We are officially living in the second machine age, and, despite the recent worldwide pandemic, 2021 promises to be a breakthrough in the development of robotization. New ideas and collaborations from leading developers create machines that have a surprising ability to learn and make informed decisions.
Now the question is whether businesses are ready to incorporate these technologies in their processes?
Kcell, one of the leaders in the telecom market of Kazakhstan, has long been studying the trends in the development of automation and robotization.
Automation is a fairly broad concept. It comes to mind when something needs to be done without or with minimum human involvement, like, for example, validation of data or actions. It is possible to automate both mechanical processes in production and routine business processes.
Robotization covers a limited part of automation, for example, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a software robot that simulates human actions by interacting with various interfaces of information systems. The program that runs robot works does not see the difference between a robot and a human.
What can robots do?
Different types of robots are used for different business tasks. However, most of the service robots are sold for logistics purposes. Giants such as Amazon and FedEx are paying particular attention to smart machines.
RPA is primarily used to achieve the tactical and strategic goals of a company and is used to transform routine human actions into programmed robotic steps.
“For example,” noted Aydar Zhumekenov, Process Automation Manager at Kcell, “our employees often copy information from one system to another, upload daily reports, retrieve customer data to conclude a contract or process client requests. During the day, our employees often perform many operations which do not require any special skills, except for attention to detail and perseverance. That’s exactly what RPA is for – to shift all these routine and repetitive processes from humans to robots.”
The RPA solutions allow businesses to free up human resources and reduce operating costs which has a direct positive impact on payback. The robot works 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. He does not get tired, does not go on vacation and is not subject to the so-called “human factor” The robot behavior and, hence, the results of his work are predictable. Robots work faster than humans and perform tasks practically without errors, providing a complete log of their actions.
It all started in 2018, when Kcell, together with a consulting company, analyzed routine business processes and concluded that it should develop the RPA direction. In a short period of time, the company was able to do a lot to study the RPA solutions market. A parallel process was started within the company – collection, analysis and selection of massive, routine and repetitive operations that took up a lot of employees’ time. The first robotic process was launched in the company in the first quarter of 2020.
55 000 minutes
In addition to using the clear and common advantages of the RPA solution: such as high accuracy, productivity and reliability, Kcell was able to start developing a new culture among employees, changing consciousness and breaking stereotypes about robots.
“At the very beginning, people would show subconscious resistance to RPA robots, fear of losing their jobs, being replaced by robots. But time shows that RPA are not taking our jobs, but help employees free up time for intellectual tasks by letting machines do routine and mechanical work for them,” notes Aidar Zhumekenov.
In 2020, eight complex, massive processes were robotized at Kcell, which freed up about 55 thousand minutes of human time. Good results were also obtained in reducing the time required for activation of services for business customers in end-to-end business processes where robots were involved.
As Aydarbek Sultan, Head of Business Solutions at Kcell, noted: “There are some limitations in using the RPA solutions. Robots will not be given a task that requires an intuitive approach, coupled with deep human expertise. For example, data validation or a job that requires the so-called “human touch” and cognitive skills. It’s better to trust those jobs to people. But considering how quickly the synergy of RPA with machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) is developing, and how these areas are developing on their own, we can optimistically assume that in the near future we will see solutions that can eliminate all the shortcomings of the currently existing RPA solutions. The RPA technology is not designed to cut jobs, but to free people from repetitive tasks, save resources and increase efficiency by freeing up time for more important tasks.” Based on the practice of Kcell, it is safe to say that the joint work of a human and a robot is the most effective.
HOW MUCH DOES IT COST TO IMPLEMENT A ROBOT?
According to Aydar Zhumekenov, “everything will depend on the complexity and details of the process itself: how many interfaces are involved, what actions need to be performed by robots. Let’s take a simple example: uploading several reports, consolidating and processing data in one excel file, analyzing the list of recipients, generating unique messages for each of the recipients and sending letters – all this requires an average of 2 weeks of RPA developer’s time: from scratch to launch.”
“In my company, there are high-class specialists with a technical/IT background, who are engaged in the turnkey roboticization of processes, starting with data collection and analyzing processes for possible optimization, resource estimation and profitability of robotization of a particular process,” he noted.
“RPA technologies can give the company a second breath in any area. Firstly, RPA can help reduce costs and increase profits. Secondly, reduce time spent on completing tasks – robotization of business processes allows the company to focus on priority tasks, which has a direct positive effect on the development of the employees’ professional skills and helps them to fully reveal their potential, without being distracted by the daily monotonous routine. Thirdly, RPA reduces the human error factor and, accordingly, increases the level of process accuracy, which we are constantly striving for”- said Yuri Kharlamov, Chairman of the Management Board of Kcell.
There will always be processes that need to be improved, optimized and automated. This applies to both internal and customer interaction processes. Kcell understands this and always keeps up with the times.