Robotic Process Automation tools can bring agility to the small businesses by automating low-value, repetitive manual processes, and freeing up crucial resources for comparatively complex and nuanced work. Automation also helps them to bring down the operational cost to a considerable extent. But the cost and complexity of the implementation can be overwhelming for many small businesses.

To help them overcome the initial barrier, Robotic Process Automation platform and solutions provider, Automation Anywhere recently launched a free version of its RPA platform, which gives them access to the platform. Milan Sheth, Executive Vice President – IMEA, Automation Anywhere speaks on the benefit it brings to the small businesses, and why businesses need to look at the Robotic Process Automation options for long-term benefits.

Milan Sheth, EVP – IMEA, Automation Anywhere

How are you trying to lower the RPA adoption barriers for small businesses?

The Automation Anywhere Community Edition is a free offering for small businesses, developers and students. It has eliminated the barriers towards Robotic Process Automation adoption for small businesses, developers and students by providing unfettered access to the digital workforce platform. Users of the Community Edition will have access to the full suite of Automation Anywhere products, including RPA, IQ Bot (AI), Bot Insight (embedded analytics) and Bot Store, the online marketplace for preconfigured downloadable RPA bots.

Creating bots may seem to be complicated; however, the Automation Anywhere platform has made building bots as easy as creating structures out of a ‘Lego block’. Alternatives like these can help small businesses turbocharge their automation initiatives while empowering a whole new generation of Robotic Process Automation developers.

How do you view the state of RPA adoption among all sizes of businesses in India currently? How do you handhold businesses in this transition from human to machine?

Gartner predicts that by 2020, 40 percent of large enterprises will have deployed RPA software, up from less than 10 percent today. This accelerated growth is more fluid when the technology is put into the hands of a wider array of users who continue to build their skills in developing, deploying and scaling RPA.
RPA has existed in India for a long time and the country is driving the technology globally. Automation is at the top of every corporate agenda in India today. If the company’s objective is to stay ahead of being disrupted by a major paradigm shift, it must adopt RPA. RPA reaps an ROI of weeks or months, rather than years.
RPA adoption is a very fluid and transparent procedure for any business vertical. If we sense an interest in RPA adoption, we deploy a team that will ensure the smooth business transition from Human to machine, and the team remains dedicated to ensure that business transactions are processed without any error. Eventually, the bot starts learning on its own and becomes more efficient with less human intervention.

Could you highlight some of the lesser known benefits of RPA, which will help companies to focus more on the long-term goals with RPA, and not just on quick wins?

Apart from making your job simpler and easy, RPA has a lot of other benefits. Bots can automate any business process. They increase business process speed, scale capacity on demand, maximize accuracy and availability, improve business process compliance, improve controls, auditability, enhance security, deliver business intelligence, optimize labor investment and accelerate digital transformation. These help enterprises attain long term corporate objectives which many times are difficult to implement.

Some of the other benefits are:

Cost cutting: By implementing RPA, businesses can achieve ROIs of up to 300% in just months, according to McKinsey.
Improvements in quality: By eliminating the tedious, repetitive work from their human employees’ desks, businesses are finding that error rates magically drop. This is huge, as quality issues can have a serious negative effect on the bottom line.
Enhancement of productivity: Because your intelligent digital workers can labor 24×7, 365 days a year, they can offload even complex tasks like extracting decision-making data from documents and emails.
Reduction in employee turnover: RPA does all the boring, repetitive work, leaving the more creative and intellectually challenging tasks to your human workers. Greater job satisfaction inevitably follows, thereby reducing hiring and training costs.