It’s hard to envision an organization that can take its commitment to become a better corporate citizen seriously without a well-developed and tightly executed sustainability plan. Sustainability initiatives have become a strategic priority in most organizations. They are present in regulatory filings, in annual reports and even on organizational charts. In fact, the 2020 Gartner Insights Sustainable Business Survey found that executives involved with sustainability strategy and initiatives plan to increase their sustainability investments over the next three years.1
Traditional IT sustainability use cases have included low-emissions hardware, cost-efficient power and cooling, smaller data centers, cloud migration and decommissioned equipment recycling, to name a few. Now, robotic process automation (RPA), which uses software robots to carry out simple, structured and repetitive business processes such as data entry, has emerged as a vital and strategic catalyst for sustainability.
RPA environmental case studies are endless. Imagine using RPA and the internet of things to provide clean energy and climate change mitigation in underserved communities by detecting anomalies in solar sensors. Or the technology could be used to detect how many people in a building are infected with COVID-19, enabling immunocompromised people to make an informed choice as to whether they want to enter the building. RPA could also help cut down on plastic environmental waste by polling local communities via chatbots on ways they reduce their carbon footprints. A software bot could also serve as a farmer’s right hand, helping them select crops well suited for the local environment; identify, control and prevent crop diseases; and learn about financing options to help them sustain and expand their business.
Some of the sustainability benefits of RPA include the following:
- Improves efficiency and accuracy. RPA plus process mining, which offers a complete picture of a process and the ability to simulate future processes, can help organizations visualize and analyze existing business and IT processes and uncover bottlenecks before they occur.
- Eliminates errors and waste. RPA can automate or partially automate processes that traditionally rely on paper consumption and incur printing costs. For instance, by integrating optical character recognition, sometimes known as text recognition, with IBM RPA, users can extract and repurpose data from scanned documents, images and image-only PDFs. This allows them to easily access and edit the original document, while eliminating the need for manual data entry and extra printouts.
- Saves time. RPA automates routine IT processes such as manual data entry, a goal financial cooperative Sicoob RPA also manages data migration as a starting point for an AIOps (artificial intelligence for IT operations) journey.
- Saves money. Deploying a software-as-a-service solution eliminates the need for expensive infrastructure and maintenance investments such as servers.
- Redistributes resources. Saved resources—human time and materials—can be revamped and applied to a business’ higher level, strategic priorities.
- Uncover new insights. Leveraging data from process mining and RPA infused with AI enables new patterns to surface, highlighting opportunities for further automation. Companies can then act on those insights, thus sparking a virtuous cycle of efficiency and innovation.
- Decreases monotonous tasks. RPA frees employees from tasks that add little value to engage in more meaningful, higher value activities, fostering a culture of creativity and innovation similar to that at finance company Credigy.
- Increases competitiveness. RPA helps best-in-class organizations use data to make better decisions, improve their customer experience and become providers that others want to do business with.
Removing Growth Obstacles With Robotic Process Automation
This paper explains how Cobmax Sales Center, a telemarketing, sales, and customer service provider, turned to IBM’s Robotic Process Automation solution to help handle customer calls for one of Brazil’s largest telecommunications companies.
Download NowSustainability is the right thing to do. Besides saving lives, it saves money and, with the help of RPA, boosts work productivity. IBM Robotic Process Automation acts as a critical lever in an organization's commitment to digital transformation, intelligent automation and operational excellence, helping it achieve long-term organization-wide sustainability and resilience.
For more information, consider starting a complimentary trial with award-winning IBM RPA.
1 “Sustainable Business Strategy for a Positive Social and Environmental Impact,” Gartner, 2020
