Q 448. There are 2 different types of Robotic Process Automations (RPAs) - Attended and Unattended. Compare the two and provide examples of processes that are suitable for each type. 

 

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Outline:

Attended Bots are used explicitly when we cannot automate the entire end to end process. These Bots are commonly referred as “Human-In-the-Loop” Automations (HitL).

 

Typically, the transaction is carried by both Human and Digital worker together, were the exchange/interaction and handover of data happens based on the defined logics.

 

On the contrary, unattended bots complete the transactions by interacting with various applications, independently, without human intervention.    

 

Comparisons:

Unattended RPA	Attended RPA (RDA / HitL)
Virtual digital employee working in background	Assistant to human / Human-bot collaboration
Focus on improving process  efficiency	Focus on improving employee productivity
Ideal for process based automation	Ideal for task based automation
Bot executes complete transaction (Start to finish, end to end)	Bot executes partial transaction and manually completed by human intervention
Used for repetitive, more frequent and simple process	Used for complex processes which requires human decision making
Rule based execution	Human/system triggered and involves manual inputs to execute the task
Typically performs Batch Operation	Mostly in attended RPA, it is  transaction/Interaction wise and not batch based
Works on preset schedule	Real time or waits in queue for human processing
Can run on work station, servers and on cloud	Usually runs on work station / single employee's desktop
Can complete end to end transaction and can work 24/7	Have to wait for human actions to complete the transaction. Running 24/7 can create bottleneck, in the waiting queue to close the task
Apt for back office support	More suitable for Front Office Support / Service desk / Help desk / Customer Contact Center, typically Customer facing roles
Server to bot communication is automated process version deployment only	Server to bot communication can be automated process version deployment, start or can reset processes
Frees employees from routine mundane work, reduces cost and accelerates processes	Increases productivity and customer service in service environments
Can be scheduled from centralized server, remotely	Mostly human trigger, real time and done on work station

 

In the Human in the Loop Automation environment, there could be single or multiple human interventions, either in the start, mid or in the end of the event depending about the coded logics.

 

 

Process Examples:

 

Unattended Automation

·         Apt for back-office processes at scale

·         Invoice management system

·         Email management / Mass customer email (BFSI, Telecom, Healthcare)

·         Manual data entry / Data migration

·         Sales orders

·         KYC (Know your customer)

·         Payroll automation

·         Absence management

·         Expense management

·         Storing Customer details / Customer onboarding / Update CRM

·         Processing Express Refunds

·         Bank statement reconciliation

·         Letter Generation

·         Extract data from different formats/applications (from PDF, scanned documents, etc.)

·         Periodic report preparation

·         Update user preference (Opt-out communication)

·         Data updates and validation

·         Credit card application (seamless based on CIBIL scores)

·         Proof of delivery (POD)

·         Patient appointment scheduling (Healthcare)

·         Transferring b-cards to sales force

 

Attended Automation

·         Apt for contact center operations / front office support

·         Extract customer data from CRM automatically during employee-customer interaction

·         Profit and Loss updates

·         Address change approval triggered by employee based on correctness and completeness

·         Compliance management (Human approval, BISO involvement)

·         Loan processing (Final approval from the Loan officer)

·         High value claim processing (Human authentication)

·         Quote-to-cash (document-based data extraction)

·         Procure-to-pay (document-based data extraction)

·         Source-to-pay (document-based data extraction)

 

Below are some of the advantages for Attended Automation over unattended automation:

·         It is Agile

·         Comparatively user friendly

·         It removes real time data entry work

·         Improves team efficiency

·         Progresses team productivity

·         Improves C-SAT, NPS scores

·         It requires minimal setup

·         Deployment is Rapid

·         Achieves ROI swiftly

 

To conclude, in an attended automation environment, automation does not stops, as it collaborates with human to complete the automation process. 

 

 

 

 

Take away:

Organization can choose any of the RPA bot types and deploy as per the necessity and business needs. Nevertheless, having a unified platform (ideally Hybrid platform) to handle both attended and unattended bots would be a superlative choice. 

 

Both RPA and RDA are integral part of Intelligent Automation Suite. 

However, the primary objective of going for an Automation, is to have minimal human involvement in the business process flow, hence RPA has an upper hand compared to RDA. 

What comes to your mind when you think about robots or bots? Some human-looking machine that does physical tasks! R2-D2 or C-3PO from Star Wars!

However, with the increasing complexity and connectivity of the enterprise, automation of tasks done by humans on a computer interface is increasingly being automated. These are called Bots and offer the company a unique versatility by allowing it to scale based on the workload, budget, and other operational constraints. This change in the level of operations is done without any work stoppage or disruptions to the value chain. Besides scaling, and providing a better product/service, bots also give the company the capacity to work faster, with more precision, and leaner.

Processes requiring repetitive and tedious action, require different levels of automation with regard to processes requiring a high level of cognition. Bots can be attended and/or unattended. Attended and unattended bots can be deployed at the same time to create a synergized, unified integrated platform. Bots can be thought of as different musicians/sections in an orchestra with each musician playing their part to create a beautiful harmony. 

Unattended RPAs

Unattended Automation requires nil to very little human intervention. They are self-triggered and the tasks are endlessly completed in a batch process. That is to say that these bots can work round the clock throughout the year. If required, these bots can be monitored and controlled remotely via different platforms or interfaces. They can be analyzed, viewed, scheduled, and modified in real-time. This gives the employee a means to interact and collaborate with the bots and breakdown the communication and functional silos in the organization.

Use Case Unattended Bots. These types of bots are generally used in back-office scenarios where a large volume of data is collected, sorted, analyzed, and distributed in the enterprise. Claim processing in Insurance companies are suitable candidates.

Examples of unattended automation scenarios are below: -

·        Exception Based – Fully Automated RPAs

·        Human Prepared Processing

·        Validation through Human in the Loop

Exception Based – Fully Automated RPAs

Example. Health Insurance Companies are required to process large volumes of claims and invoices. The data is generally stored in a mix of multiple legacy and modern systems. APIs are not available for the integration of these multiple systems. Data has to be verified, updated, and moved between these systems

A fully automated bot can be created to verify, move, update the data across all these systems. Based on the Service Level Agreements, the optimum number of bots can be deployed to process these invoices and claims.

Human Prepared Processing

These are processes that require human intervention to start the process, however can be automated once the process is started. This combines human creativity with software efficiency.

Example. Mortgage Companies process a very large volume of mortgages. The Mortgage process involves human logic that is necessary to start the process, however, the rest of the process is repetitive and can be automated. The human logic designates when the appraisal is ordered, the required additions, and the appraisal firm.

Validation through Human in the Loop

In some cases, some processes require human intermittent intervention. Automation can be built into the process to seek human intervention when a problem arises.

Example. The Accounts Payable Departments repeatedly process different types of not-standard invoices in different formats and forms. Machine Learning and Optical Character Recognition can be used to read these invoices. However, in case the unattended bot is unable to recognize the data, a human being would be called upon to intervene in the process and then hand over the process back to the unattended bot.

Attended RPAs

Attended bots require human intervention. These bots are at the employee workstation level and triggered by specific commands, actions, or events that the employee engages within the workflow. Since it generally involves switching between multiple interfaces, screens during the employee workflow, these bots are designed to be user-friendly and agile. Attended bots are generally restricted to a specific workstation, section, or department making the automation generally restricted to the employee engaging in the workflow at that moment

Use Case Attended RPAs. These bots are generally used in customer-facing tasks. Call Centres are an ideal place for the use of attended RPAs. Call Centre operators need to switch between different screens and interfaces while addressing a customer issue. The unattended bots generally take care of the tasks involved in entering/retrieving the data so that the operator can spend more time interacting with the customer.

Examples of attended automation scenarios are below: -

·        Attended, Interval: Robot takeover

·        Attended, in tandem: Working alongside the robot

Attended, Interval: Robot takeover

In Financial services companies, the process requires robot intervention at various stages to handle monotonous and repetitive tasks. The human can hand over control to the robot by some shortcut key to hand over this part of the process to the robot. In this model, there are a number of switches between the human and robot in order to complete the task.

Attended, in tandem: Working alongside the robot

This model is used when humans need to move between a conversation (Call centre) and repetitive tasks. This calls for humans and robots working alongside each other. In this case, the agent continues to focus on the customer, while the robot does the routine and mundane tasks

References

https://www.uipath.com/blog/rpa/unattended-attended-automation

https://www.uipath.com/blog/automation/rpa-use-cases-part-one-unattended-robots

https://www.uipath.com/blog/automation/rpa-use-cases-for-attended-robots-automation

RPA or Robotic process automations are deployed to execute repetitive, rule-based routine tasks. The applications are coded with the commands to perform exactly what a human would do and are call BOTs which are the Robots. Across various sectors RPA is deployed to achieve a higher efficiency level in a short span of time. There are 2 types of RPA attended and unattended whereby it’s quite clear attended needs attention of someone. The RPA either attended or unattended, are deployed to replace human efforts, the benefits are in the form of reduced staff cost or staff realigned to complex processes and accurate processing. A glance through the 2 types of RPA is as below:

Very good reply by Sanchita. An excellent response by Johanan. The winner, however, is Mohamed Asif, for his structured comparison, and more examples.