The adoption of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) across all industries is continuing to spread. A recent survey by Deloitte revealed that 53% of the business leaders agree that their organizations have embarked upon the RPA journey. Deloitte also predicts that this number will grow to 72% within the next two years. Seemingly, if this trend continues, RPA is expected to achieve universal adoption by the end of 2025.
The current trends in the RPA development market suggest that continuous improvement and automation are among the top agendas for RPA adoption. Reports have found that RPA has outperformed expectations in terms of non-financial benefits including timelines, accuracy, improved compliances, and flexibility. Whereas in terms of cost reduction, RPA is at par.
The BFSI, Healthcare, and Logistics industries have already started to take a leap towards hyper-automation. In fact,
the BFSI segment holds the highest share in RPA adoption with the rising use of RPA for regulatory reporting and
balance sheet reconciliation. RPA tools are helping financial service providers to monitor and control several
interfaces and facilitate seamless execution of transitions. For instance, in April 2020, banks in the United States deployed UiPath software robots to handle loan applications from SMBs across the country.
The healthcare and logistics industries are on the same path as BFSI. Let’s discuss the three of them one by one.
RPA in Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance
Grand View Research, in their report from 2019, stated that the banking and financial service industry was the market leader in RPA adoption, accounting for a 29% share in global RPA revenue. The higher adoption is due to the nature of banking, financial, and insurance companies; they are required to handle a large volume of data with higher accuracy.
Particularly for Insurance, RPA is very effective in streamlining the high volume of repetitive back-office tasks such as form claims processing, policy requests, underwriting, payouts, etc. Legacy systems are quite outdated in terms of meeting the increasing demand. Whereas RPA can handle several tasks in the background while enabling employees to focus on more complex processes.
Some of the popular use cases of RPA in BFSI are:
- Statement Processing
- Customer Onboarding
- Customer Communication
- Compliance Management
- Fraud Detection
- Claims Management
- Underwriting and Payouts
RPA in Healthcare
Although healthcare doesn’t hold the highest share in RPA adoption, it is among the most demanding and regulated industries for RPA. In fact, several studies state that the healthcare segment will realize the fastest growth in terms of RPA adoption during 2021-2024. Studies also confirm that by reducing the focus on back-office tasks, healthcare institutions can deliver more value-based care and attention to the patients.
Another reason behind the growth of RPA in the healthcare sector is because healthcare is among the most inefficient industries. Also, building technology solutions for healthcare is a daunting task for many technology service providers. RPA solutions are sophisticated enough to bring automation to healthcare while ensuring maximum data security.
Some popular use cases of RPA in healthcare:
- Patient Scheduling
- Claim Management
- Regulatory Compliance Management
- Data Entry, Migration, and Extraction
RPA in Logistics Industry
For transportation and logistics, automation can apply to more than just core tasks like loading and moving. The software bots can handle repetitive data-rich tasks like administrative work and paperwork filing. Automating such processes will allow transportation and logistics service providers to shift their efforts towards value-adding and core tasks. Since software bots are more accurate and faster than humans, they can be utilized for compliance-related tasks.
One of the most revolutionary uses of RPA in the logistics industry is the routing of freight orders to the best fulfillment centers. The RPA software can bring higher efficiency by looking across the entire fulfillment chain and tying several systems together.
Some other popular use cases of RPA in Logistics:
- Predictive Maintenance
- Purchase Order Initiation
- Shipment Scheduling and Processing
Final Words
The rising demand for RPA in several industries across the globe is clearly evident in the increasing number of use cases being implemented to streamline operational processes. While implementing software bots will require a considerable amount of effort and investment, the prize is expected to be very significant if organizations get the foundation and agility right.
