RPA Alone is Not Enough

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is foundational to any automation strategy. It can provide immense value for you and your customers if implemented properly. It automates repeatable tasks for your users. RPA can go out and gather information from multiple sources. It can update multiple data storages. RPA is necessary if you are thinking about automating any part of your technology stack.

With RPA speeding up processing times and reducing costly errors, processing costs decline, and per-employee output increases. Common savings from these efficiency improvements fall between 25% and 50%. - Omid Aslani, Director, Commercial Product Management, 7 Biggest Benefits of RPA (Robotic Process Automation) 2020

However, stopping at just RPA would be a mistake. Robotics Process Automation is not a process orchestration engine. RPA bots only follow business rules. It can't make decisions based on variable information. Where RPA robots shine is when they follow concrete rules and do repeatable tasks.

More than RPA is needed to meet the demands placed on businesses operating in a digital world. Fluid markets and changing needs in the business environment require flexible technology stacks and highly customizable and robust strategies.

Resilient enterprises know they need to be agile in order to not only survive in this new world but to flourish in it. They must be able to identify and automate as many business processes as possible. The result is an end-to-end automation that utilizes all aspects of an intelligent business platform.

A couple of areas need to be discussed when talking about transitioning from just RPA to a smart business platform. A smart business platform involves automation intelligence (AI) and other automation technologies to achieve its goals. The goals, in this case, would be creating efficiency and effectiveness to greater value for you and your customers.

One of the first areas that an intelligent business platform can utilize technology is document and data intelligence. RPA can help with this by using robots to go out and gather information from external and/or internal sources. It succeeds when looking for structured content. However, artificial intelligence software that includes cognitive capture, machine learning, and natural language processing can take your solution to the next level because a lot of data still resides on documents.

Being able to tell what the document is and then define what is essential to it is what artificial intelligence is about. You need to quickly identify what a document is, where it goes, and what data is necessary to maximize your knowledge workers' efficiency and effectiveness. It is also no longer limited to just your standard document intake anymore. It still handles applications, invoices, claims forms, purchase orders, and other industry standard forms with ease. Still, it can also be involved in handling emails from dissatisfied customers so that organizations can act quickly to address any issues.

The second area where an innovative business platform can use technology to achieve its goals is process orchestration. Through process orchestration, technology can be utilized to create and maintain advanced workflows that will get your data and documents where they need to go. Process orchestration also makes it possible to synchronize all of the automated workflows so companies can scale and manage their digital workload.

Flexibly adapting your workflows to fit your business needs is essential when trying to stay competitive. Understanding the market and then adjusting to it requires a technology that is as well. Intelligent business platforms have to be able to take complex workflows and be able to adjust them on the fly. Good platforms can and do on a daily basis.

The third area where an intelligent business platform can solve problems is data silos. Disjointed and disorganized data points cause headaches for all industries. The integration of systems can be enabled by using pre-built connectors that will transform separate data entities into a network of intelligent technologies and services.

The key to moving beyond RPA is to infuse it with artificial intelligence (AI). Why? Because

almost all business processes rely on data, and as the old adage goes: "Garbage in, garbage out." In other words, inaccurate data can cause problems in processes and workflows that hurt your ability to deliver a high-quality customer experience, your bottom line, and even your ability to comply with regulations. - RPA is Not Enough, Kofax, Q1 2022

Now that we have some steps defined in your transition, it is crucial to find a company and a product that can meet all those areas. Tromba Technologies has decades of experience analyzing, designing, and implementing automation technologies. Our TrombaAI platform is built on Kofax TotalAgility, an industry leader in automation. It leverages cognitive capture with advanced workflows and robotic process automation right out of the box. Our design tool is a lot like Vizio in look and feels, so being able to adjust those workflows to meet ever-changing needs becomes simple to achieve. We also have the ability to integrate multiple different systems through web services, custom data connectors, or out-of-the-box data integration tools.

RPA is essential for any modern automation solution. Being able to tap into its powerful abilities provides your company with the ability to maximize your automation potential. However, RPA bots have limitations in what they can do when deployed as a standalone technology. The recommended application of RPA is where RPA is a piece of a holistic, intelligent automation strategy that uses advanced technologies like artificial intelligence to business processes and workflows.

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TrombaAI is Tromba’s SaaS/Cloud Automation platform. To learn more, visit https://www.tromba-ai.com or contact Tromba at sales@trombatech.com.

Are you a Kofax TotalAgility customer?

www.kofax.com

Kofax TotalAgility (KTA) | Tromba Technologies

Are you an Upland FileBound customer?

www.filebound.com

FileBound Enterprise | Tromba Technologies

Are you interested in Cloud or OnPremise automation platform? We can help you with all of this as well. Contact us by visiting www.trombatech.com or at sales@trombatech.com for more information.

How can TrombaAI help with your disaster recovery and business continuity plan?

It used to be that disaster recovery was a backup of your files and databases on your servers. Your System Administrators had to check and verify that the backup systems were working properly and that the current backups were valid.

Fast forward to today, there is more to business continuity than server backups. There are more backup options now with OnPremise, Cloud, and Hybrid options. And what about remote worker models and options? Now, even small businesses have opportunities to utilize a workforce that is not always present in a “brick and mortar” office building. But how do you back up your processes, business rules, security & compliance, all while backing up your data?

This is where TrombaAI and Tromba Technologies can help your organization. TrombaAI is a cloud automation platform. Your business processes, business rules, security & compliance policies, and data can be maintained 24/7. Your remote worker continuity plans would fully support maintaining the security and integrity of your business processes and documents.

But what if you have Kofax TotalAgility or Kofax Capture? Tromba can help you implement successful Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery models for those products as well. Kofax TotalAgility is a browser-based automation platform that has the technology and feature native to support your requirements fully. Kofax Capture has Kofax Capture Network Server that can be added to support distributed processing as well as a disaster recovery model.

Another hurricane season passed. But disaster can occur at any time. As we have seen recently, a building can collapse without warning. What happens then? Buildings catch fire and are damaged where that cannot be inhabited for periods of time.

Don’t get caught with your workforce unable to access your data, access your business processes, and unable to maintain security and compliance. Contact Tromba today to learn more about how our solutions can meet your enterprise’s most complex business continuity plan or help your small business move from backing up data to a true business continuity plan that keeps your business running when disaster hits.

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TrombaAI is Tromba’s SaaS/Cloud Automation platform. To learn more, visit https://www.tromba-ai.com or contact Tromba at sales@trombatech.com.

Are you a Kofax TotalAgility customer?

www.kofax.com

Kofax TotalAgility (KTA) | Tromba Technologies

Are you an Upland FileBound customer?

www.filebound.com

FileBound Enterprise | Tromba Technologies

Are you interested in Cloud or OnPremise automation platform? We can help you with all of this as well. Contact us by visiting www.trombatech.com or at sales@trombatech.com for more information.

Manage your daily work with TrombaAI

When thinking about managing your day-to-day work tasks, there are many common-sense approaches to that. Many, like Indeed, have blogs for tips to organize your day and work. Some of these tips are:

1. Keep a task list

2. Eliminate clutter on your desk

3. Manage your time

4. Take breaks

5. Don't do multiple tasks at once

6. Remove distractions

7. Automate tasks that you can

8. Prioritize your tasks

9. Organize your work by time

10. Work in "batches"

There are more ideas and tips that all revolve around these ideas. Teams discuss these ideas, and managers try to help guide workers to greater productivity by leveraging these ideas. But what happens with these ideas? How do we make this happen?

Keep a task list – Do you clutter your monitor and desk with sticky notes? Do you use pads of paper in some manner? Do you use Outlook task lists? Do you use OneNote or something else like that?

Eliminate clutter – Do you neatly stack your papers? Do you use folders and dividers to organize? Do you take this idea digitally and create an enormous amount of Outlook folders to sort your emails?

Manage your time – How do you do that? Do you set an hour for this? And an hour for that? Do you know how long your tasks and processes take?

Take breaks – Ok, coffee is really important! How do you stop in the middle of something to take a break? Do you have to wait on breaks because you can't easily stop in the middle of a task when you don't know how long it will take?

Don't do multiple tasks at once – FOCUS! 😊 What happens when that important email you were waiting for comes in the middle of working on another task?

Remove distractions – Hmmm. Can you mute your phone? Turn email notifications off? Hang a "Do not disturb" sign on your cubicle or door?

Automate tasks that you can – What does that mean? Is this a lot of Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V? Do you make a lot of spreadsheets to "automate" the collection of data?

Prioritize your tasks – Are your priorities your manager's priorities? Or even the organization's priorities? Do you know what your department's priorities are with regard to your tasks? Who gets to set the priorities?

Organize your work by time – What happens if something takes longer than you thought it would? Do you simply do what you didn't get done the day before the first thing in the morning? Or do you put off tasks that are harder or longer until later?

Work in "batches" - Do you stack the paper up and start working through it? How do you define a workable "batch"? What happens if that "batch" takes too long or cannot be completed in the time you set for that "batch"?

So, to answer these questions, do you and your team meet to discuss obstacles and struggles? Do you try to time specific tasks to justify your concerns or express being overworked? And even try to reset expectations with your management? How do you convince a manager who does not perform your tasks how to fit expectations into these great ideas for more productivity? Or are you a manager who needs the answers to make your team more productive and successful?

Tromba Technologies has a couple of decades of experience helping organizations become more productive, more accurate, and even more profitable. TrombaAI (www.tromba-ai.com) is the automation platform built by Tromba using Kofax TotalAgility and Upland FileBound automation technologies to address all of these needs and outcomes that all organizations are looking for.

Let's quickly look at how TrombaAI directly addresses all of these performances and work management ideas.

Keep a task list – When managing your work and tasks in a process like a policy renewal process, why would you even need to keep or make a list? TrombaAI has a work queue that keeps all of your tasks in all of your processes right in front of you. You can filter the tasks by criteria that you set or your organization sets.

Eliminate clutter – To us, this means eliminating workarounds. TrombaAI can collect all the information you need to perform tasks even before you take the work. There is no need to print, copy & paste, or simply collect information that you need just to perform a task. It can all be waiting for you.

Manage our time – Do you need to know how long tasks take to manage your time better? TrombaAI can collect and measure any KPI (Key Performance Indicator). With Analytics, you can gain insight into how long "what" takes. You can know how long something has been sitting or aging in your work queue. And better yet, you can know how long something has been in the process life-cycle to head off possible SLA (Service Level Agreement) violations.

Take breaks – Take your coffee and lunch breaks! TrombaAI can safely and securely pause your task so that it is waiting for you when you are ready to resume working on it. You won't lose any work you have performed even if the task has not been completed.

Don't do multiple tasks at once – Let TrombaAI help you focus on your work queue. You will have all the information from different data systems, web lookups, from documents; all in front of you. So you won't need to get lost in the spreadsheet workarounds to collect data, get lost reading your MSN news when you meant to go look up a piece of information or get distracted by a different customer when looking up data in your Line of Business application. Do you need to email an escalation to your manager? There is no need to go to email since TrombaAI performs that task automatically. Everything you need will be there to simply get the task done quickly and accurately.

Remove distractions – If you are not scavenging for information to perform a task, that is one layer of distraction removed. Have you ever had to perform the same task repeatedly because of a phone call or a colleague asking a complicated question, and when you return the task, you can't remember exactly where you left off? TrombaAI keeps up with where you are completing tasks. Take the phone call and answer your colleague's questions. Know that you won't get distracted and will resume right where you left off with your tasks using TrombaAI.

Automate tasks that you can – This is a strength of TrombaAI since it is an automation platform. 😊 Retrieving pieces of information from anywhere for the purpose of automation and completing tasks is exactly what TrombaAI is and does for its users.

Automation technologies that are innate to TrombaAI are:

1) Process Orchestration,

2) Business Process Management,

3) Workflow,

4) Cognitive Document Capture,

5) Robotics Process Automation,

6) Process and Business Analytics,

7) Integrated Mobile Capture,

8) Inner/External Portal access,

9) Digital Signature,

10) Customer Communication Management, and

11) Systems and Data Integration

Prioritize your tasks – TrombaAI makes this a snap. If your organization has rules to prioritize work items, TrombaAI will automatically sort and prioritize your tasks in the work queue. If you need to prioritize oldest to newest, that can be automatic or on demand whenever you need that. Do you need to filter your work by customer to prioritize certain accounts? That, too, can be automatic or on demand. Are there other rules that determine priority? Like a dollar amount? Any rule can be used to prioritize tasks automatically in TrombaAI.

Organize your work by time – With TrombaAI Analytics, you and your manager can know how long tasks and processes take. With that knowledge, you can better arrange your day for specific tasks to better make sure all the important items are done on time and to get more completed in a day.

Work in "batches" - Do you work on multiple "things" in a day? Are you an underwriter that reviews applications, renewals, etc.? In this "are you," TrombaAI can have applications and renewals sorted so that you can work through all the applications in a "batch" and all of the renewals in a "batch". Or are you working with Invoices? Do you need to approve all of the high-dollar invoices and approve GL coding? TrombaAI can organize similar tasks into what some may call logic batches so that you work through all of them together. That will keep you from bouncing around to dissimilar tasks constantly and slowing you down.

That's a little of what Tromba AI can do for you, your team, and your organization.

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TrombaAI is Tromba’s SaaS/Cloud Automation platform. To learn more, visit https://www.tromba-ai.com or contact Tromba at sales@trombatech.com.

Are you a Kofax TotalAgility customer?

www.kofax.com

Kofax TotalAgility (KTA) | Tromba Technologies

Are you an Upland FileBound customer?

www.filebound.com

FileBound Enterprise | Tromba Technologies

Or are you simply interested in an OnPremise automation platform? We can help you with all of this as well. Contact us by visiting www.trombatech.com or at sales@trombatech.com for more information.