What Is Smart Process Automation and How Can Your Business Benefit From It?

According to Gartner, global spending on RPA software will reach almost $3 billion in 2023, and will continue to grow. This impressive metric proves that businesses around the globe have been adopting Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to great effect. Reducing time spent on mundane tasks and increasing efficiency, this versatile automation technology has already found its use in all major industries.

One of the main reasons why RPA has been so successful is its capability to c. Thanks to that, RPA allows businesses to push the boundaries of what they can achieve with automation. It is only logical then, that Robotic Process Automation itself would be improved in a similar fashion using new technological advancements, right?

Discover more about SAP automation with RPA and UiPath.

Enter SPA—Smart Process Automation (or Intelligent Process Automation), an RPA system taken to the next level. In this article, we’ll discuss what SPA is, how it is different from RPA, which industries can use it, and what’s in it for your business. Let’s get cracking!

Unlike RPA, which already has a well-established position in the market (to prove that, Deloitte reports that 53% of enterprises have already started their RPA journey), SPA is a relatively new concept. Let’s start by comparing it to RPA and listing the benefits it brings to all stakeholders.

By this point, you probably know what RPA is about: it’s an automation technology that uses pre-programmed scripts (bots) to handle repetitive, high-volume, and rule-based processes. It’s a highly effective solution, but what if it could be improved even further? That’s exactly what SPA sets out to do, taking RPA to another level by applying sophisticated machine intelligence techniques to task automation.

A Smart Process Automation system makes use of cognitive technologies such as AI, ML (machine learning), and NLP (natural language processing) to better deal with semi-structured and unstructured data including document scans, emails, contracts, presentations, images, or even audio recordings. By ‘better’, we mean more innovatively. Where RPA takes a task and automates it, completing it in less time than a human would, SPA can also cooperate with people, make suggestions, and apply enhancements to workflows.

The higher level of autonomy is one of the defining features of SPA, and its main advantage over traditional RPA. Robotic Process Automation works wonders when it’s delegated to a task that’s based on an if-then rule: if a condition occurs, a program then executes a pre-defined action. These are mostly simple but labor-intense processes such as data entry, records verification, or numerical operations. However, there are exceptions even in the most rudimental tasks, particularly if unstructured data is concerned.

When an RPA bot stumbles upon one of these anomalies, it will usually notify the assigned employee/team (so-called “human in the loop”) to resolve the issue. What sets SPA apart from RPA is the ability to observe and learn how the exception is addressed to be able to handle it on its own in the future. This means that your employees won’t be interrupted by bots asking for assistance every time a specific anomaly issue occurs. Instead, the SPA algorithm will predict how a human would solve the exception and act accordingly.

Speaking of predictions, the cognitive abilities of SPA will also come in handy for suggesting additional processes that would benefit from automation. Automation platforms like UiPath already offer AI solutions to identify areas for improvement.

And it’s not just the behavior of your staff that SPA can learn. By combining the customer-faced RPA processes with AI and ML, the bots will be able to predict customer behavior, create personalized offers, and improve interactions with clients.

Last but not least, SPA creates a whole new world of possibilities for data analytics. Most processes optimized with RPA require bots to run through thousands of records—why not make use of all that data and have AI analyze it in real-time to generate market intelligence for your company?

As the next stage in the evolution of RPA, Smart Process Automation does everything its older sibling excels at, but better. And just like RPA, SPA adds value for everyone involved regardless of their role:

• Business — From the perspective of the company as a whole, adopting a smart automation system will increase work effectiveness and accuracy while reducing time-to-action. Automation lowers operational expenses as well, with 61% of businesses reporting that their pre-implementation saving expectations were met or exceeded.
• Employees — Manual, repetitive workloads feel more like a waste of time rather than a rewarding job. Launching RPA was the first step toward freeing your staff from these chores. The next one comes with SPA, which will give professionals even more time to focus on creative and fulfilling tasks that stimulate business growth now that bots can handle exceptions by themselves.
• Customers — SPA can positively impact customer experience, both directly and indirectly. The immediate effect on CX is the better speed and quality of response thanks to optimized customer service workflows or chat and self-service enabled by automation. The indirect impact comes from the overall improvements to your business operations that will help you deliver your services or products more efficiently.