As the UK moves to a greater knowledge worker/services-based economy, productivity lags some 15% behind the competition.  As we move further out onto the world stage, something needs to change and quickly!

Organisations are waking up to the fact that better productivity means greater profits, doing more with the same (or even less), and focusing on things that create value and customer satisfaction.

What would you like to stop doing in your business right now?

The traditional response to this has been:

• Streamlining a process – faster communication through chat applications such as Skype.
• Investing in expensive all-inclusive IT projects; new major systems such as ERP.
• Multiple applications to address specific issues; offering a point solution.

All of these have inevitably created numerous gaps and silos. Where one application finishes, the next one doesn’t quite start. Furthermore, these are filled by employees doing wasteful tasks, continuously eroding productivity and sapping the strength of the workforce.  These are areas for automation, something that a digital worker can perform.

What is a digital workforce?

An approach is to automate routine, repetitive tasks using Robotic Process Automation (RPA) where a Robot does the task just the way a human would.  So, welcome to your digital workforce. The digital workforce operates alongside human employees, freeing them up to focus on the most important stuff, creating value, facing off to customers and being creative.

The bots are “trained” to carry out tasks within a business process, just like an employee. However, this is much quicker and your bots operate with greater accuracy, 24/7.  Above all, they can be deployed rapidly and can be very cost-effective.

Just think what you could do with all that extra time in your business if all the repetitive, time consuming and manual-intensive tasks were just dealt with.

Robotic Process Automation enables the digital workforce

Robotic Process Automation is the smart technology that uses process-driven programming to mimic the actions of humans. It processes through the same computer screens that the operator would do, interacting across multiple systems without having to have complex and expensive interfaces.

Bots either work closely with people to support their tasks and activities. They can also work entirely independently and autonomously, just getting on with the job, executing it up to 5 to 10 times faster, without making mistakes. Day or night weekend or public holiday, they operate without the need for a coffee break!

What can your digital workers do for you typically?

• Logging into applications.
• Moving files and folders.
• Copying and pasting data.
• Filling in forms.
• Extracting structured and semi-structured data from documents.
• Scraping browsers, and much more.

What processes will your digital workforce assist with?

• Tasks that ideally need to be done 24×7.
• Processes that are consistently applied and are rule-based.
• Manual and repetitive tasks.
• Seasonal or round the clock working such as issues and complaints handling.
• Processes which require audit proofing for regulatory compliance.
• Tasks involving multiple systems where you need validations for each aspect.
• Any task involving many resources and multi-step processes.
• Tasks that need manual calculations.

What does a digital workforce look like?

Centelli, a pioneer in Robotic Process Automation, structure their digital workforce in terms of:

A Digital Assistant

A digital assistant is manually activated digital worker that works interactively on a user’s computer. Therefore, they carry out a set of planned activities across multiple applications, like running a macro in Excel.

A Digital Worker

This is an autonomous worker that works on tasks without the need for human interaction, automatically as opposed to manually. These workers are active 24×7, 365 days a year.

A Digital Team Lead

A centralised management console that enables users to interact with their digital workforce whenever they want. This console also enables the coordination of tasks across digital workers, tracks task completion and provides centralised logging of results and performance.

Recruiting your digital workforce

In summary, a digital workforce will enhance your companies process efficiency, effectiveness and will save you money in the long run. Why not better engage your employees and free up time for your people to focus on real value-adding cognitive activity? Let them focus on your customers and making complex, business-critical decisions, while your digital workforce keeps the wheels turning.

Don’t get left behind – start building your digital workforce today.