Automation is a revolutionary tool that has enabled businesses to enhance efficiency, eliminate errors and reduce overall operational costs. Workflow automation and robotic process automation are two tools that have been in use for years to automate mundane tasks and free up the workforce. A study conducted by PWC reported that nearly half of human resources departments have started focusing on intelligent automation. Gartner also reported that around 80% of finance leaders have adopted or are planning to adopt RPA into their systems in the near future. But what exactly are RPA and workflow automation, and how do they differ? Well, this article talks about robotic process automation vs workflow automation and the differences between the two.

What is Robotic Process Automation?

Robotic process automation is a software technology that enables the automation of repetitive tasks, with the help of software robots, or “bots”, that can learn, mimic, and then execute rules-based business processes. RPA bots are easy to set up, and use and can be scheduled, cloned, customized, and shared to carry out processes throughout the organization. 

RPA is an innovative technology that has been widely adopted by numerous industries around the world. Grand View Research forecasts the global RPA market size is to reach $11 billion by 2027, expanding at a CAGR of 34% from 2020 to 2027. The Deloitte Global RPA Survey predicts RPA to achieve “near universal adoption” in the next 5 years, should the current trend of adoption continue. 

What is Workflow Automation?

Workflow automation is an approach to automate the flow of tasks, documents, and information across work activities in an organization in accordance with pre-defined business rules. The Straits Time did a survey of 11 countries which revealed that excessive and repetitive administrative tasks cost an astounding S$3.95 trillion a year, highlighting the dire need for automation to cut down on operational costs. 

Workflow automation can be used to automate employee onboarding, invoice processing, customer relationship management (CRM), and enterprise resource planning (ERP). Deloitte Insights forecasts the market for workflow automation and related technologies to reach $5 billion by the year 2024, further going on to show the rising growth in the popularity of workflow automation amongst organizations worldwide.

Workflow Automation vs Robotic Process Automation

Here are a few key points that’ll help you understand workflow automation vs robotic process automation and how they differ from each other.

  • Workflow automation is deployed to automate specific tasks within a workflow, whereas robotic process automation is broader in scope and can automate entire workflows from start to finish.
  • Workflow automation focuses on automating the flow of work activities through the process, whereas RPA focuses on automating individual tasks.
  • Processes that are heavily reliant on rules and regulations are perfect for RPA. While workflow automation is used to automate tasks such as invoice processing and employee onboarding.  

Workflow automation vs robotic process automation doesn’t mean that one is better than the other or the two are competitors of each other. Workflow automation and RPA are not only compatible but are also synergistic. The amalgamation of workflow automation and RPA will help your business get the best of both worlds and also enable you to experience a more efficient workflow.

Why Choose Intone for Your RPA Needs?

A study conducted by Automation Anywhere reported that an average employee spends about 10%-25% of their time on repetitive computer tasks and that IT departments spend almost 30% of their time on basic low level tasks, which can easily be automated by RPA bots to save time and improve efficiency.

Intone is a pioneer when it comes to providing Robotic process automation. Our solutions have proven to have 2x times more features in respect to use-case and mapping and 3x times more features with respect to intelligent routing than that which is provided by Google Dialogflow. We are proud of our capabilities to provide innovative solutions and expertise that are needed for you to embrace the future today. We offer,

  • State-of-the-art front-end RPA, where we ensure that your customers have a superior experience and that they start to see your brand in a whole new light. 
  • Our back-end RPA can easily automate the most mundane, repetitive, and labor-intensive tasks to free up your employees to help them focus on higher-order tasks. 
  • Intone offers multilingual solutions as compared to the market standard of English only. 
  • Our advanced NLP understands customer requests and responds in a conversational manner with a minimum accuracy of 85%.
  • Intone offers efficient omnichannel support through easy integration with commonly used customer support channels like Gmail, Outlook 365, etc.
  • Intone offers a top of the line enterprise-grade security with a minimum of 256-bit encryption at both transmission and rest.
  • Intone’s RPA will anonymize your data to ensure greater protection of sensitive data and information.
  • Intone offers end-to-end hyper-automation with our low-code engine.

Check out how Intone can help you streamline your manual business process with robotic process automation for insurance companies as well as other industries.

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