solution, which combines the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), is changing the game for businesses by automating more complex tasks and improving efficiency.

Emily Yan

What Is RPA 2.0?

The adoption of RPA has revolutionised the way businesses operate, streamlining operations and reducing costs by automating repetitive and time-consuming tasks. However, as industries like aerospace and defence and healthcare seek to comply with strict security mandates while maximising efficiency, the need for more intelligent and reliable process automation has become increasingly apparent.

This is where RPA 2.0 comes in. Leveraging AI and machine learning, RPA 2.0 can automate even more complex workflows non-invasively, making it an ideal solution for heavily regulated industries.

According to Gartner, almost 70% of human effort in management and processing will be automated by 2024, highlighting the vast potential for RPA 2.0. With new capabilities like intelligent computer vision, RPA 2.0 can analyse elements on the screen and drive software just like humans, making automation more reliable.

RPA 2.0 has advanced natural language processing (NLP). It understands the meaning and context of words and phrases, even when there are variations in language, dialect or syntax. It learns from and adapts to new language patterns and variations over time, improving its ability to understand and respond to human language more accurately and effectively.

Using NLP, RPA can automate responses to inquiries on the website, patient registration at kiosks, front-line administrative queries, and many other communication services. This improves communication, significantly shortens the time to diagnosis, increases efficiency, and leads to better outcomes in healthcare settings.

Moreover, with ML algorithms, RPA 2.0 can adapt to changing requirements more efficiently, enhancing the organization’s agility and minimizing risks. The result? An RPA 2.0 that evolves from a virtual assistant to a virtual workforce, capable of handling more complex tasks and freeing up human resources to focus on higher-value tasks.

RPA 2.0 Empowers Organisations to Do More with Less, Safely

Allison Freedman

In today’s fast-paced business environment, enterprises require an efficient way to manage complex workflows that span across multiple teams, regions and platforms. RPA 2.0 is a powerful tool that can help organisations manage these workflows seamlessly, quickly adapting to changing factors and new requirements.

A good example is a London-based health system which uses RPA 2.0 and intelligent test automation to automate processes across multiple platforms, including a student information management system, a time-tabling system and electronic patient records.

By mapping different activity types to plan the best time for activities, they achieved greater efficiency at scale, accelerating their digital innovations.

Greater Security with Non-Invasive Automation

Installing RPA tools on mission-critical applications isn’t an option. Because of intelligent computer vision, RPA 2.0 solutions can interact with the software and systems without installing anything on the server or jeopardising security requirements.

A combination of two techniques achieves non-invasive automation:

• A two-system model allows the RPA 2.0 software to sit on a separate machine.
• Bots can drive the software via the user interface (UI) rather than through access to the source code or object layer, both of which can be obscured or unavailable to traditional RPA tools.

For example, non-invasive RPA has been used across the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and multiple military branches to manage finances, data and critical office tasks. At one defense contractor, one of its labs required a three-hour setup process every morning before any testing work could start. This process was a giant barrier to getting work done quickly, as it meant that the real testing work could only begin after lunch. However, the team could automate this setup and configuration process non-invasively. Instead of taking all morning, once initiated, the setup was ready to go within 15 minutes.

Kickstarting Your RPA 2.0 Journey

In today’s hyper-competitive landscape, organisations must continuously drive operational efficiency and free up personnel for more strategic tasks to remain ahead of the curve. RPA 2.0 can be a powerful tool for achieving these goals, but implementing it safely and securely is paramount to its success.

Here are some key considerations to implement RPA 2.0 safely:

• Understand the regulatory environment. Industries like healthcare and aerospace and defence are highly regulated. Before implementing RPA 2.0, it is important to understand the regulatory environment and ensure your tool complies with all relevant regulations.
• Identify the right processes. Not all processes are suitable for automation. Identifying the right processes based on complexity, repeatability, and volume is important. Common workflows such as database migration, audit trails for federal organizations, and security patches for hospital servers are good starting points.
• Implement strong security controls. Although RPA 2.0 can automate processes non-invasively, it is essential to implement strong security controls such as user authentication, data encryption and access controls to mitigate security risks.
• Ensure transparency and accountability. It is essential to ensure transparency and accountability in the implementation process. This includes providing clear documentation, training, and communication to all stakeholders and ensuring clear lines of responsibility and accountability for automation.

Conclusion

In summary, RPA 2.0 arrives as a timely solution for organisations aiming to do more with less in highly secured environments. Compared to the first iteration, it can handle more complex tasks with greater reliability through AI and ML. This innovative approach can unlock significant business value for the U.S., potentially in trillions of dollars, by addressing productivity challenges and catalyzing digital innovation at a larger scale.

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