IoT was just a
buzzword couple of years back but now, it has become a part of our everyday
life. Internet of Things (IoT) is nothing but the connection of physical
devices through the internet. It has become a new reality that every industry
is getting involved with.
But, the power of
IoT can be truly felt when we integrate it with Automation. If you are
wondering why, check out what one of the RPA providers quoted: “As an
automation platform, RPA is the key that unlocks and makes the unimagined
possibilities of the IoT possible." Hence, IoT and Automation can provide
a completely different environment for employees to work conventionally.
Automation with IoT
can seamlessly handle a lot of workflows which includes managing notifications
and marked events, forwarding a huge amount of data automatically, and
ultimately making the data more accessible and valuable. Say, for example,
manufacturing workflows have administrative tasks which when connected with IoT
and Automation solution results in billions of savings.
Since IoT is
enriched with data that it gets from everywhere, an automation bot can make use
of this data and convert it into fruitful solutions which can increase the
efficiency of overall IoT workflows. We can call such integration “Internet of
Thought”. If we take the example of hiring a new employee, most larger
companies deal with simultaneous entry and provision of data to different
systems. If data needs to communicate across these systems, it needs to be
entered manually every time the application wants to fetch the same data. This
is not only time-consuming but also prone to human errors resulting in
increased cost and operational disruptions.
But, aren’t these
manual processes ruled based? Even though these rules are recorded in the minds
of the employees and not formally documented, they can still be considered as a
repetitive and rule-based process. And that is where the Automation process
comes into place. Automation bots are just not about scanning receipts at the
desk of the accounts payable department, but they are software tools that can
be utilized to run complex, manual and repetitive workflows that reduce the
overall cost and increase the efficiency of the business. These software tools
in industry jargon can be named Virtual bots.
When we combine
these bots with Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, the result is
going to be amazing. These bots will not only replicate human tasks which are
repetitive and manual but also try to replicate human logic in creating
different algorithms which can predict the results similar to how a human does.
In the previous example of hiring a new employee, using an intelligent RPA
system seems to be the best solution. This bot can quickly record, analyze the
individual steps in the workflow and mimic the human logic in such activities
to exchange data between different applications. This process will promise a
must faster and quicker results with guaranteed accuracy eliminating all the
human errors that can affect the overall efficiency.
Using AI, ML, and
RPA, Intelligent bots can be well trained to make educated guesses about
certain fields in paper and electronic documents. Also, all repetitive and
mundane tasks can be taken over by robots just by observing how a human is
performing such activities and replicate the same process to complete the
workflows. Say, for example, a bot can be made to categorize invoices, read
their field, add the values of the fields to various applications like SAP and
route those invoices for approval or customer acceptance to close the invoice
processing. The process can be continuously trained to finally exceed the
accuracy of the humans so that RPA trained bots can start adding value to the
business.
On the final note, all
the business verticals have seen tremendous strides in recent years after the
advent of Automation technologies and most of the businesses have witnessed
higher efficiency and profits in the overall working of their business. But the
Automation Era is still at the nascent stages and will evolve considerably to
include many Robot Supported Process optimization to integrate familiar
technologies.
