Here at KeyMark, we’ve been excited about digital workers, Robotic Process Automation and the possibilities they bring to our customers for a long time. It’s ability to automate tedious digital processes with speed and precision give it almost infinite opportunities to improve businesses and make employees’ lives easier. Yes, we really like to talk up this technology, and we’ve created resources – The RPA Cheat Sheet and The CIO’s Guide to RPA, to name a few – that help present its powerful capabilities. So now, why not use it for ourselves?
Digital Workers in KeyMark's Accounts Payable Department
Digital workers, sometimes called robots, are autonomous and can dynamically work within an organizations systems and processes to achieve intelligent automation. They’re easy to scale, highly adaptable and a key part of building an operationally agile and connected enterprise. In short, they interact with software systems the same way a human would to accomplish repetitive tasks.
While working on top-tier solutions for our customers, our new RPA Team has also been at work on some of KeyMark’s own processes, as well as creating OnBase Boost on the Blue Prism Digital Exchange. Recently, digital workers were rolled out to automate parts of our accounting department – specifically in accounts receivable. Our new Service Billing Automation project allows us to generate customer invoices through the use of RPA.
How it Works
On a basic level, here’s what our digital workers are doing:
- First, they are gathering the necessary data for invoices located within queries in our OnBase system
- Next, they are interacting with the user interface of KeyMark’s accounting system to place the data they have gathered in the correct place
Amazingly enough, programming our digital workers to accomplish these tasks didn’t take ridiculous amounts of coding. Many RPA solutions are low-code or even no-code, where bots are run through a process enough times that they actually learn what they need to do. Following the advice that we give our customers, we also started with a small, repetitive process to get our RPA solution started. Starting small ensured that we could see exactly what our solution was accomplishing, and makes it easy to expand when we want to automate more processes.
Our digital workers are performing tasks that a human normally would, and they’re interacting with software almost the exact same way. The difference is that they can do it much faster, without mistakes, around the clock, and help free our employees to get more done!
The Result
Now, our accounting team is able to process more invoices in a shorter amount of time, and they have given the digital workers a big thumbs up! As we continue to use and monitor our digital workers, stay tuned for more precise figures on what they’re helping us accomplish. For now, check out more ways Robotic Process Automation is being utilized in accounts payable in our eBook Implementing RPA in Accounts Payable.
