My wife and I just recently went over our Thanksgiving menu and some of the items we still need to grab. To say it made me hungry is an understatement – stuffing, casseroles, buttered rolls, sweet potatoes, pies and, of course, that glorious turkey. I can hardly wait!
What I can hold off on? Dishes. After so many hours of cooking and maybe a solid half hour of actually eating, there’s a sink-full of aftermath left to clean up. Yes, we use our dishwasher, but there’s always the pre-rinse and, of course, those pots, pans and special dishes that need to be washed by-hand.
Maybe I’ll try to sneak in a nap first!
The dread of this inevitable “grunt work” got me thinking about robotic process automation, or RPA. You may have heard about these little bots before – they’re the revolutionary automation alternative to old-school screen-scraping. Memorizing mundane, repetitive tasks like mouse clicks, copy and paste, and opening and closing browsers, RPA thrives in environments of frequent information collection and data entry – in the insurance space, you could say these kinds of environments are “hot spots.”
Ordinarily, you may think RPA is a nice-to-have option that you may want to consider should you have an above average fiscal year. But, in unprecedented, pandemic times, tools like RPA could be the differentiating edge between how you and a competitor serve your customers. With RPA managing the “grunt work,” customers don’t worry about human error or compromised information – because the bots handle it all, inevitable data entry missteps or poor ulterior motives never have an opportunity to surface. This also bodes well for your standing with the Department of Insurance and meeting (dare I say, exceeding) those high compliance standards.
And while RPA is a good friend of OnBase, don’t sweat it if you have a legacy system or two still at play – RPA speaks their language too, and will seamlessly integrate for optimal interoperability.
Between the upcoming holidays and a busy year for insurance, I completely understand if you don’t have the time to invest in researching RPA. If, on occasion, you’d like to know more, please feel free to follow my LinkedIn blog series, “Q&A for RPA with James.” It can be found searching #RPAwithJames in the LinkedIn search bar, and is also frequently reshared on ImageSoft’s corporate LinkedIn page.
Now, if only we could hire these RPA bots to do Thanksgiving clean-up! At least I know what I’m wishing for should I break off the biggest part of the wish bone.
Wishing you and yours a healthy and happy holiday weekend!
James
Are You Following #RPAwithJames?
Robotic process automation is one of the best ways to automate those repetitive tasks that insurers know oh-so-well. Not only does it save you tremendous time, but RPA protects your customer data from inevitable human error.
Want to get your bearings about you with RPA, but don’t have the time to research and read lengthy articles? Simply follow the #RPAwithJames feed on LinkedIn where James Leneschmidt, ImageSoft’s CTO, answers foundational questions about RPA in a short, to-the-point LinkedIn post.
Best Practices for Electronic Signature Solutions
There have been archives of content written about digitally signing documents at agencies, but most of that content overlooks the most obvious fact: not every agency’s signature process is the same, so how can a single type of electronic signature solution be the best fit?
Failing to address all your signature processes makes the solution nothing but a Band-Aid. It sounds absurd to have to say this, but it is a best practice at agencies to address all of their signature processes.
Let’s look at a couple of different processes to see the differences.
Robotic Process Automation: The Next Step in Your Digital Workflow
RPA, as its casually referred to, mimics mouse clicks and keystrokes to automate repetitive, office-like work. Able to automate tasks in any environment, regardless of the existing software platform, RPA is available to any industry and thrives in all environments, especially those who already operate on OnBase and want to take their automation a step further.
We couldn’t have picked a timelier guest to walk us through an overview of RPA and the types of applications that qualify as good candidates. Tim Tallaksen, Director of Intelligent Process Automation at Hyland Software, joins us for a well-rounded conversation about what robotic process automation is, how its currently supporting businesses amidst the pandemic, and how Hyland’s recent acquisition of a world-class RPA developer is allowing current OnBase customers to quickly deploy huge bot farms to automate the work of thousands of staff – easily extending the value of their digital workflow.
The Processing Task Master
No, this isn’t an ad for Black Friday or Cyber Monday.
In recent years, and especially since the pandemic pushed many industries into backlog, robotic process automation has been picking up the slack by managing organizational “grunt work.” As Hyland’s recent article “Robotic Process Automation: The Processing Task Master” defines it, RPA does all your mouse clicking, copying and pasting, and opening and closing of applications in “moments rather than minutes.”
For insurance, RPA would thrive in environments of data collection or entry, especially in these stressful pandemic times when users might be understandably more prone to human errors. And as an industry upheld to one of the highest compliance standards, RPA offers paramount protection over vulnerable data.
To learn more about what RPA is, integrating it with existing systems and the “processing task master’s” benefits to interoperability, this short read is a great place to start.
What Can We Do For You?
ImageSoft guides insurers through the selection of enterprise content management to achieve the efficiencies and cost savings you need. Our industry-leading solutions for insurance offer automated workflows, improved speed and efficiency, reduced costs and proper compliance.
ImageSoft is ready to help your company reap the benefits from integrated enterprise content management.