Microsoft adds RPA to its list of services with Power Automate

Microsoft is heavily invested in empowering the average business users and is pushing for anyone can develop. In this context, Power Platform, first introduced in 2018 shows tremendous promise especially with the newly revamped Power Automate (previously Microsoft Flow) and Power Agents. The latest edition of Microsoft Ignite declared that the company will be a provider for RPA. This feature is now in public preview is surely path-breaking. Read on to find out why.

James Phillips, corporate vice president of business applications at Microsoft writes,

“One of the biggest challenges organizations face is scaling and automating business processes—from digitizing pen and paper processes to automating complex processes that span legacy and modern applications. Robotic process automation has rapidly become a key technology to address many of these scenarios but generally requires a patchwork of automation services that need integration and management before the real work can get done.”

For those not aware, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is the technology that enables us to configure computer software, or a ‘robot’ to emulate and integrate the actions of a human interacting within digital systems to execute a business process. For RPA to work as pointed out by James Phillips, we need automation services and connectors to other services. This is where Power Automation plays a crucial role and stands out among the existing RPA.

The newly added RPA capability is called UI flows. It is a simple point and click, low code experience that can record and playback human interactions with software systems and turn them into automated workflows for repetitive mundane tasks. UI flows combined with the capabilities of Power Automate connectors provide an end-to-end automation platform. Power Automate has roughly 275+ connectors to widely used apps and services that support API automation. In the past, the only way to connect API to a legacy system is to ask your developer team to do it for you. But now, with Power Automate Microsoft is expanding horizons for things that can be automated.

To further elaborate on this and make things simple Microsoft offers an example of an insurance claims processing company.

For example, let’s say you work for an insurance claims processing company, where clients fill out digital forms, paper forms, or communicate through email. The claim is processed on modern cloud services while staff also maintain cumbersome paper records and legacy applications. With Power Automate, this entire process can be automated. Digitized data from scanned paper forms are processed with AI that recognizes forms, and old legacy systems can be automated with RPA—one platform that brings both worlds together seamlessly.

The evolution of Microsoft Flows into power automate to align more with the Power platform along with the RPA feature was expected if not this soon. This together with the Power Virtual agent and new security updates for Power BI only makes the platform stronger.

Power Platform is the combined strength of four major services namely Power BI, Power Apps, Power Automate and Power Virtual Agent. Microsoft claims that with power platform you can analyze data, build solutions, automate processes, and create virtual agents. These no-code/low code services are sure of keeping productivity soaring together with the ROI.

Robotic Process Automation in pharmaceuticals

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is the technology that enables us to configure computer software, or a ‘robot’ to emulate and integrate the actions of a human interacting within digital systems to execute a business process.  

I contrast to traditional technology implementations, RPA allows an organization to incorporate automation at the fraction of cost and time. While RPA implementation offers cost efficiency and consistency it achieves that without disrupting existing infrastructure systems. Thus, there is minimal migration downtime.

While many businesses have achieved the early success of RPA adoption there are a lot who are yet to catch up on this trend. Through this blog, we will discuss areas in pharmaceuticals which have the potential to increase ROI and factors to look out while adopting RPA.

Areas to drive ROI 

Clinical development: Clinical development is the costliest and one of the most critical stages in the life sciences value chain. Though science is sophisticated, the oversight is highly manual and paper-based, involves multiple systems and is prone to human error. RPA works best in rule-based, manual processes. Its use in clinical development can increase consistency in data entry, quality control. Potentially saving several million dollars a year per clinical trial.

Salesforce operations: Studies suggest that sales reps spend as much as 71% of their time on data entry. Inventory, record tracking, reviewing customer feedback, such tasks are highly manual and can be achieved faster and more accurately with RPA. This will facilitate sales reps to spend more time on actual selling activities or higher-value work like interactions with physicians and hospital groups. Bots as personal assistants will increase responsiveness and relevance of reps.

Supply chain: RPA in the supply chain is catching up rapidly with the introduction of smart systems that cognitive capacities. Supply chain areas like order processing, automated communication exchange, vendor selection, shipment status are ready to make a shift from the traditional technologies like RFID, ERP or CRM. To create a smooth supply chain, organizations should ensure stages are tightly integrated.

Precision Marketing: According to Inc. Magazine, it is five to 10 times more expensive to find a new customer than to sell to an existing one, which is why so much effort goes into precision marketing (marketing directed at existing customers). Marketers can leverage RPA to update the information of existing customers whenever there is a new email, or any feedback is shared. In addition, the migration from legacy CRM systems is a lot safer and accurate with RPA. Any tool which can help take a few things of a marketer’s plate is always welcomed.

“Robotic process automation technology usually costs one-third the amount of an offshore employee and one-fifth of an onshore employee.” 

These are a few of the many use cases of RPA. Businesses have benefitted from the use of RPA and with the development of technology, it is expanding to newer horizons. However, to reap the maximum benefit of RPA implementation one should thoroughly survey the present working conditions and consider various internal and external factors.

Questions to determine whether a function would benefit from RPA 

Here are a few questions are based on internal drivers and external drivers. While people, process and current technology used fall into the internal category, customer, compliance, and competition fall into external category.

Internal Drivers	External Drivers
People, Does the functional require critical decision making or is the function rule-based and manual? Does it involve higher operational cost with similar returns in comparison to other processes?	Customer, Are you losing customers to slower response time?  Do you struggle with consistent customer usage reports?
Process Are the processes transactional? Are they highly repetitive and high in volume too? Do the processes require substantial time to complete resulting in end product realization?	Compliance Do regulatory bodies demand a high dependency on technological solutions? Do compliance bodies have strict timelines for submission or issue resolution? Do you require periodic standard reporting to regulatory bodies?
Technology Is your infrastructure ready for automation in the near future? Do the systems have enough processing power to handle the various automated transaction? Does the function utilize systems that can share centralized data?	Competition Are you losing out to your competitors over efficiency and new technologies?  Are your competitor’s able answer regulatory bodies on time? Do you have a higher labor cost?

Pharmaceutical companies typically involve highly regulated environments and any automated decision-making function here would require extensive validation along with solid-state control. The RPA market is exploding and is expected to hit $1.7 billion this year if you haven’t yet made the leap to RPA this blog hopefully sets you on the right track.