Blog 1
RPA RDA IPA - What the bot is this all about?
Devran Deviren I 21.04.2020
Everyone is talking about automation. In the age of digitization, companies that have overslept optimizing their processes are stumbling.
But what exactly is process automation?
Robotic Process Automation
RPA is an approach to process automation that uses "digital" robots to learn routine tasks and emulate the inputs. The goal is to automate the entire process without human interaction.
Robotic Desktop Automation
The RDA (often referred to as a robot) can be understood as an improvement in the work process that assists the user in its execution. The RDA robot takes on the role of a digital assistant that supports the employee with recommendations for action or relevant information from various systems.
So the focus is not on automating the entire process, but on optimizing the way the employee works.
Intelligent process automation
IPA is the combination of robotic process automation with machine learning to efficiently reproduce human thinking.
In this blog we would like to discuss a possible use case and analyze when you need which type of automation.
What are we going to do?
We categorize our robots into three products.
Since we offer our software already programmed, it makes no difference to us whether the robot runs locally on the desktop in the form of an RDA or in the background in the form of an RPA. Ultimately, both are robotics - the only difference is that you're trying to automate the whole process and not just part of it.
The Level 1 RPA is the easy way to automate. It is used to automate monotonous processes.
Level 2 RPA is the combination of our intelligent text recognition software with the technology of robotics. These robots are able to recognize and understand text.
Artificial intelligence is on everyone's lips. We use them to develop Level 3 RPA. These robots are intelligent and can understand and thus automate complicated work processes.
Let's imagine following process:
If you want this process to run fully automatically in the background and without human intervention, you need an RPA. They would send all scanned documents to an email address owned by the robot and the robot would take care of renaming and implementing them into the document management system.
What if you don't want to use the robot on a virtual machine? Then you need an RDA. You scan the documents and then launch the robot locally on your desktop, which does the work for you.
What is the difference between these two technologies? The RPA runs in the background and automates the entire process, while the RDA runs locally on your desktop and automates only part of the overall process. In this case you would have to collect all the emails you want to process and then start the robot. With the RPA, on the other hand, the process runs completely automatically in the background.
Let's make the process a little more complicated:
What has changed now?
The robot needs to extract information from the documents. For this he needs OCR. Behind this OCR there are now many checks to assess whether the content of the document is correct or not. If everything is correct, the robot must correctly interpret the content extracted from the document when uploading it and enter it into the DMS.
Now back to the same question, what if you don't want to use the robot on a virtual machine? This is where it matters. Since this robot requires reading comprehension, it is a level 2 robot. We would optimally integrate it into the process. This means that we are able to custom-design the robot. However, if you only want to use it with human interaction, we would grant your wish and convert the robot into an RDA.
In summary, Level 2 robots are a combination of RPA and OCR. Why do we distinguish them at all? These robots contain our OCR AI, which means they understand what they are reading and can validate the scanned text. As you know, text documents are very different from each other. It is important to understand the content. We train our artificial intelligence to meet your specific needs.
Now let's add another step to the complexity of the process:
What happens when many different documents are scanned and then need to be checked for the following content:
1. Who sent the document?
2. Is the document correct?
3. Has it been signed?
4. Is the signature correct?
5. Has anything been crossed out on the document?
6. Is the content correct?
7. Is the amount in the correct currency?
8. Is the exchange rate correct at the given time?
9. etc.
Then you need intelligent process automation. Or as we call it: Level 3 Robot. This needs to be tailor-made to meet the needs of the customer and work optimally.
This means that the scanned documents could be sent to our robot. Our AI would do the checking and further processing.
However, this is also the most complex robot in the development process as data collection and validation takes a very long time.
Using our neural networks, we would teach our model to distinguish between the respective documents. A robot is then built around this model, which perfectly copes with the task of analysis.
In a perfect world - what would this process look like?
Assuming that documents are always submitted on paper, a mobile solution would be the key to success. We would develop an app that would analyze documents using our artificial intelligence and then integrate them into your DMS.
This is where Alphabots differs from normal RPA providers. We also offer all neural networks that we can build as APIs and integrate them into apps to automate processes.
What does that mean for you?
Only 12 percent of German companies use the far-reaching advantages of process automation. One of the reasons for this is that many entrepreneurs do not even know that their processes can easily be optimized.
Another reason is the entrepreneurs' fear of exposing themselves to the new technology. That's why we take care of the robot and you use it. So you outsource your need for robots to us.
The implementation costs for the necessary RPA software are often enormous. Many companies therefore decide to put their employees on bad processes. It's different with us. You only order the finished robot and immediately increase your profit.
