In a digital age, it’s the ultimate irony that many of the most important business processes in the enterprise today must be carried out by human staff. Some of those tasks are the dullest and most repetitive and, therefore, the most prone to error.
Fallible and error-prone humans may be, but thankfully humans tend to come with compensations, like being creative, ingenious and entrepreneurial.
With robotic process automation (RPA), the two – robots – work together to automate the various repetitive, remedial tasks that are a time drain on employees. And if there’s one thing at which computers excel, it’s doing the same thing over and over, 24/7, without error or distraction.
But if RPA is such an obvious choice, why are human workers still logging in and out of different pieces of software and websites, copying and pasting information, manually entering data and generally having to get involved at every stage? The answer is that despite the advantages of RPA, organisations aren’t taking advantage of the most advanced RPA available on today’s market, Kofax RPA.
The problem for other RPA solutions is that much information flowing through a business isn’t structured: that is, it’s not in a standard, easily-assimilated form that’s acceptable for computers to process. Whether it’s a voice call from a customer, a request for a new quote in an email, or a contract in a scanned document, unstructured data has meant, up until now, that humans must manage the technology to compensate for systems which are incapable of cognitive thought.
However, the Kofax platform brings many of these issues to an end. By using machine-learning routines that learn along the process, unstructured text, emails, images, and documents are automatically ingested into workflows. That frees up your staff from the drudgery of manually managing software that’s meant to be automatic – without changing the underlying IT infrastructure: the Kofax RPA platform undertakes tasks tirelessly, and according to limits and rules preset by the humans they support.
Kofax RPA works via a no-code design interface in which employees “on the factory floor” can draw out the steps and processes they work through, showing the robot their activities within different software applications used. Whether that’s on an in-house ERP, a cloud service used for a specialist function, an older mainframe-based application that is difficult to integrate, or a database, the Kofax platform exists as a layer on top of the tech stack.
The Kofax RPA solution lets non-IT staff automate even complex interactions with customers, partners, colleagues and different pieces of enterprise software.
Moreover, where “traditional” RPA meant that there would be significant levels of human labour still involved (humans having to help the far-from-smart software used to semi-automate tasks), with Kofax RPA it can automate more, streamline more effectively, and free up more of the most expensive resource; human labour.
The benefits are not just internal, naturally. As staff time is redeployed and can focus on more high-value tasks, customers will notice the difference, as will partners and, for instance, other organisations in a company’s supply chain: efficiency internally breeds external professionalism and creates value for the company.
This world-class RPA solution boasts several world firsts, only available with Kofax RPA:
- Machine-learning based, cognitive document automation for structured and unstructured data, like business documents that do not follow a single template, proprietary data formats, and information from just about any system.
- Built-in artificial intelligence that mimics human and technological behaviours to better interact with systems, and create seamless, automated processes in even highly complex, decision-rich
- Server-side, in-memory processing means that robots are lightning fast and highly efficient, delivering superior performance and scalability at significantly lower costs than solutions that rely on virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI).
- A no-code process mapping and automation control interface, so business process owners can determine the best ways to let the RPA take the strain, rather than an existing software platform dictating the way people have to
- Perfect cross-platform automation, from individuals’ desktop apps, to advanced cloud-based apps present in web portals, like Salesforce. Legacy databases, apps, and middleware are all assimilated as standard, plus there’s an open API for even one-off bespoke, proprietary stacks.
- A modular roll-out model, so information-intensive departments (like Finance, or Human Resources) can deploy RPA, and become internal advocates, showcasing the advantages and broadcasting the productivity gains made.
Kofax RPA fits alongside existing BPM (business process management) platforms and legacy software and can address and automate internal and external systems. External systems might include simple steps like partners’ platforms being updated with order progress as and when changes in status occur. At a deeper level, integrations and automations can be forged via Java, .NET, SOAP and RESTful interfaces to just about any system.
To oversee the automation workflows, there’s Kofax Process Intelligence to monitor trends, ensure compliance, detect potential problems and maximise the productivity of your digital (and, therefore, human) workforce.
To learn more, download a Forrester Insights Report on Intelligent Automation from Kofax. See how you can Work Like Tomorrow – today.
