What is Process Discovery for RPA?

There is no doubt that it’s savvy to evaluate the current systems and tasks before implementing RPA or other automation tools. Before transforming your workflows, you need to see the RPA opportunities clearly and determine the appropriate tasks for automation. So, you can make sure that your investment will return and contribute to your business goals.

RPA (Robotic Process Automation) offers various benefits, but it’s even more efficient when you know which tasks are eligible to automate with RPA. Thus, process eligibility assessment is one of the first steps to planning how to automate their workflows.

Digital transformation requires companies to take solid steps before investing in technologies. A strategic approach to business transformation is necessary to create value and improve business performance. And a calculated plan through process assessment is the key to being strategical.

What is process eligibility?

Process eligibility is a procedure to comprehend and analyze the current business processes. It’s also known as process discovery or process assessment. During the process eligibility, you will reconsider all the tasks in a workflow and find out the best ones to speed up by automating.

The most important thing to keep in mind before implementing RPA is that it automates clearly defined processes. Without clearly defined processes, you may automate the unfitting tasks and fail to get a high ROI from your digital transformation.
What to analyze during the process eligibility assessment?
RPA automates repetitive tasks that can be done without human cognitive and creative skills. Therefore, process assessment provides a realistic insight into the tasks you can assign to RPA bots.

Various qualities of the tasks will reveal the compatibility to business transformation. Here are some of them.

Is the task rule-based and repetitive?

A primary benefit of RPA is facilitating and accelerating repetitive tasks. If your task is manual but not iterative, RPA may not be the best option to enable it. On the other hand, automation fits perfectly when you have tasks covering high-volume data and do them regularly.

For a task to be eligible for RPA, it needs to be rule-based. While building RPA bots, you’ll need to define the task clearly so they will know how to deal with the task. They function on ‘the if-then condition’ and help you complete the rule-based and repetitive tasks faster, efficiently, and unerringly. So, you can automate data entry and payroll processing with RPA.

Is your data readable and structured?

RPA needs readable data to execute the tasks according to the rule-based commands. Therefore, you need to make sure that your data is readable. For example, a scanned invoice is not digital enough for bots to read.

Automation requires a structured database so RPA can retrieve data without complication. The bot will not standardize the process, but you need to provide it. Few exceptions are manageable. When you have too many ‘if conditions,’ the process will need to work on standardization.

Also, if the data are in various formats, you will need preparation using other tools such as Optical Character Recognition (OCR). Consequently, the bots can comprehend them. It’s not an obstacle to automate, but be aware that you need to lay the groundwork.

Does your task require human skills?

Automation targets assigning repetitive tasks to robots so that your teams will have more time for complex tasks. If your task requires decision-making steps frequently or needs changes regularly, just an RPA will not be sufficient to automate it.

When your task fits the other conditions but not this one, you still have options. You don’t have to give up on your digital transformation. However, in this case, you also need to use Artificial Intelligence so that your system will get cognitive skills like humans. So, it will also digitize the decision-making process with minimal involvement of human employees.

RPA Eligibility Test

A Process Assessment Tool, also known as Process Eligibility Tool, will facilitate you to analyze your business workflows to understand your compatibility with RPA. As a result, you will learn the best tasks to be automated for faster ROI and better productivity.

There are various assessment methods: some require time to examine all the processes, while the others will be shorter to give you a preunderstanding. In different cases, both approaches have their strengths and weaknesses. When the assessment is detailed, the process also includes ROI measurements.

Try Robusta Process Discovery Tool to identify whether your business processes are a good candidate for RPA automation.