The pandemic has irrevocably changed business operations. In a recent report by UIpath, "The COVID-19 Crisis Will Accelerate Enterprise Automation Plans."

Forrester Research states that one of the “lasting legacies [of the pandemic] will be a renewed focus on automation.”

The need for automation increased manifold after the pandemic, and businesses started moving with RPA.

According to research by Enterprise technology conducted at the peak of the COVID-19 lockdown, RPA adoption accounted for 22% of IT buyers. 

Among the fast-growing technologies, robotic process automation can be one leading us towards a better post-pandemic world.

How? Read this blog to know more!

The Need for RPA Amid Pandemic

The ability to adapt quickly is a matter of survival for small & mid-sized businesses. During tough economic times such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the recipe for resilience is financial discipline, but it comes at a cost. 

Performance and organizational agility are the two most affected areas, calling out for adaptability- this is where Robotic Process Automation steps in.

Data Source: https://flobotics.io/blog/rpa-statistics/

RPA uses software that helps businesses automate their manual and repetitive tasks. The RPA bots allow the organizations to automate simple & mundane tasks allowing the human workforce to focus on more productive tasks.

Where there are paper, manual tasks, and complex workflows, there lies an opportunity to inject RPA to automate tasks & improve business performance.

According to HfS, "If there’s ever been a time we needed a digital workforce to augment humans, it’s now."

The Advantages of RPA Amid COVID-19

We understand that RPA, in a pandemic situation, can’t be a nirvana solution for all our business problems. Still, it can help businesses tackle operations where processing speed has been adversely affected. ̉

Robotic process automation can help in business continuity, resiliency, and improved customer experience.

Here are a few ways in which RPA helps tackle business challenges amid the COVID-19 pandemic:

1) Cost Savings

RPA projects generate a great deal of cost savings. Businesses can enjoy immediate ROI offsetting the upfront investment of implementing just ten bots. With RPA implementation in a pandemic, enterprises can increase the quality and quantity of work products while allowing the human workforce to shift towards higher-value tasks. 

2) Speed

The most significant advantage of RPA in pandemic and otherwise is the speed & time slash it can render by automating the mundane tasks. This was imperative during a pandemic when lost time can result in loss of life. 

3) Productivity

A drop in revenue has forced many organizations to lay off their employees during the pandemic, which rendered a big blow to productivity. By automating the daily activities of the workforce, enterprises can easily focus on activities that require human problem-solving.

4) Remote work

When the entire world was forced into a lockdown, businesses had no choice but to shift toward a work-from-home model. Robotic process automation helped companies facilitate remote work by expediting the setup process of work from home offices.

5) Business Continuity

Amid the pandemic, RPA implementation protected the staff’s health by limiting exposure. For instance, bots were employed to evaluate employees’ current health, ad based on the survey; it helped determine if a person is at low risk or high risk. 

6) Accuracy

RPA in pandemic can help businesses eliminate human error, set between 5% and 10%. Improved accuracy and quality of work are essential in high-stake tasks. 

RPA in the Post-pandemic World

Diagnostic labs, drive-through test centers, and hospitals are burdened with diagnosing hundreds of patients each day during & after the pandemic.

As a result, there is a desperate need to speed up analyzing, looking up medical records, updating them, and sharing the documents with CDC. It has been noted that attended bots can save up to 8-9 minutes per patient by avoiding manual data management.

From Amazon to delivery services and hospitals, almost all the industries need to increase their workforce to meet the growing business demands. The solutions powered by the bot can help organizations to free up human resources to focus on more critical tasks. 

Gartner predicts that by 2024, nearly half of new RPA customers will come from business buyers outside of IT organizations.

Planning with Automation

Automation is a valuable asset for ensuring agility, resiliency, and cost-effectiveness in a business environment. RPA implementation in the pandemic & post-pandemic world can help business leaders gain a foothold in a new market. After years of planning, workforce cutting & restructuring, now is the right time to invest in RPA solutions to help employees adapt to the post-pandemic world. RPA can help mitigate unexpected risks associated with manual tasks in this unpredictable market dynamic.