Research and implementation of RPA within an organization

Abstract

The term robotic process automation refers to software that may be efficiently designed to perform fundamental functions across applications, like humans. The software robot can be set up as a workflow with many steps and actions, such as getting forms, sending a receipt message, making sure the documents are complete, filing the form in a folder, and updating a spreadsheet with the name of the form, the date it was filed, etc. The fundamental concept is to identify a simple, repeating activity. Examples include order processing and invoice management. The majority of robotic process automation is currently "rule-based," which excludes AI. However, some existing RPA technologies, such as Power Automate's AI Builder, provide AI as an additional capability. The main aim of the thesis project is an implementation of RPA within an organization and triggering the use of it for automating other routine tasks. By introducing this practice, we would get several benefits, such as increasing productivity and efficiency and reducing company costs. Today, besides the challenge of choosing among many available RPA tools on the market, picking the proper initial process for automation is complex. During this research, it was found manual processes at the accounting department that can be automated in a company and implementation of RPA. It was identified potential business processes for automation. Then it was converted to high-level business requirements to detailed development specifications. It was used diagrams for visualizing the process. Test cases were defined for preparing for the final validation after the actual robotic process automation implementation. Then, it was researched current RPA tools on the market and made a comparison of them. Based on the comparison, it was chosen the best which fits a company. Finally, a manual process was selected for the implementation based on previous parts and automated. In addition, this thesis can serve as a useful guide for acquiring the fundamental knowledge necessary for beginning work with RPA. This work permits a deep dive into RPA, the identification of the optimal manual process, and a comparison of RPA tools.