Common Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Use Cases

At a glance, we’ll cover RPA use cases for:

• Financial Services and Banking (including wealth management and private equity)
• Insurance
• Healthcare
• Manufacturing (including automotive manufacturing)
• Public Sector
• Energy & Utilities
• Retail
• Telecoms

As well as in these functions:

• Finance and Accounting
• Human Resources (HR)
• Customer Relation Management (CRM)
• Supply Chain & Logistics

But first, let’s establish what makes for a good RPA use case.

What Makes a Good RPA Use Case

RPA automates digital tasks that are high-volume, repetitive, and rule-based.

So a good RPA use case is one that follows that structure, especially if the task doesn’t benefit from human involvement or intervention.

RPA bots are able to mimic actions such as keystrokes, clicks, data uploads, transfers, and more. They do so in the same user interface that your employees would use.

Those tasks typically fall in departmental functions and industries that manage a lot of data and have monotonous processes within different computer systems, documents, and software.

RPA doesn’t need to exist on its own. The bots can be combined with other software such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, process intelligence, Optical Character Recognition (OCR), and more.

When that’s the case, it’s called Intelligent Automation where the RPA bots become digital workers capable of advanced automations such as responding to customers, analyzing and sorting data, and improving processes.

This creates even more use cases for RPA.

Industry RPA Use Cases

While RPA can be used in any industry, there are some that rely on digital automation more than others.

These industries are:

• Financial services and banking
• Insurance
• Healthcare
• Manufacturing
• Government and the Public Sector
• Energy and utilities
• Retail
• Telecoms

If your industry isn’t listed but you want to know how RPA can improve efficiency in your company, get in touch here.

Otherwise, scroll down to see unique RPA use cases in your industry.

RPA Use Cases in Financial Services Sector

The financial sector is riddled with digital processes that can be optimized and automated.

So it’s a natural fit for RPA.

The most common use cases in the financial services and banking sector are:

• Automating reporting tasks for reconciliations, monthly closing, management reports, and mortgage processing
• Streamlining accounts payable and accounts receivable processes
• Fraud detection
• Payment processing
• Credit checks
• Loan application process

RPA works so well for banks that UAE-based Mashreq Bank uses RPA and Intelligent Automation to lift over 1 million transactions a month.

They have 300+ bots running and they’ve automated 97% of their financial transactions. At the same time, nearly 80% of non-financial transactions are run by robotic processes. And they’ve achieved close to 30% operating efficiency of their outsourced operations in India.

If you want to find out more you can head to our page: how RPA is used in banking and financial services.

Wealth Management

Wealth management companies are juggling sensitive data across multiple clients which leaves little to no room for error. RPA is an automation solution that can ensure error-free processes.

Here are some examples of RPA use in wealth management:

• Quality control management
• Following compliance practices
• Automating investor data migration and embedding the automation of data processing

Private Equity

Private Equity falls within the financial sector but comes with some unique use cases.

Most of the use cases exist around the need for businesses to adapt to and improve the processes of more than one business at a time.

The top three use cases are compensation, employee onboarding and offboarding, and merger and acquisition allocation.

We can break those down into even more specific cases where businesses can:

• Reconcile various compensation structures
• Calculate compensation and pay it out
• Update employee information and push the data to any relevant upstream or downstream system
• Conform processes to compliance regulations
• Change employee access authority
• Automate data entry, mapping, and extraction

Insurance

In the insurance industry, companies are battling legacy systems, siloed functions and teams, complex operating structures, limited underwriting talent, and the constant need to deliver a great customer experience.

RPA helps insurance companies win those battles through the automation of repetitive tasks that take up too much valuable employee time.

Here are some examples of where RPA comes into play:

• Registering and processing claims
• Underwriting
• Regulatory compliance
• Business and process analytics
• Policy cancellation
• Sales and distribution
• Legacy application integration
• Policy servicing/admin
• Incident management

Zurich UK uses RPA and Intelligent Automation to improve over 120 processes. The digital workforce has processed 3 million transactions and allowed customers to report claims quickly and get paid quickly.

You can read more about robotic process automation for insurance companies here.

RPA Use Cases in Healthcare

The healthcare industry relies on processes to deliver streamlined, efficient, and enjoyable patient experiences. RPA is used widely to ensure that happens.

RPA can help healthcare providers with:

• Appointment scheduling
• Patient records and data management
• Asset tracking and management
• Diagnostics and data analysis
• Patient outreach and post-treatment care

RPA Use Cases in Manufacturing

Manufacturing companies come with a lot of moving parts—both in the machines they use and the digital processes they manage. That leaves plenty of room for automation opportunities.

RPA eliminates the potential for human error and increases employee job satisfaction by taking tedious tasks off their hands.

Here are just a few use case examples from our larger list of 20:

• Invoice processing
• Purchase order processing
• Supply chain management
• Accounts payable processing
• Audits

RPA Automotive

Rather than list use cases for the automotive sector, let’s look at how Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) leverages RPA to stay ahead of the competition.

JLR has automated its accounts payable and invoice reconciliation so that it can increase accuracy and reduce compliance risks while reducing time-consuming tasks.

Their use of RPA and Intelligent Automation has saved them time and human capacity equating to over £1 million which they’ve been able to reinvest back in the business.

That’s just a glimpse into what RPA can achieve for a business in the manufacturing or automotive industry.

RPA Use Cases in the Public Sector

The public sector is essential for the well-being of the public. That means it needs to run efficiently so that people can get the help and support they need from the government.

The challenge is that companies in this industry are always short on time and short on budget. Automation can help give them both back, at least in part.

These are some of the ways RPA helps the public sector to enable better care of the public and their workforce:

• Data capture and analysis (surveys and census management)
• Statutory process automation
• Content migration
• Registration office processing and administration
• Grant application processing, permitting, reporting and compliance

Norfolk County Council relies on RPA to give them back 133 hours that would have been spent on manually processing employee payroll.

RPA Use Cases in Energy & Utilities

Energy companies are on the frontline of environmental changes and regulations. To keep up and deliver excellent service to their customers they need to find ways to accelerate processes and give their workforce the time to spend on tasks that require human intervention.

Here are some common use cases for RPA in the Energy & Utilities sector:

• Contact center processes
• Virtual agents
• Metering
• Statements and billing
• Customer account management
• Technician dispatch and reporting

Utilita uses RPA and Intelligent Automation to respond to customer requests quickly and efficiently.

In fact, 50% of their customer service processes are not automated. That allows agents to spend more time doing what they do best—speaking to customers and sharing other services with them.

The RPA software robots, alongside natural-language AI, have been trained to read and sort emails on Utilita’s behalf. They do this for 12,500 emails a month.

RPA Use cases in Retail

The success of retail companies hinges on having happy, repeat customers. There are a lot of digital processes that go into making that happen.

Customer queries need to be responded to, new prospective customers need to be marketed to, inventory needs to be carried and managed, etc.

That’s why retail is ripe for RPA support.

Here are the most common use cases for the retail industry:

• Demand-supply planning
• Product categorization
• Inventory management
• Call center processes
• Marketing automation
• Sales analysis
• Supply chain management and logistics
• Customer support
• Fraud detection

John Lewis turns to RPA to ward off fraudsters. The software bots (turned digital workers with the assistance of AI) were able to run 20,000 forensic fraud checks in one week. This gave John Lewis employees 100 hours back they could spend on more strategic projects.

RPA Uses cases in Telecoms

Many companies in the telecommunications industry are combating new innovative technologies with outdated processes. That puts them on the back foot, scrambling to keep up. With RPA they can get ahead of customer demand and the competition.

Here are some use case examples in the telecoms industry:

• Network management customer onboarding or offboarding
• Data transformation
• Debt collection
• Expense control
• First Call Resolution (FCR)

Proximus, Belgium’s largest telecoms provider, uses robotic process automation to accelerate the processing of invoices.

They use digital workers to scan 150,000 invoices so that their accounts payable team can give their time and energy elsewhere. Removing monotonous tasks from their workforce has led to an increase in staff morale. Win-win!

Function RPA Use Cases

Now that we’ve looked at RPA use in different industries, we can hone in on specific function use cases.

RPA is most often used in Finance and Accounting, Human Resources, CRM, and Supply Chain & Logistics functions. Though there are plenty of other functions that can use RPA, we’re highlighting these four.

Let’s dive in.

RPA Use Cases in Finance and Accounting

The finance function of any business can benefit from having RPA in their team.

RPA does the heavy lifting of back-office tasks across multiple documents and software. This spares you the headache of putting forth unnecessary manual effort into time-consuming tasks around invoicing, reporting, and account management.

Here are some use case examples:

• Expense reimbursement
• Financial planning and analysis (FP&A)
• Accounts payable automation
• Accounts receivable automation
• Accounting change
• Account and bank reconciliations
• Reporting
• Back Office Automation

RPA Use Cases in Human Resources (HR)

HR needs to be agile and scalable to help the business grow and overcome its challenges such as hiring the right talent, delivering an enjoyable employee experience, and retaining high performers.

HR teams can achieve operational agility with the help of RPA.

Here are some use cases to inspire how you can use RPA in your HR function:

• Spent analytics and reporting
• Learning and development administration
• Position management
• Travel and/or expense management
• Payroll Automation
• Payroll batch importing and validation
• Employee benefit invoice reconciliation
• New-starter onboarding
• Employee master data
• User credentials creation
• Access termination

If those use cases aren’t enough to help you envision all you can do with RPA, take Santander’s real-life example.

Their HR function was able to reduce the time it took to onboard new employees by 85%.

How did they do it? Robotic process automation has been trained to automatically inform the relevant departments when a new joiner is added, gather the required information, set up accounts, and perform the necessary compliance checks.

A process that was taking six weeks is now completed in just two days and has enhanced the employee experience.

RPA Use Cases in CRM

Customer relationship management teams often use RPA to increase customer satisfaction by streamlining routine processes and manual tasks that can happen without human oversight or intervention.

You can automate communications between disparate systems so that everyone is in the know across the customer lifecycle.

Here are some use cases for your CRM:

• Customer support (including fielding customer complaints)
• Customer account management
• Order tracking
• Data transfers

RPA Use Cases in Supply Chain & Logistics

If your business handles a supply chain then you’re perfectly positioned to benefit from RPA.

From invoice management to inventory tracking, you can come up with automation ideas to improve operational efficiency.

Here are some of the most common use cases across supply chain management and logistics:

• Shipment scheduling and tracking
• Invoice processing and credit collections
• Order and inventory processing
• Capturing, researching, and closing out loads
• Procurement and inventory
• Order and inventory tracking

Learn More about RPA

As we mentioned before, this article merely scratches the surface of what RPA is capable of in your industry or business function.

If you want to learn more about RPA and see how Blue Prism compares to it’s competitors, download the latest Gartner Magic Quadrant

Alexis Veenendaal is an associate content writer and editor at SS&C Blue Prism. She’ll tell you all the cool tips and tricks for implementing intelligent automation into your workplace. She has lived and worked internationally as a professional writer and designer for nearly a decade after graduating from the University of Lethbridge for English Literature. Her personal pursuits include authoring books and digital cartography.