The short answer is yes, but the long answer is no. Confused? Let’s try and clarify this.
Being a bit of a veteran in the automation industry, in my experience, automation, in general, is as good as the people that make use of it.
Most of the progress for humankind relies on automation being developed by smart, capable people, which in turn creates more challenging jobs overall.
Concerns about RPA
However, the main concern people have with RPA bots is the way they automate tasks by imitating how humans complete processes with machines.
Don’t worry; you won’t suddenly see a Terminator-like robot walking around applying for jobs at the job center!
However, bots are negatively associated with reducing the need for human intervention and as job loss villains.
If you’re unfamiliar with how an RPA bot behaves, they don’t run in the background like an application or change any of your existing systems. Instead, they interact with your current system and execute processes the same way a person would.
A high-priority objective of commercial businesses is to make a decent profit. To that end, many see cost as a key lever. And human labor costs are often the highest expense on many organizations’ P&L.
Companies that use RPA can reduce the amount spent on wages overall by redeployment of people from low-value roles to more strategic activities (for higher wages per person). Or, headcount can be reduced as well but this is less likely in an era of near-full employment.
The benefits of RPA
Please don’t despair; it’s not all doom and gloom. RPA brings plenty of benefits to companies and their staff beyond simple cost reductions.
Companies that embrace RPA technology can employ their human task force for more interesting job roles while an RPA bot gets on with the repetitive and mundane tasks employees used to complete.
Also, I have witnessed many situations within businesses where bots and automation have been used to secure peoples’ jobs by increasing the productivity of the organization and keeping it competitive in the market place. Bots can and have been used to improve customer service, enhance retention and drive revenue uplift.
Still worried about bots taking over the workforce?
I’ve got 2 words for you; Vision and Creativity.
The ability to adopt, adapt and improve given any situation is the best human quality that cannot be replicated, and is unlikely to be within the next century at least.
Humans can interact with others on a personal level; they have a sense of moral duty, understand language skills and work well together, even in stressful situations.
Computers can’t do any of this.
Who’s ever seen the blue-screen-of-death before because your PC just gives up and cannot rectify a problem? It can only work within its built-in parameters.
Now that you’re breathing a sigh of relief and can see the benefits of RPA bots, what’s stopping you from using them to automate your business processes and provide a service that uses a virtual workforce or automates logging in to your online billing systems to pay your bills?
Save yourself some time and effort and relax, knowing it can be performed error-free with RPA bots.