many tasks were moved to low-cost countries in Asia, Eastern Europe andLatin America.The term “Robotic Process Automation” (RPA) may suggests
visions of physical robots wandering around offices doing the job of humans. In
fact, the term really means automation of service tasks. While automation or enabling
technologies such as standard Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) packages and self-service
portals have long been deployed in Shared Service Organizations (SSO), RPA is
actually a new breed of configuring software that replaces jobs once performed
by human. In a study conducted by Prof. Mary Lacity and Prof. Leslie Willcocks in
2016, the early adopters of RPA have achieved multi-layer of business results
from deploying RPA, including FTE savings, doing more work with fewer
resources, increased service quality (as robots execute exactly as configured
to do so), increased service delivery speed, and more satisfied employees
because their jobs are refocused to more interesting tasks requiring judgment,
empathy and social interactions. Gina Schaefer,
Managing Director of Deloitte Consulting LLP, also cited a similar stand – RPA
helps automate processes of repetitive, manual tasks and monotonous for humans
and cumbersome for businesses. This allows early adopters in service delivery or
SSO to achieve cost efficiencies and create more nimble and competitive businesses.

According to Prof. Willcocks, there are 3 distinctive features
that set RPA apart from other existing automation tools like Business Process
Management (BPM), scripting and screen scraping which will be covered in this
report: 1. RPA is easy to configure,
so developers don’t need programming skills; 2. RPA software is non-invasive;
3. RPA is enterprise-safe

Early shared
services centers were set up in 1990’s with a strong objective that is efficiency
and centralization in pursuit of cost reduction strategies whereby many
tasks were moved to low-cost countries in Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin
America.  . Many organizations have successfully trimmed
costs in this manner, and the knack of SSOs to generate impressive one-time
savings is undeniable. Now that major companies have earned the benefits of
labour arbitrage, and system harmonization and process standardization has come
to a reasonable level, automation of remaining tasks and processes is the new
target. Companies take advantage of Robotic Process Automation in their back
offices..