Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is arguably one of the most transformative technologies in the business world. It can be used to streamline a business across the board, from network security to payroll and order fulfillment. For anyone who’s been paying attention, the benefits are as clear as day.

You already know this, of course. That’s why you’re here. You don’t need us to convince you about the value of RPA — you need to convince the decision-makers in your business.

Fortunately, that won’t be difficult to do. As you’ll soon see, the numbers speak for themselves. First thing’s first, however, you’re going to need a plan.

It All Starts With Your Roadmap

In order to properly conceptualize and explain the specific ways that RPA can benefit your business, it’s imperative that you first know exactly how it will be used within your organization.

For instance, will you apply it to your reporting, eliminating hours of data entry? Will you use it to process invoices for your customers, enabling faster fulfillment times and eliminating potential invoicing errors? Or will you use RPA to streamline your onboarding process so that new employees can get to work that much faster?

The possibilities are, as they say, limitless.

You likely started exploring RPA with a specific problem or set of processes in mind. That’s good. Zero in on that for now, and answer the following questions:

Costs, Benefits, and Potential

Armed with the research you did in the previous step, it’s time to crunch some numbers. First, you want to do a cost-benefit analysis of your project. You want to be as comprehensive as possible here, quantifying every single potential expense and gain.

You’ll also want to calculate your return on investment. What, at the end of the day, does your business ultimately gain from this deployment? What tangible value will this project generate for the business?

Finally, take a brief moment to brainstorm what other areas of your organization might benefit from RPA. In a pinch, having this information on hand could help seal the deal and bring someone who’s still on the fence over to your side. Don’t just focus on broad departments, drill down to specific processes.

Your CBA and ROI are the two figures that really matter here.

The Pitch

Now that you’ve done your research and crunched some numbers, it’s time to think about how you’re going to make your case. Start with the challenge; your reason for proposing the deployment.

Focus on what the issue is costing your business — on what you lose if you leave the problem unaddressed. Again, concrete numbers are your friend here. You want to provide them with specifics.

How many hours of productivity do they lose? How much money is this problem costing them? How many more clients could they serve if they deployed RPA?

From there, you’ll want to explain in layman’s terms precisely how a well-executed RPA strategy can address this problem. Don’t bother going into detail about the features or functions of RPA. Focus on the results.

With any luck, you’ll have made a strong enough case to move forward with your deployment.

Closing Thoughts

So, in summary, to make your case in favor of RPA, you need:

We won’t lie and say it will be easy. But the end result is worth it. And if, after reading this piece, you still aren’t sure where to start or where to go, Tangentia can help.

We have nearly two decades of experience in the automation space and have worked with multiple customers and systems worldwide. We’re also partnered with multiple RPA vendors, meaning that no matter your use case or business model, we have the expertise and the connections you need.

Book a discovery call today, and we’ll help you make your case.

More and more processes are becoming automated for businesses of all sizes. Affordable automated processes are now feasible for companies, regardless of industry or company mandate.

With the rise of business automation and lowered cost requirements of automating common business tasks, robotic process automation or RPA provides needed services that can overcome common business challenges and eliminate manual processes that are error-prone and time-intensive.

This article will cover everything bots, specifically RPA and unattended and attended bots, and how they can help your business.

What is RPA (Robotic Process Automation)?

RPA refers to software that automates common business tasks. You can purchase RPA with designated tasks to complete, or you can automate processes specific to your workflow and industry.

Tax software is a form of RPA. You can automate the sending of receipts, promissory notes, invoices, and more to clients and customers, while automatically filling in tax forms for your company accountant with the click of a button.

RPA processes can fulfill low-level tasks that employees can perform. If money is tight, or you want your employees to focus on specialized tasks and skillsets, you can use RPA to take over these simplistic tasks.

Unattended Bots Vs. Attended Bots: What’s the Difference?

Bots solve tasks, it’s that simple. Whether you use unattended or attended bots, automate the software and let it do the work. Bots can perform tasks for your business with or without constant guidance from an employee or multiple employees, depending on whether you choose to use unattended or attended bots.

You can also choose both if you want to mix and match how involved your employees are when automating tasks like sending order confirmation emails to clients or updating invoices based on electronic purchase orders.

Unattended bots require no human interaction. These bots are designed to tackle repetitive and frequent tasks at scale. For example, unattended bots are ideal for manual data entry, repetitive admin tasks, monitoring data streams, and other similar tasks.

Attended bots require human interaction. These bots handle simple tasks that make up larger, more complex processes. They often work in tandem with humans to automate complex workflows. Attended bots are not designed for scale. Instead, you should think of them as individualized personal assistants. For example, a customer service rep interacting with a client may use an attended bot to pull customer data during the call.

Which Bot Type is Right For Your Business?

If you want to retain a bit more control over your business bots, choose attended bots. If you have experience with bots and want to automate these processes even more than your normal amount, choose unattended bots.

You can choose both; you do not need to limit yourself to choosing one or the other.

Businesses without experience with bots should choose attended bots to start before moving onto unattended bots. You can use attended bots for some processes and unattended bots for other processes.

Companies experienced with technology, especially RPA or bots, can skip attended bots and go right to implementing unattended bots.

Adopting RPA in Your Business

RPA adoption can be a significant part of the project management process. As you are planning projects and processes, consider which tasks can be automated to save time and increase project efficiency. Fulfilling projects under budget and ahead of schedule is a much more realistic process when bots and RPA can automate many lower-level tasks that require minimal knowledge and skillsets.

Repetitive, low-level tasks are prone to human error. Such tasks take valuable time and money away from more important tasks. These tasks no longer need to be done by human employees but can be performed by automation software in fractions of a second.

Adopting RPA can save you time, money, and efficiency, as well as raise employee morale.

If you are hesitant to add bots, consider the fact that you already have. If you use GPS for delivery runs, you are automating route mapping from a manual process to an electronic version. If you use Microsoft Word, you are automating the creation of a business document instead of writing it out by hand.

Specific bot software and automation are no different than a manual process an employee uses to finish a task faster and under budget.

Key Differences Between Unattended and Attended Bots

While both types of bots can help your business, key differences exist between unattended and attended bots.

Consider attended bots like an extension of your employees. Employees can make decisions and choose actions for these bots to perform. Bots need to be assigned tasks to complete. They cannot undertake actions independently.

Unattended bots are like employees themselves. You direct these bots to fulfill tasks and provide them the autonomy to perform actions within a predetermined framework. Unattended bots can therefore seem to act independently, even though they are not. Such bots can finish employee tasks much quicker than manual processes and require minimal interaction from human operators.

Although these key differences between unattended and attended bots are clear, different definitions may exist depending on the industry jargon you use and the specific software you purchase. However, in simplistic terms, unattended bots are “unattended,” and attended bots are “attended.”

Ready to Transform Your Business With RPA? Tangentia Can Help

Tangentia has almost two decades of experience providing automated solutions, like unattended and attended RPA, for customers worldwide.

Whether you need business solutions like AI, EDI, RPA, or B2B integrations, we can help. Book a discovery call today to see what RPA can do for your business.

Choosing Between Attended and Unattended Bots For Your Business. Learn more about attended and unattended bots in regards to which your business should leverage in our eBook.