When we think of healthcare, we often think of visiting our doctor or the hospital. But healthcare services encompass so much more, such as dental care, optometry, physical therapy, chiropractic, and massage therapy.

Each and every one of these is dedicated to focusing on patient care, but at the same time, each has an increasingly complex administrative load to deal with. Robotic process automation (RPA) can alleviate that administrative burden and help you put your focus back on your patients.

What Is RPA?

RPA is a technology that uses software “bots” that are programmed to complete specific tasks. These can be standalone tasks or a series of tasks that make up an entire process. The key is to implement RPA in the back-office and front-office in strategic areas in such a way that staff is freed up to focus their time and energy on high-value tasks that are directly related to patient care and nurturing patient relationships.

Challenges Faced by Healthcare Providers

Let’s get specific about the challenges faced by all healthcare providers, regardless of the field in which they operate. These challenges primarily come down to three main areas:

Experience, Knowledge, Expertise

EDI is not a monolithic discipline. Different industries have different data interchange requirements and must adhere to different regulations and standards. A vendor that understands one sector is not guaranteed to be knowledgeable about another.

All three of these areas of management are heavily reliant on numerous tedious, repetitive tasks that are time-consuming and prone to error when performed manually. However, when these tasks are automated, the result is processes that are done in a fraction of the time and are error-free, while staff and healthcare providers have more time to spend with patients.

Benefits of RPA in Healthcare

The benefits of RPA in healthcare are many and they have a significant impact on the ability of healthcare providers to offer the highest level of care. These benefits include:

RPA in Healthcare Use Cases

Regardless of what medical field you are in, RPA can help in a variety of ways. There are many use cases associated with RPA in healthcare. Here are some examples.

Simplified Appointment Scheduling

The process of scheduling patient appointments is faced with challenges, whether the patients schedule their appointments online or the appointments are scheduled in the office. In some cases, there is a need to:

Checking these various data sources and cross-referencing them to come up with the ideal date and time for the appointment is a time-consuming process when done manually. However, an RPA bot can check all these sources within seconds and find the earliest date and time that works when taking all relevant factors into account.

Patient Recall and Reactivation

Patients are notorious for neglecting to schedule their next appointment or following up with their dentist, optometrist, or other healthcare providers. Sending out reminder calls and texts manually is difficult, and many practices now have automated reminders. RPA can take this a step further by:

In fact, no matter what type of patient communication you need to implement, RPA can automate it for the greatest impact and the best ROI.

Streamlined Invoice Processing

Manually processing patient invoices is extremely time-consuming. The larger the healthcare company, the more challenging the task. With RPA, a bot can be programmed to automate the collection and processing of up to 90% of a healthcare provider’s invoices. This eliminates human error that inevitably makes its way into manual invoice processing and reduces the amount of disruption the business faces.

Take Advantage of RPA

Adopting RPA to improve patient, data, and account management is critical to the success of any healthcare provider, regardless of the field in which they operate. Best of all, you can customize your RPA solution to align with the specific needs of your healthcare practice.

To do this the right way, you need to take the time to define your operational, business and patient care strategies and then determine which processes are the best candidates for automation, starting with the two or three top candidates and expanding from there as needed.

To find out more about what RPA can do for your healthcare practice and how we can help, book a discovery call with a member of Tangentia’s automation team today.

The telecom industry needs robotic process automation (RPA) more than ever before. The industry has grown at a rapid pace over the past 20 years. It forms the foundation of every aspect of human life, from work to play. In the U.S. in 2020 over 62% of households had only wireless voice service, rather than a landline. Of those households with a landline, over 34% also had at least one mobile phone.

Telecom has become more than just a means to call a friend or business associate. People use their phones to shop, locate businesses, order takeout and keep track of their health and fitness. Businesses use mobile technology to keep in touch with employees no matter where they are, to inspire collaboration, and more. Telecom companies can keep up with this overwhelming demand with RPA.

Challenges Faced by Telecom

Aside from the fact that demand for telecom has grown in the past two decades, telecom companies face additional challenges. They need to offer their service at the most affordable prices and their service has to be the fastest, all while maintaining a high level of innovation. This has created an incredibly competitive environment in the telecom industry.

At the same time telecom companies must:

Many of these challenges, and telecom operations in general, rely heavily on processes. And many of these processes are ideal candidates for RPA.

What is RPA?

RPA is software technology that is specifically designed to perform repetitive, rules-based tasks that are extremely time-consuming and error-prone when humans perform them manually. RPA operates in a similar fashion to its human counterparts. These software bots can be programmed to perform a variety of back-office and front-office tasks such as:

The automation of these tasks has a significant impact on many processes within telecom. Processes are performed more quickly and with fewer errors, and they free up employees’ time to focus on tasks of higher value, such as direct customer engagement, collaboration, and innovation.

Use Cases for RPA in Telecom

There are many areas of telecom that can benefit from RPA, including those that directly affect customers and those that relate to back-office processes. Here are some use cases that demonstrate the impact of RPA.

First Call Resolution (FCR)

When a customer calls in with concerns about their service or account, it can take a significant amount of time for an agent to retrieve the required customer information, enter data and update information as needed. This can make customer calls take a long time and it can be challenging to address all of a customer’s issues in a single call.

With RPA, the retrieval of information, updating of customer information, and data entry can be automated, making them go much faster and eliminating human error. This helps the agent focus on customer engagement and resolve issues faster, ultimately increasing customer satisfaction.

Responding to Partner and Customer Queries

Telecom companies typically have external partners who sell their services, and it is common for these partners to have questions and concerns. RPA can relieve human workers of many of the tasks associated with partner queries by scanning and interpreting emails, answering simple queries, and notifying a human worker of any queries that are complex in nature.

RPA is capable of performing the same tasks when it comes to customer queries, making customer service run more smoothly. The result is human workers who can work more efficiently and effectively to resolve partner and customer issues and provide better service, ensuring happier partners and customers.

Tracking Competitor Prices

Since telecom companies typically have their pricing structure and plan online, it is possible to determine what your competitors’ prices are and to monitor those prices on an ongoing basis. However, this is difficult to do manually. RPA can relieve human workers of the burden of tracking competitor prices by doing it for them. This is an asset to telecom companies trying to remain competitive within their industry.

Make RPA Work for You

The benefits of RPA in telecom are clear. The key is to get RPA working for you as efficiently as possible. To accomplish this, it is important to assess your operational objectives and determine where RPA can have the most impact in your organization. This makes it possible to customize an RPA solution that will suit the unique needs of your company.

Book a discovery call with a member of Tangentia’s automation team today and find out what RPA can do for your telecom company.