Months before the pandemic ignited a global business crisis, industry analysts ranked robotic process automation (RPA) among the leading ingredients of digital transformation.
IDC predicted that by 2021, the contribution of “digital coworkers” would increase by 35 percent. RPA also made Gartner’s top 10 strategic technology trends in 2020 as an important part of hyperautomation.
Now, with all eyes on recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, RPA is even more important for its ability to automate processes and augment people. Nowhere is this more apparent than in procurement, which is increasingly charged with bolstering business resiliency in an unpredictable world.
Tumultuous Times Demand Intelligent Procurement
Unlike most humans, RPA not only relishes, but excels at repetitive tasks. The more tedious and mundane they are, the better. For example, RPA can make short work of procurement processes like quickly finding out which of your suppliers are at risk during a pandemic.
Not Yesterday’s Automation
Injecting RPA capabilities into an employee’s daily procurement processes can dramatically speed up rote tasks, many of which have far greater urgency these days.
“Maybe some of your suppliers are at risk, and they’re small and could take advantage of the government support programs in the United States,” Brown said. “You need to find out if they’re financially strapped or in difficult straits. Using RPA, you could quickly look at your smaller size suppliers, see if they’ve acquired one of those loans indicating they may be at risk, apply that data into your supply chain, and find another supplier to reduce your risk.”
Pandemic or not, RPA can be tremendously useful in tackling time-consuming procurement processes. These could be common tasks such as updating supplier certification information from a third-party site or changing cost center data on a large batch of purchase orders. Accomplishing these activities in minutes instead of hours frees up employees to make more strategic contributions while delivering massive productivity gains to the company.
AI Boosts Intelligent Procurement
Brown was particularly excited about the business results from combining artificial intelligence (AI) with RPA, something he described as an ongoing learning process for both people and machines.
“Adding AI into an automated process is a natural extension…[because] you can start providing recommendations to shorten processes,” he said. “The algorithm starts learning based on how you’ve selected items. It makes decisions for you, then asks if it got it right. You can also look at the data afterwards and change the strategy, if needed, over time.”
RPA Drives Supply Chain Agility
Both experts predicted an uptick in RPA across procurement as companies weather supply and demand fluctuations through a long recovery period. Kavanagh saw RPA helping companies reengineer supply chains for more dynamic and globally friendly sourcing strategies. Brown expected a significant increase in the number of SAP Ariba customers incorporating RPA into daily procurement activities.