Explaining Robotic Process Automation (RPA) In Simple Words

Here's What Robotic Process Automation Means And Why Large Banks Are Turning To It

Recently in the Nigeria tech space, we celebrated Union Bank as the first Nigerian bank to incorporate Robotic Process Automation (RPA).

In my excitement about it and other new digital banking innovations (check this one out) in Nigeria's banking/tech sector, I sometimes forget that the mass public, who are direct beneficiaries of these changes, do not all understand what it means for them or the bank, even after reading the news.

In this post, I do my best to explain RPA simply. I also share some use cases of banks implementing RPA and what its implementation means for Union Bank and their users.

Robotic Process Automation makes use of software to offer improved business efficiency and data security by automating repetitive tasks across multiple business applications without altering existing infrastructure and systems.

In simpler words, RPA is a child of artificial intelligence. It uses intelligent software to create processes that mimic and improve customer experience with the product/service and makes specific business operations faster and more efficient.

RPA is usually set up to automate repetitive but important tasks that are either time-consuming or quite mundane for a human-being to do daily with any feeling of fulfilment.

Earlier this year, I wrote about South Africa's Standard Bank partnering with WorkFusion, one of the world's leading intelligent automation software providers, to launch RPA to help with on-boarding new customers. The results of their partnership was the drastic reduction of customer on-boarding time reduced by over 6,600% in just 3 months!

Read about it here or watch this short video.

Union Bank in their media launch shared that their implementation of RPA, though still in early stages, will be mainly focused on making nationwide ATM transactions operations more efficient.

Head of Service Assurance at the bank, Bunmi Olufeko, gave a practical example of the RPA’s efficiency saying, “The top 3 customer complaints are related to failed ATM cash transactions. People have to wait 3 days to get money returned after an ATM reconciliation. But the Union Bank RPA does this in an hour or two.”

Hear that, Union bank customers?

Bunmi went on to add that the Union Bank RPA technologies are currently reconciling 900 ATMs but apart from cash dispensation, the technology will also be applied to other service and processes that ease banking operations for all Union Bank customers nationwide.

Want to learn even more about RPA and other forms of intelligent automation? Read this short post (You asked, we answered: top 5 questions on combining RPA and AI) or even better, sign up for Automation Academy!