Sage Intacct Quarterly Releases and Robotics Process Automation
In this interview, Johnny Ramondino, President of IN-RGY Consulting, and Brian Terrell, Managing Partner of BTerrell Group, discuss why Robotic Process Automation is a viable alternative to using scripting tools when it comes to automation of important business applications or workflows.
This is the eleventh in a series of articles and videos where we get Johnny’s take on deploying RPA alongside mid-market Cloud ERP.
Brian Terrell, Managing Partner of BTerrell Group and a Sage Intacct Partner, creates business process automation using Cloud ERP and leading automation tools, including RPA software. RPA automates many business processes faster than other options by accessing applications through the user interface in a code-free and non-invasive manner.
Transcription:
Brian Terrell:
Sage Intacct publishes comprehensive updates on a quarterly basis. Why use RPA when we can just wait for the software publisher, or even a company's own developers, to include a desired feature or functionality within the program?
Johnny Ramondino:
What is important to me is that Robotic Process Automation presents a leapfrogging opportunity in certain instances. It is important though to decouple the concept of the business applications that are being used by the business, and the way the business uses those applications. So think in terms of the many applications used in a business, such as a CRM system, a finance system, an accounting system and so on. And all these applications have been implemented in different ways. You may have enabled or disabled certain features and functionality and perhaps you've integrated many of these applications in a certain way. The last layer is around how the business uses those applications, the operational layer, which is the day-to-day user interface application. The speed at which product features evolve is very slow even though companies are trying to speed it up.
To complicate matters, when feature functionality changes, they may change in one application, or if you've implemented applications in four areas, then maybe across those four areas it changes as well. However, your business process probably layers over many applications. Your business process issues don’t necessarily get solved by the fact that you've added feature functionality. You may still have to implement that feature functionality. Now that may happen a bit faster, but timing is not typically in the control of the business, it's in the control of IT or consulting. So the ability of the business to adapt business needs into the systems and applications they use is very limited. It's very limited because if the business has a business change today, they have to reimplement, buy a new product, or ask for product feature enhancements, and hopefully, for only one application.
Sometimes two, three or four applications may need to change. So you can imagine how long it takes for the business to react to these changes in business need. It doesn't make sense in today's world.
With RPA, the business has the flexibility of saying: "Listen, our business changed and so I need to do five more tasks," but instead of asking IT for all these changes, the business has options. Business is doing it using labor. With RPA, they can accomplish these changes much quicker using automation. That in itself is a transformative capability for business because they can react to business requirement changes more rapidly. The sooner that the organization, support and understands that, the sooner everyone will rally around the use of RPA. It still doesn't mean you should use RPA for everything, absolutely not.
But using it in this way gives power to the business they've never had, and in areas where they can maximize the use of technology. Technology already exists in the organization today. Without technology, it’s an incredibly long and very painful process to optimize. RPA is transformative in itself and as organizations learn of its capabilities, we'll see great benefits for the business over and above simply the automating of daily tasks.
BTerrell Group solves business automation challenges for mid-market companies with Intacct and an automation toolkit, which includes Robotic Process Automation software, Intacct Platform Services, and other leading automation technologies. With Intacct and RPA, client companies achieve more automation using fewer resources, resulting in a rapid return on investment. Contact Brian at brian.terrell@bterrell.com to start the conversation.
Read more on the subject of Robotic Process Automation
The Basics about Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
Robotic Process Automation, More value, less investment
An RPA Q&A, Five things to know about Robotics Process Automation
7 Ways Robotic Process Automation helps the Mid-market
A day in the life of a RPA midmarket enterprise bot
Scaling RPA to the mid-market enterprise
How does RPA affect IT and DevOps?
RPA's role in automation in finance for midmarket financial services companies
RPA removes the barriers for a move to Cloud ERP