5 smart ways in which RPA helps Small and Medium Enterprises

Estimated reading time: 2 mins

As Robotic Process Automation (RPA) adoption grows, both horizontally and vertically, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) or small businesses, in general, are also changing their lookout towards the technology. RPA, once perceived as the prerogative of only large enterprises looking at improving productivity and reducing operational expenditure, is now on the agenda of SMEs as well. And this phenomena is global, be it in Asia, Australia, Europe, or USA.

Conventionally, small businesses always tend to be lean. However, the prospect of using RPA for improving productivity, speed, and accuracy towards enhancing business outcome is more of a ‘must-have’ than a ‘nice-to-have’ business element even for small businesses. The newly minted doctrine for small businesses and SMEs has that sooner RPA is adopted in the processes the better.

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RPA significantly helps SMEs and small businesses in the following 5 smart ways:

5 ways in which RPA helps small businesses:

1. High productivity
2. Improved business performance
3. Un-interrupted continuous processing
4. Enhanced accuracy
5. Focused innovation

1. High productivity
   RPA allows doing more with less. One bot license can be sequentially used to perform multiple processes. As the paper-work and records keeping is taken care of in the background, employees have improved bandwidth to reach out to more customers, seal an increasing number of deals, and perform better and faster with the same number of employees. As the systems would be automated to systematically gather together all information, the authorized employees can have the customer data at their finger tips resulting in better customer service and happier customers.
   
   
2. Improved business performance
   As RPA is highly interoperable as well as industry and technology agnostic, it helps to automate processes in accounts payables, accounts receivables, auditing, government statutory compliances, and all other paper and process-intensive work. It functions 24x7, automates all rule-based and repetitive activity involving structured data, and can be scaled up, as required. Using Artificial Intelligence (AI)/ Machine Learning (ML) layers, RPA can even be extended to automate processes involving unstructured data involving free text, documents, PDFs, images, etc.
   
   
3. Un-interrupted continuous processing
   RPA is a non-intrusive technology and involves only surface-level integration while maintaining the integrity of the underlying enterprise systems. This system sophistication does not involve coding. It allows automation using drag-and-drop features, just like a macro would in MS Excel, and allows faster implementation along with lowered risks without any real down time. It performs similar to how a human operator would but with higher element of accuracy. It works without a break in a continuous manner delivering more throughput.
   
   
4. Enhanced accuracy
   As humans continue to work on complex and repetitive processes, errors tend to creep in by oversight than by design. RPA augments human effort that does not require reasoning and decision making thus automating tedious and rule-based tasks. It significantly improves accuracy and helps to efficiently and effectively service larger amounts of data.
   
   
5. Focused innovation
   As RPA takes over the routine activities, small businesses are able to focus on their core competence and differentiators such as providing personalized customer attention and other human-centric activities, such as strategic innovation. Enterprises focused on building innovative solutions are good at attracting and retaining talent which in turn enhances their brand value.

In summary

SMEs and small businesses are a unique segment among business enterprises. They are already lean and productive. However, they need to deliver a sustainable market performance. RPA not only helps large companies but also SMEs and small businesses, in this effort. RPA helps to automate early in the journey, stay competitive in the market through innovation and better productivity and in the bargain grow their revenue and market share.

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