application of technology that allows employees in a company to configure computer software or a “robot” to capture and interpret existing applications for processing a transaction, manipulating data, triggering responses and communicating with other digital systems.” If companies use manpower to process information in high volume, transactional functions; then Robotic Process Automation has great ability to transform them. RPA is mainly a back end system, removing people from core process like: IT support, workflow processes, expense management, and data entry. RPA aims to increase the speed and accuracy with which processes are managed. Where previous large scale transformations driven by technology occurred in the manufacturing sector, so now it seems likely that it will be business support services that will experience the effects of RPAs. In analysis based on Frey and Osborne in 2014, Deloitte’s The robots are coming: moving beyond traditional methods of automation reported that 56 percent of financial function roles in the UK had a high probability of being automated.
Of respondents surveyed, 91 percent indicated their plan to apply RPA to accounts payable functions, 55 percent planned to apply RPA to travel and expenses, and 36 percent indicated their intention to apply RPA to fixed assets. 13 percent of those surveyed intended to invest in robotic process automation in the next 12 months. RPA has the potential to allow many businesses to introduce processing services that may previously have been outside what they could afford or their resource availability. If their historical solution to access these services was outsourcing, they could be looking forward to a significant financial gain. Automation offers the potential to achieve more with a lot less: which can only benefit businesses that are lean on resource. Increasing the opportunities to automate in both the business and consumer world will continue to transform society. It’s challenging to guess the impact on jobs, as economists consistently predict that where jobs are lost to technology, new ones are also created. The WEF’s Future of Jobs report released in January 2016 indicated an estimated unemployment increase of 0.3 percent on a global scale.
This number struggles to be significant in the context of the global economy, and reinforces the universal belief that where jobs are lost they will also be gained, and usually of a higher pay level. It is expected that large scale automation will impact on employment. This will see jobs move from some sectors and into others, as the market creates new opportunities and demands new skills to match them. While big changes may be predicted, this will be over a number of years and the expectation is that much of the change will evolve with the normal churn of employees leaving and arriving in the workforce. The real focus for change lies with the leaders of government and corporations who must empower the workers of tomorrow with the skills that are needed to succeed in jobs that have not yet been created.
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