Business process automation (BPA) is one of the key building blocks of digital transformation in modern enterprises. Rolling out advanced RPA, BPM and artificial intelligence solutions lifts team efficiency by 20-50%, while at the same time reducing operational errors, costs and the time it takes to complete work.
At Horus we help organisations walk that path, implementing reliable enterprise-class platforms such as UiPath, Camunda and Temporal that move companies to an entirely new level of performance.
How does automation work in a company?
Many leaders start out asking the same question: how does automation actually work in a company? Put simply, it is the use of software to carry out routine tasks without human intervention, where business processes are combined with AI technology and tightly defined rules.
Success here depends on proper Business Process Management (BPM). Before a robot is built, the processes have to be mapped in detail, which is what exposes the bottlenecks in a company’s infrastructure. With that approach, companies can automate invoicing, customer enquiry handling or employee onboarding, freeing up valuable resources.
What are RPA systems?
The foundation of many optimisations is the systems that support the processes. So what are RPA systems? The acronym stands for Robotic Process Automation and describes technology whose job is to imitate human actions in a digital environment. Bots can operate on the interfaces of existing applications (so-called legacy systems) and work alongside modern cloud services.
Tools in this class deliver spectacular results:
- They drive a dramatic reduction in human error — Deloitte reports that in 80% of large corporations the number of errors fell by 70%, and in the financial sector alone the reduction reached as much as 90%.
- UiPath, one of the leaders of the RPA market, offers a powerful library of over 2,000 robots ready for rapid deployment.
What are examples of business processes to automate?
Scalability is the biggest asset of digital assistants. What are the examples of business processes that companies successfully hand over to bots? The largest time savings show up in areas such as:
- Invoice and payment handling (McKinsey research points to savings of up to 40% of the time involved).
- Generating sales reports and analysing extensive data from CRM systems (e.g. Salesforce).
- Customer data verification (KYC) and end-to-end onboarding of new employees.
- Handling IT tickets (helpdesk) and automated archiving of business documentation.
A good illustration of the scale involved is BNP Paribas, which gained over 10,000 hours a year through automation on loan application processing alone.
What does automation of manufacturing processes involve?
Although bots are often associated with the office, they are revolutionising logistics and industry just as strongly. What does automation of manufacturing processes involve on the IT side? Above all, connecting RPA environments with advanced ERP systems (such as SAP or Oracle) in order to map data flows instantly and without code.
In manufacturing this is done with RESTful APIs and dedicated middleware tools such as UiPath Orchestrator, which cuts typical deployment times from months down to just a few weeks. The software manages inventory in logistics efficiently, predicts bottlenecks with AI and continuously analyses throughput, preventing costly downtime.
How much does AI automation cost, and does it pay off?
The decision to go through digital transformation is an investment with a very fast return. So how much does AI automation cost? The market offers a range of licensing models: from simple automations in applications like Zapier (from free plans up to USD 20), through workflow platforms such as Make (from USD 9 per month), to advanced enterprise-class RPA environments like UiPath (from USD 420 per month).
Whatever technology stack you choose, the hard data speaks for itself. According to analyses by IDC experts, a successful RPA implementation reduces a company’s operating costs by 35%. What is more, companies using integrated hybrid automation achieve a return on investment (ROI) of 200-300% within the first year of operation.
Want to start automating on UiPath, Temporal or Camunda?
The engineering teams at Horus have been delivering large-scale implementations for years, combining systems architecture expertise with business goals.