Robotic process automation (RPA) has the potential to save 800 hours of staff time, so what is it exactly?
RPA is an emerging business technology based on the notion of metaphorical software robots or artificial intelligence. In its most basic terms RPA is the use of computer software to automate business tasks which might take people a long time to complete, examples might include:
- Copying large sets of data from one place to another
- Automating a repetitive task that is done many hundreds of thousands of times
- Using data from an excel file to automatically create users accounts
- Automating an approval process based on a defined dataset
- Populating web forms and submitting them based on a define dataset
The types of RPA
Broadly speaking there are two types of RPA, simple automation and intelligent automation.
- Simple automation – is the use of computer software to complete repetitive tasks based on a define dataset or set of instructions.
- Intelligent automation – is the use of computer software containing artificial intelligence to make intelligent decisions on our behalf. This usually requires huge amounts of previous historical data from which an AI would base future decisions.
What is the point of RPA?
The sole purpose of RPA is to save time and reduce error. Machines are very good at repetitive processes, they don’t get tired, they don’t make mistakes and they can work 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
Using RPA to automate the mundane is not about replacing staff, it’s about freeing staff time to focus their energy on areas that can add real value; areas such as customer and student experience. The things that machines can’t do.
How is RPA being used at the University of Birmingham?
Leapwork is currently being used to automate a laborious process in HEFi. When a new cohort of students join the university, they must be placed in workspaces and allocated a tutor. This activity is carried out in BIRMs and then must be replicated into the portfolio management software PebblePad. This duplication of data input took somewhere between 700 and 800 hours in 2018.
During a recent meeting with Fred O’Loughlin from HEFi, a basic proof of concept was created using Leapwork in under an hour. The automation consumes an Excel data sheet and then pastes a row at a time into PebblePad.
Further work was undertaken to ensure that the automation would scale, making the process practically invisible to a school. It was decided to accomplish this by allowing a school to simply drop a file into a location, where Leapwork would pick this up and process it appropriately.
With this in place a single file containing all student data for all work spaces in school can be consumed by Leapwork and processed in a single session. The automation in Leapwork can process 1,000 students in ten minutes and could process 40,000 students in about seven and a half hours. All told, the automation of this process took less than 17 hours, with much of this time spent prototyping the ability to work from a single location, processing the data through the dictionary and coping with possible error conditions. By and large the automation carried out in that first hour meeting remains in place.
HEFi are currently working on automating the creation of the tutor groups and allocation of tutors to them, we are also investigating automating the data input into BIRMs.
Find out more
Leapwork has the potential to automate processes all over the University including IT Services. If you would like to find out more about RPA and to explore the opportunities please contact Tim Packwood or Paul Coles.