Overview and History of RPA

Last updated on Jan 15 2023
Prabhas Ramanathan

Table of Contents

Overview and History of RPA

RPA stands for Robotic Process Automation. it’s the technology used for software tools that automate human tasks, which are manual, rule-based, or repetitive. Typically, it’s sort of a bot that performs such tasks as a way higher rate than a person alone. These RPA software bots never sleep and make zero mistakes, and may interact with in-house applications, websites, user portals, etc. they will log into applications, enter data, open emails and attachments, calculate and complete tasks, then sign off .

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The term Robotic Process Automation creates an image of physical robots performing some labour-intensive human physical tasks like uploading or unloading heavy goods from a vehicle or cleaning the house etc. However, actually, the image is totally different. The word ‘Robot’ in ‘RPA’ isn’t a physical robot but a virtual system that helps in automating the repetitive manual computing or business process tasks.
RPA technologies are often divided into three categories:
Probots
These are the bots that follow simple, repeatable rules to process data.
Knowbots
These are the bots that search user-specified information from the web and answer the user.
Chatbots
These are the bots that act and respond as virtual agents. They reply to customer queries in real-time.

Why RPA?

RPA isn’t a part of an organization’s IT infrastructure. Instead, it belongs to the highest of the entire organization’s IT infrastructure. In an IT environment, most of the business processes aren’t smart and intelligent. Many of them are hooked in to multiple IT systems, which rarely interact with one another. Such sorts of tasks are repetitive, time-consuming, and labour-intensive for citizenry . With the Robotic Process Automation, it takes large IT transformation plans and implementation process to automate those sorts of repetitive, time-consuming, and rule-based tasks more quickly, accurately, and tirelessly, compared to a person’s being.
RPA technology uses bots that interact with web applications, web sites, excel worksheets, and emails to automate the tasks a bit like a people. RPA is currently the foremost efficient automation solution, and it helps citizenry to specialise in those tasks which require emotional intelligence, reasoning, judgement, and interactions with the purchasers, instead of just doing repetitive tasks.

Benefits of RPA

Robotic Process Automation technology provides the subsequent benefits:

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Cost Savings
RPA helps organizations to save lots of an enormous amount of cost because it is usually cheaper than hiring an employee to perform an equivalent set of tasks.
Less Error
RPA works on standard logic and doesn’t get bored, distracted, or tired. Hence, the probability of creating errors reduces to an excellent extent, which suggests less re-work and an enhanced reputation for efficiency.
Faster Processing
RPA works faster than human employees as computer software doesn’t need breaks, food, rest, etc., and may perform repetitive operations tirelessly. With RPA, time interval becomes predictable and consistent, which ensures high-quality customer service across the operations.
Better Regulatory Compliance
RPA software works on the logic and data fed thereto and does what’s only needed as per the given instructions. Hence, there are minimal chances of not complying with the quality regulations.
Better Customer Service
When RPA is implemented during a business, it frees many of its employees who can spend their time performing on customer-related services. it’s very beneficial for businesses that receive tons of customer queries. It also results in increased productivity for workers.
Auditable & Secure
RPA bots will only access the info that they’re given permission and make an in depth audit trail of all activity.
Low Technical Barrier
RPA doesn’t require any programming skills to configure the software robot. Since it’s a code-free technology, any non-technical person can found out the bot using drag and drop features. It also includes the ‘Recorder’ to record the steps of automation.
With of these benefits, RPA ensures an overall higher level of quality for any organization.
Prerequisite
There is no specific prerequisite for this tutorial. All you would like is continuous learning and practicing with the tools. However, if you would like to increase functionalities to match your requirements, then a basic knowledge of software coding and programming logic are going to be beneficial and put you at a plus.

History of RPA (Robotic Process Automation)

RPA is that the combination of several technologies, brought together under one toolkit for various automation purposes. Though the term ‘RPA’ emerged within the early 2000s, the initial development was started after the 1990s.
‘Machine Learning (ML)’ is one among those technologies that helped towards innovation, which eventually cause the creation of RPA. In 1959, ‘Arthur Samuel’ developed Machine Learning. Machine Learning allowed computers to perform several critical tasks, like translation and text summarization, etc. However, there have been limits on how computers could process language. It led to the event of ‘Natural Language Processing (NLP),’ which helped computers to know and process human language more accurately. In 1960, NLP combined ‘AI (Artificial Intelligence)’ for establishing the interactions between computers and human languages. Then, the technology progressed further towards the establishment of RPA, and there have been few more developments within the 1990s.
Because of the continual developments, there was an emergence of technology that the majority closely resembled RPA. The history of RPA tells that there have been three key predecessors of Robotic Process Automation that are given below:
Screen Scraping
Screen Scraping technology is taken into account as a big step towards the creation of RPA. This technology is employed to extract data from web, programs, and documents, which is further displayed by another application.
While there have been many benefits of screen scraping over manual labour, screen scraping was also limited to some extent. thanks to limitations and lack of availability of source codes, programmers, and documentation, it became difficult to know for the typical business user.
Workflow Automation and Management Tools
Workflow automation is that the process that has a series of automated actions, which helps in reducing the human task. These actions must be repetitive in order that their steps are predictable. Such actions are often automated by using automated management tools. Workflow automation uses business rules to make a decision when the step has been completed, and therefore the execution of subsequent are often started.
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence is that the ability of computer machines or robots to perform tasks that typically require human intelligence. AI programming is predicated on three techniques: learning, reasoning, and self-correction.
The applications for AI are endless and may be applied to several different sectors and industries. a number of the commonly used technologies of AI are:
• Image Recognition – it’s the technology that identifies and detects objects or attributes in images or videos.
• Speech Recognition – it’s the technology that identifies words and phrases in speech and converts them into a machine-readable format.
• Natural Language Generation – it’s the technology that transforms structured data into tongue.
• Sentiment Analysis – it’s the technology that uses tongue processing, text analysis, and biometrics to spot, extract, quantify, and study subjective information.
All these technologies together made RPA such an impactful technological platform and added more benefits for the business users.
So, this brings us to the end of blog. This Tecklearn ‘Overview and History of RPA’ blog helps you with commonly asked questions if you are looking out for a job in Robotic Process Automation. If you wish to learn RPA and build a career in Robotic process Automation domain, then check out our interactive, Robotic Process Automation using UiPath Training, that comes with 24*7 support to guide you throughout your learning period. Please find the link for course details:

 

https://www.tecklearn.com/course/robotic-process-automation-using-uipath/

Robotic Process Automation using UiPath Training

About the Course

Tecklearn’s Robotic Process Automation training using UiPath will prepare you for UiPath’s RPA Developer Advanced Certification Exam so that you can drive RPA initiatives in your organization. RPA training and certification is a comprehensive course for mastering Robotic Process Automation, different tools in RPA, the life cycle of RPA, deploying the UiPath tool, UiPath Studio, invoking a UiPath workflow, Citrix automation, automating the virtual environment and more through hands-on projects and case studies.

Why Should you take Robotic Process Automation using UiPath Training?

• The average salary of RPA Technical Automation Architect is $116,872 per annum – Indeed.com.
• Robotic Process Automation market will reach $2.9 billion by 2021 – Forrester Research
• Robotic Process Automation is being heralded as one of the booming industries in today’s digitally-driven economy. Every industry including banking, finance and information technology can immensely benefit from the RPA industry

What you will Learn in this Course?

Introduction to Robotic Process Automation

• Why RPA?
• Industry Implementation of RPA
• RPA Growth Trends
• Different RPA Tools
• Types of Bots
• Why UiPath?
• UiPath Installation
• Getting Started with UiPath
• Project and Project Types
• UiPath Dashboard
• UiPath Overview

Important components of UiPath

• Introduction to UiPath Studio, UiPath Robot and UiPath Orchestrator
• Working with variables
• Managing control flow
• Excel Automation
• Gmail automation with UiPath

More about RPA

• Ui Path Studio Components
• Passing rogramming, Debugging and Exception Handling

Programming, Debugging and Exception Handling

• Programming Activities in UiPath
• Debugging errors in a UiPath Project
• Different ways of Error Handling in UiPath
• Browse through the log files related to UiPath Project

Connect Orchestrator with UiPath

• UiPath Orchestrator Overview
• Orchestrator activities

RPA Tools like REFramework

• Introduction to REFramework
• Purpose of REFramework
• Using State Machine Layout
• State Machine States
• Workflows Involved
• Exception Handling and Logging

Programming Activities Using Data Table

• Programming activities using Data Table
• Learn Data Table Structure, Comprehend Searching Method and Data Table Activities
• Create an environment and associate the workflow
• Creation of Collection
• Email Automation
• Understanding Sequence and Flowchart
• Automate Sending and Reading of Email Message

Data Scrapping

• Importance of Data scraping with UiPath
• Data scraping aspects: Taking screenshot, Activating, getting text, highlighting and selecting item, loading image and more

Desktop Automation

RPA Project

• Excel Operations Automation using Ui Path

UiPath Orchestrator

• Orchestrator Overview
• Orchestrator Account Creation
• Connecting a Robot
• Create an Environment and Associate the Robot
• Publish a Package
• Create a Process from the Package
• Running a Robot and Examine Logs
• Scheduling and Running of Unattended Robot

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