Robotic Process Automation: Wiki says – “Robotic process automation (or RPA) is a form of business process automation technology based on metaphorical software robots (bots) or artificial intelligence (AI) workers.” RPA has been in motion since mankind started evolving tools. Robotic arms and machines have been engaged with humans worked in different manufacturing industries for decades. RPA takes the same approach to business processes. Business Processes have multiple repetitive tasks that add low value. These tedious tasks can be automated and hence remove human engagement from it.

Example: A sales order is created based on 25 columns in an excel file. One file with n rows creates n sales orders. These excel files are created by traveling salesmen taking orders on the road (example – pharma reps in a small town with sparse connectivity). Each salesman emails the file to the local center where these are loaded on the server. These are read by a person and sales orders are created accordingly. The last step can be automated. A program can read the files and creates sales orders one by one.

SAP Intelligent RPA: SAP IRPA is a solution provided by SAP. It provides an integrated environment to perform three basic RPA functions – create, execute and monitor automation.

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