RPA in Data Analysis and Reporting – Key Benefits

RPA (Robotic Process Automation) is a rapidly growing field of business process automation technology. Data analysis and reporting are tasks that can be easily automated using an RPA robot, which in turn can work without human supervision 24/7, providing immense benefits to the entire company. Advanced robotic process automation is the next step for an enterprise toward the most effective digital transformation possible – in the article below, we will cover the most important aspects of RPA in data analysis and reporting.    

What are the main advantages of using RPA in data analysis?

  According to an article in The Economist, data is the most valuable resource for an enterprise today. Through proper analysis of the information they possess, managers are able to make the best decisions regarding the future of their business, adopted strategy, budget planning, recruitment for specific positions, and many other activities vital to the entire company.   Analyzing data held by an enterprise is not always easy, as it may come from various sources, be stored on different media or in different programs used by departments, or simply be vast in quantity. It happens that raw data is available, but for the reasons above, it is very difficult to process as a whole, preventing the company from leveraging its potential or drawing important conclusions. Thanks to RPA data analysis, processes that were previously time-consuming and often prone to human error become much faster, more reliable, and cost-effective. This improves the quality of the analysis and also has a real impact on employees, who are “freed up” and able to focus on tasks that are harder to automate and require a human touch. This change itself makes people more motivated and provides greater job satisfaction as they work on more creative activities. Contrary to common concerns, the implementation of Robotic Process Automation allows for the creation of innovative and promising jobs such as RPA developers or testers, as well as management positions – a perfect example is the Head of RPA, whose responsibilities we describe here.   Furthermore, RPA specializes in creating datasets that are “clean” (clean data). The process of collecting and analyzing data by an RPA robot eliminates, as mentioned, the possibility of human error, ensuring that the analyzed datasets remain accurate, precise, consistent, up-to-date, and easily accessible, as described in detail in the article “Data and RPA”. Thanks to these features, RPA allows for the automatic cleaning and organization of datasets, which again saves our valuable time and creates highly accurate and correct reports.    

What are the main advantages of using RPA in data reporting?

  Organizing and analyzing data is essential, but to utilize its full potential, this data must also be reported and visualized. RPA can help us with this as well, saving time and costs.   RPA robots can gather data from various sources within an organization, generate reports after analyzing this data, and update information in other systems (e.g., CRM) based on the generated reports. These tasks are repetitive and long-lasting, and therefore prone to errors if performed by a human – thanks to RPA reporting, we eliminate this risk. Robotic process automation also does not take breaks – it works 24/7, which affects the timeliness of our reports.   Taking these advantages into account, many different departments in an organization dealing with completely different things can use RPA reporting. The most logical examples include:  

• Finance Department – financial department reports should be constantly updated with the latest and correct data, as organizations base their most important decisions regarding the future of the company, employees, investments, or structural changes on them. RPA can easily help us prepare automated reports on financial forecasts, paid and unpaid customer invoices, profit and loss statements, the profitability of initiatives led by the company, and much more.
• HR Department – RPA reporting will help HR departments monitor employee data. It will not only easily calculate statistics on age, gender distribution, or preferences regarding remote work versus office work (if the company allows a choice in this matter), but will also show turnover in a given month or quarter, job satisfaction percentage (for example, based on a survey previously sent to employees), and training offered by the employer and its evaluation. Recruitment can also benefit from RPA reporting options and regularly check its effectiveness by visualizing data on accepted offers or candidate evaluations of the recruitment process.
• Marketing and sales – the most obvious reports that RPA can generate are those using data from internal CRM and ERP systems, but also from social media (e.g., LinkedIn) or applications like HubSpot or SalesForce. Thanks to these, employees in these departments can monitor data on customers, best-selling services and/or products, the best-performing sales channels used in the company, or SEO – at the same time, we will see the worst-performing initiatives, and identifying them will help in changing or improving them.

  Of course, all these reports can be prepared by a human, but they will be significantly less reliable and up-to-date. What an employee might do in several hours or more, an RPA robot does in real-time, without breaks for sleep or rest, so decision-makers have access to the latest and accurate reports at any time.    

What should you pay attention to when implementing RPA for data analysis and reporting?

  Digital transformation is a challenge, but more and more organizations are realizing how important this endeavor is. What do you need to remember? First of all, before any IT system implementation, and robotic process automation is one, a thorough analysis of the entire enterprise and/or department where RPA is to take over employee duties should be conducted. The goal is to define as precisely as possible the areas where RPA can help automate repetitive and time-consuming data analysis and reporting tasks. A great plus is that if a new need arises after implementation, the organization is able to independently adjust the operation of basic RPA robots to the changing reality of the company. Of course, in the case of more advanced configurations or emerging doubts, we would rather use the services of specialists, but simpler actions can often be programmed by ourselves, which additionally saves our time and money.   Robotic process automation for data analysis and reporting can be introduced to an organization in several ways. We can do this, among other things, by using the cloud and RPAaaS – RPA-as-a-Service. A very important issue we must take care of is checking the security of the chosen RPA system, which must be ensured at the design and implementation stage to be effective.    

How to improve BPO with RPA?

  BPO is an abbreviation for Business Process Outsourcing. This sector has been developing for over twenty years and deals, as the name suggests, with outsourcing business processes – companies that use BPO services give up performing some processes – usually tedious and repetitive – themselves, relying on purchasing appropriate services. This applies to various departments – accounting, IT, logistics, administration, marketing, or legal. Until recently, it was one of the most dynamically developing industries in Poland (you can find more at this link), but since RPA began to climb the ladder of popularity and gain more and more supporters of process automation, organizations are visibly redirecting their attention from BPO to RPA. It can be said that RPA is also a type of outsourcing – only instead of handing over work to people from a BPO company, it is handed over to an automatic robot. For this reason, RPA may threaten BPO – unless they join forces.   Robotic Process Automation can help BPO organizations in the same way it automates any other process. Thanks to it, BPO is able to offer its potential clients more diverse services that meet the needs of time and cost optimization. RPA allows for fast and at the same time reliable exchange of information between systems, which is crucial for BPO organizations, which must somehow connect with client systems and, to maintain high customer satisfaction, cannot afford human errors or time-consuming actions. RPA standardizes Customer Experience – it is not dependent on a given day, world events, the person answering the phone or replying to an email, but always works the same way, and everyone on the client side will encounter exactly the same process experience if it is carried out by an RPA robot.   If you want to know more and are interested in how Robotic Process Automation can help your organization automate data analysis or reporting, please contact us – we will answer all your questions and tailor the solution to your needs.