Robotic Process AutomationThe Emerging Technology

The Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) market is fueled with fierce competition. Client organizations look for more accuracy, speed, reliable, and timely delivery of the tasks that are assigned. In this context, BPO companies are inclined to adopt automation with the use of robotic process automation (RPA) and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to have technology edge and competitive edge to lead the competition. Although there are many merits for both the client organization and the BPO in terms of cost savings, speed performance, and time saving for the client company, there is psychological fear on the part of the employees in BPO because of the automation of the jobs. According to the survey conducted by Christian Kroll et al. (2016), most of the BPOs prefer RPA in finance and accounting, followed by customer service, sales and delivery, and human resource management functions. The employees who work in these functions are afraid of losing their jobs. Routine and monotonous jobs should be automated to avoid human error to maintain a high accuracy level. AI and RPA collaboration can produce genuine benefit in several ways. With little initial cost, these technologies can produce a favorable and substantial return on investment (ROI). As automation technology may help businesses reach their objectives, the majority of businesses are willing to adopt it, and many of them have already begun to reap the benefits. No organization, however, will be able to effectively decide and support investments in automation if the ROI of a project is not properly understood. The initiative team must concentrate on ROI when planning, executing, and governing AI and RPA to do so effectively. In the past, automation has not always been welcomed, and concerns related to its use and its detrimental effects on employment have persisted (Autor, 2015; Vagia et al., 2016). The same situation prevails in the industry because of significant advances in innovations and technological development, namely RPA, AI, machine learning, and natural language processing. McKinsey & Company (Venkat Atluri et al., 2019) viewed on new and disruptive technologies and projected that, by 2025, the potential economic impact of automation technologies such as RPA will be nearly $6.7 trillion. Jonas Uyttendaele (2018) published the study entitled “Artificial Intelligence in Corporate Banking–A Closer look at the Potential Impact on E-Business Processes,” conducted at the Department of Marketing in Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium. This research aimed to evaluate how AI will affect a bank’s B2B customer relationship procedures. Nowadays, AI development has been accelerating, and this motivated our research group to study the effects of such rapid technological advances on e-business procedures. The main objective of the research was to identify the impact and its significance from the bank’s and/or customer’s perspective, thus making it important to get banks and their clients ready for the upcoming, unavoidable changes. This research study was qualitative, and the respondents belonged to three categories: banks, technology providers, and experts. The researcher observed that re-skilling the workforce would be necessary to adapt to the changing roles of banks. Banks are transforming themselves into technology banks owing to AI implementation, and the employees and the customers of the bank are also required to adopt these changes. Re-skilling and giving appropriate training to the employees definitely support the bank to yield well-satisfied experience to the customers. Markus Michael Renner (2018) conducted research on “Software Robot-Based Automation of Financial Administration’s Processes” as part of his master’s degree course at LUT School of Business and Management, Lappeenranta University of Technology, Finland. The researcher explored the application of RPA in financial management. He noted that a Finnish city’s shared services center has robots integrated into the accounts payable process. He, therefore, used case study methodology for his research. He reported that the case organization is public and highly domestic when compared with previous cases scrutinizing RPA. The objective of this research was to scrutinize and find tasks to apply RPA effectively, find whether challenges or difficulties persist while executing and explore other solutions, if any, and have a comparative observation between his research and other related previous research. The investigator found that financial shared services center of his case company had used RPA for those tasks that are described with rules and utilized multiple systems to accomplish them. Hence, in this, the robots check data from online Excel spread sheets and compare them against invoice information quickly and accurately. Furthermore, the author reported the need for standardization of the process to enable the robots perform accurately. The researcher emphatically mentioned that a detailed profitability analysis should be conducted to determine whether or not the implementation of robotics is profitable. For this, a break-even analysis tool can be used. If RPA can increase savings (cost-effective) in terms of reduced labor requirements and man-hours as well as time-saving in terms of performing the job, then RPA adoption is profitable. If the initial cost of the project is more and annual savings are minor, then RPA adoption is not profitable. Furthermore, RPA needs constant updation because of changes in technology and systems, which may make RPA adoption unprofitable. Here, an attempt is made to look into the evolution of RPA to explore the thin line of difference among manual, scripted automation, and RPA. This chapter also describes the various business processes where RPA can be used for its benefits, looking into various research studies and understanding the impact of RPA and AI on business outcomes.