Module 1-RPA
-Prof. Anamika Dhawan
Course Code Course Name
RPA Theory ME-MCA-314
Teaching Scheme:
Robotic Process Automation
Credits Assigned
Contact Hours (Per Week)
Theory Tutorial Total Theory Tutorial Total
3 - 3 3 - 3
Examination Scheme (Marks)
In Semester Assessment (ISA)
End Sem.
Continuous Total (ISA) Term Work Total (Marks)
MSE Examination
Assessment (CA) (CA + MSE)
25 25 50 50 - 100
Sr. No. Course Objective
1 Understanding RPA Fundamentals and Its Business Applications
2 Developing and Managing RPA Bots
3 Ensuring Security and Compliance in RPA
4 Mastering RPA Technologies and Best Practices
RPA Lab
Sr. No. Course Outcome Bloom Level
CO1 Gain knowledge of RPA concepts, lifecycle, business benefits, and process Understand
methodologies like Lean, Six Sigma, and Agile for effective RPA planning.
CO2 Learn to analyze business processes, develop automation solutions using Apply
UiPath and Automation Anywhere, and manage testing, monitoring, and
deployment of RPA bots.
CO3 Understand RPA security risks, implement secured BOT development and Analyze
deployment, and apply threat modeling for risk mitigation.
CO4 Explore UiPath Orchestrator, Automation Anywhere’s IQ Bots, resilient Create
automation strategies, and industry best practices for RPA implementation
and scaling.
What is RPA?
A Business process automation technology.
Makes it easy to build, deploy, and manage software robots that
emulate humans actions interacting with digital systems and
software.
It's automation software that handles tedious, manual digital tasks
and transfers the work of a human worker to a "digital worker"
https://youtu.be/vgdMjzCfh1Y?si=cU5bN4-e9NeNx7RO
Why RPA?
Cost Effective
RPA is the most sought after solution in this technology-driven era to
reduce the investment being done on manual tasks and get the best of the
employees by allowing them to innovate rather than doing monotonous work.
Undefeatable Accuracy
Robots, once defined/built, can have unlimited attention and can work
endlessly without any distractions. And that gives the ability to make no
mistakes.
Raising the Bar On Productivity
Robots, have no measure of capacity.If developed smartly, they can work
for every millisecond. And this gives unlimited possibilities for any
company to run their businesses without worrying about productivity.
TYpes of RPA
1. Attended Automation
2. UnAttended Automation
3. Hybrid
Attended RPA
This type of bot resides on the user’s machine and is usually
invoked by the user.
Attended automation is best suited for tasks that are triggered at
points that are programmatically hard to detect.
For instance, let’s say a customer service representative would
normally need up to 3 screens and complete 5 manual steps so as to
complete a transaction. Instead of going through all of these, the
customer service rep can choose to launch an automation code
Unattended RPA
These bots are like batch processes on the cloud and data processing
tasks are completed in the background.
Unattended automation is deal for reducing the work of back-office
employees.
Unattended automation can be launched in the following ways: data
input in a specified location, bot initiated, orchestrator
initiated, and specified intervals.
Hybrid rpa
In this type of RPA, attended and unattended RPA boys are combined
so as to provide automation for both back and front office
activities.
This allows for end to end automation of a process.
For example, a hybrid RPA bot using natural language processing
could listen to a conversation between two people, analyze that
conversation in real time and then use that analysis to provide
information that will help the attending human take the necessary
next steps.
History of RPA
RPA is the combination of several technologies, brought together
under one toolkit for different automation purposes.
Though the term 'RPA' emerged in the early 2000s, the initial
development was started after the 1990s.
'Machine Learning (ML)' is one of those technologies that helped
towards innovation, which eventually lead to the creation of RPA.In
1959, 'Arthur Samuel' developed Machine Learning. Machine Learning
allowed computers to perform several critical tasks, such as
translation and text summarization, etc.
History of RPA
Then , The development of 'Natural Language Processing (NLP),' which
helped computers to understand 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 were few more developments in the 1990s.
History of RPA
The three key predecessors of Robotic Process Automation that are
given below:
1. Screen Scraping
2. Workflow Automation and Management Tools
3. Artificial Intelligence
Screen Scraping
Screen Scraping technology is considered as a significant step
towards the creation of RPA.
This technology is used to extract data from web, programs, and
documents, which is further displayed by another application.
While there were many benefits of screen scraping over manual labor,
screen scraping was also limited to some extent.
Workflow Automation and management tools
Workflow automation is the process that includes a series of
automated actions, which helps in reducing the human task.
These actions must be repetitive so that their steps are
predictable. Such actions can be automated by using automated
management tools.
Workflow automation uses business rules to decide when the step has
been completed, and the execution of the next can be started.
AI
Artificial intelligence is the ability of computer machines or
robots to perform tasks that typically require human intelligence.
AI programming is based on three techniques: learning, reasoning,
and self-correction.
Image Recognition
Speech Recognition
Natural Language Generation
Sentiment Analysis
Benefits of RPA
Current status of RPA Utilization and value
RPA offers significant opportunities to improve business process
performance. This has been proven in various business process areas
in thousands of organisations.
The check of vendor invoices, handling of routine insurance claims,
or the processing of loan applications are just a few examples where
RPA has been used successfully.
In general, non-value-added working steps, such as entering data
from one application into another or extracting and re-entering
spreadsheets, are automated, freeing up related human workforce for
higher qualified activities, leading to cost reductions and shorter
cycle times.
Current status of RPA Utilization and value
A bank, for example, reduced the onboarding time from 16 days to 9
minutes.
A marketing services company achieved 97% accuracy of product
categorisation and reduced manual effort by up to 80% for selected
processes.
An international software company reduced 67% of their headcount in
their invoice processing through RPA while achieving 20% less help
desk inquiries through more accurate results
Current status of RPA Utilization and value
RPA can also add value in the technical field of software
integration. Without the availability of RPA, in a heterogeneous
systems environment, applications are either connected by system
interfaces or by humans.
Leads to efficiency effects in the information technology department
and provides business users the required integration to enhance
process performance.
RPA software is often offered at an aggressive price, basic entrance
versions even for free. Also, implementation costs are relatively
inexpensive.
Level of Adoption
Level 1
The objective of the first category is to improve the workers
productivity with the help of automated tools.
The robot does not perform the tasks but assists the human workforce
with their effort.
Level 2
RPA is deployed to carry out end-to-end tasks. The robot is no
longer helping the human workforce but replacing it. However, the
objective is far from straightforward and the human workforce still
has a key role to play in supporting the deployment and scale of the
new digital workforce.
At this stage organisations will have a centralised robot management
system in place, with the retrained human workforce analysing robot
performance and orchestrating scheduling and queuing.
Level 3
By the time an organisation is operating in this category,
end-to-end tasks will be fully automated, and the human workforce
will be focusing their efforts on exception handling.
This is often referred to as “human-in-the-loop”.
At a stage in an organisation’s journey they will have a Cloud /
SaaS (VMs) & on-premises deployment. Features will include, advanced
analytics and workflows, auto-scaling, dynamic load balancing and
context awareness.
Level 4
The final category sees RPA integrated with AI technologies such as
Machine Learning, voice recognition, computer vision, text
analytics, natural language processing and natural language
generation.
These enhanced capabilities provide the organisation with a whole
series of digital interactions, for example; object connectivity on
the screen, voice and visual interfaces, processing of unstructured
data, predictive and prescriptive analytics, automation of tasks
that involve cognitive decision making and diagnostics that enable
your robots to self-manage and selfheal.
Skills Required for RPA
Programming capabilities: Java, .NET, C, or C++
Specific mindset: an algorithmic and structured way of thinking
Knowledge of database query language: SQL
Good command of scripting languages: HTML and JavaScript
Understanding of the basics of Artificial Intelligence and Machine
Learning
What is RPA?
The Process of automating the workflows with the help of
robots/software to reduce the involvement of humans is said to be
Robotic Process Automation.
Robotic: Entities which mimic human actions are called Robots.
Process: Sequence of steps which lead to a meaningful activity. For
example, the process of making tea or your favorite dish, etc.
Automation: Any process which is done by a robot without human
intervention.
RPA Lifecycle
Discovery phase
In this phase, the requirements of the client are analyzed
by the Process Architect.
Based on the requirements, given by the client, it is
decided whether the process can be automated or not.
If the process can be automated, then the complexity of the
process is analyzed. Finally, the benefits from the
automation are penned down.
Solution design phase
In this phase, the solution or the steps to automate a task
is designed. The Technical Architect in collaboration with
the Process Architect makes a Process Definition
Document(PDD) which contains the information about each and
every process/step to depth.
Once all the client requirements are analyzed and the
Process Definition Document is made, the next step is to
decide few requirements for the project such as Budget, Time
to be spent, number of people working on the project and so
on.
Solution design phase
Then, you have to create an Object Model Diagram or a
Flowchart to understand the flow of process. With the help
of this, you will be able to understand which step has to be
automated and what are its requirements.
After you create the flowchart, you have to choose an RPA
Tool to automate your task and then, you are good to get
started with developing the bot.
Development Phase
The Development Phase is the phase wherein the Automation
Developer creates Automation Scripts in the chosen RPA Tool.
The tool could be any of the enormous amounts of the tools
present in the market, but, the top 3 tools in today’s
market are UiPath, Blue Prism & Automation Anywhere.
Also, the Automation Scripts are created by referring to the
previously created Process Definition Document.
Depending on the task to be automated or the kind of
automation required, there may or may not be coding
required; but, there are humongous amounts of scenarios
where you do not need coding at all.
UAT
In this phase of RPA lifecycle, the developed bot is tested
either by the Testing team or the Development team itself.
The bot is tested in the pre-production environment to test
how the users can use this bot to automate a specific task.
If the testing is successful, then it moves forward with the
next stage, But, if the testing fails, then the bot goes
back to the Development Phase where the errors found in the
Testing phase are rectified and are tested again.
Deployment and maintenance phase
After developing and testing a bot, the bot is deployed into
the production environment.
Now, once the bot is deployed, users can use it. But, if
there are any issues with the bot, then it goes back to the
Dev & Testing teams to resolve the issue.
Execute Bot
In this stage, the bots are executed and thereafter checked
to generate meaningful results.
Use cases of RPA
Use cases of RPA
USE CASES IN RPA-CA1
RPA in HR
RPA in IT
RPA in Medical Industry-Healthcare
RPA in Retail
