Although the current topic is not as popular as ChatGPT , the most popular MarTech tool in the past two years has to be RPA. Today we will take a look: Capital’s darling, said to be used by more than 70% of the world’s top 500 companies, what is the best employee RPA in the boss’s mind? And what are its applications in marketing and operations?
01 What is RPA?
In our daily work, there are a lot of repetitive tasks, such as:
- You are responsible for e-commerce operations and need to spend 2 hours a day logging into multiple store backends to sort out daily data;
- You are responsible for after-sales processing and need to spend 3 hours a day to refund eligible after-sales orders;
- You are responsible for video uploading and need to publish the same video to different media platforms each time;
- You are responsible for KOL placement, and you need to spend 1 hour every day to collect the playback and interaction data of all posted content;
- You are responsible for the e-commerce live broadcast, and you need to spend 1 hour every day copying and organizing the live broadcast data of competing products;
……
These tasks all have obvious commonalities: simple operations, clear rules, and a lot of repetition. For humans, this kind of work is time-consuming, labor-intensive and error-prone, but RPA can perfectly solve this problem.
RPA stands for Robotic Process Automation . It is a set of technologies that mainly uses software to execute business processes. It executes the same processes according to human execution rules and operating procedures. It is affectionately called "digital employees".
- Robot: refers to its ability to imitate human actions on software: such as clicking, opening applications, typing, page scrolling, etc.
- Process: refers to the behavior of imitation being a series of specific steps in sequence.
- Automation: refers to the ability to automatically complete the set step tasks without manual interference after setting the steps.
The definition seems a bit abstract, but it is actually not mysterious: for example, macro commands in excel, game plug-in button wizards, multi-play boxes, etc. all belong to the broad concept of RPA. Even in the IOS mobile phone system, there is a very similar function called shortcut commands that can achieve similar functions. For example, suppose we want to capture the data of accounts on the new WeChat daily list on a daily basis. How to achieve this using RPA?
Open the RPA software and follow the steps: Open the new list website - click on the WeChat hot list - copy data - switch dates - copy data, complete the process settings by dragging and dropping, and click Operation to automatically obtain and save the data in excel.
The advantages and disadvantages of RPA are clear:
- The advantage is that it can help you solve some things that common systems cannot. Because no matter how many systems there are, you have to turn on your computer every day, double-click the system icon on the desktop, and then click to download the chart. This is the "last mile" problem on the system. RPA is the robot assistant that solves this last-mile problem ;
- The disadvantage is that it cannot solve complex, non-operational, and non-customized things.
02 Who is using RPA?
The characteristics of RPA determine the scope of application
The biggest difference between RPA and other software is that it realizes cross-system and cross-platform connections in a non-intrusive and weakly coupled form. In human terms, because it simulates human behavior, RPA hardly requires you to carry out secondary development or changes to the systems you are currently using, such as ERP, CRM, third-party platforms, etc., to achieve automated task execution. It can be seen that RPA is very friendly to colleagues who do non-technical development and perform routine daily work. As long as the business process conforms to: repeatability, strong rules, stable process, and large volume, RPA can be used to improve efficiency.
So currently we mainly see that the industries or scenarios where RPA is used more are similar. Including finance, manufacturing, medicine and retail e-commerce, they are all industries that are already very mature and have fixed processes. They already have many fixed systems, but the practitioners who use the system have complex and repetitive needs. It is impossible for the business system to provide process-based solutions for everyone at different levels. At this time, the value of RPA is relatively great.
Application of RPA in marketing and operations
But this does not mean that RPA is valuable only in management work such as finance and human resources. In fact, for the daily work of operations and marketing, RPA application scenarios are actually very widespread in various industries.
1.Retail e -commerce industry
The first to bear the brunt are retail e-commerce companies that have a large number of repetitive tasks. In this industry where every bit of human efficiency is extremely precious, saving one point of manpower in any link is a cost saving. In retail, especially e-commerce, RPA has been widely used, including:
- Product loading and unloading
To solve the time-consuming problem of updating online multi-channel stores, RPA can automatically log in to the backend to upload images, fill in the product attributes and finally manually check and confirm, so that all online channels such as Tmall, Douyin, and Mini Programs can be updated at once. Some brands can ultimately save 75% of the time when putting products on and off the shelves through PRA.
- Automatic store patrol
Brands need to control product prices across multiple channels to avoid confusion in the price system . Therefore, there is a job in e-commerce called store inspection, which is to simulate placing orders and collect the prices of goods of various specifications on the product settlement page to check whether they are broken. For brands with a large number of SKUs, it is unrealistic to do it manually every day. It can only be done once in a long period or only the main products can be monitored. But with RPA, rapid automated SKU price inspection can be achieved. Some emerging dairy products have used RPA to conduct price inspections on 3,000+ SKUs on 6 platforms in one day, and found 6% of the products at underpriced prices.
- Logistics interception
Timely interception of problematic orders can effectively reduce cargo damage and logistics costs. Usually operators need to manually refresh the background to query the orders that need to be intercepted and then perform logistics interception. It takes about 4-8 minutes to process such an order and it is difficult to cope with the traffic surge scenario. For example, a kitchen appliance brand used an interception application developed by RPA to successfully intercept 20,000+ orders during the Double Eleven promotion period, reducing cargo damage by 3 million+.
- price monitoring
RPA can be used to monitor competitors' prices and grasp their latest product price information in real time. Use it as a reference for your own store product activity pricing to ensure your own optimal pricing.
2. Operation positions in other industries
Similar to e-commerce, as long as various operating departments involve a large amount of repetitive work, RPA can actually be used to improve efficiency.
- Video upload
Similar scenarios to product launches include uploading videos/articles to multiple media platforms. This work is as simple as logging in-copy-paste-upload, but it is also very boring and needs to be repeated for each platform every time. RPA can easily solve this problem.
- data collection
One of the most widely used scenarios for RPA is data collection . Although the collection efficiency is lower than that of crawler software, because it simulates human click behavior, there is no need to worry about being intercepted by anti-crawling software. Furthermore, the collected data can also automatically generate reports for visualization. I know that a domestic cosmetics brand has used RPA to automatically collect and process a large amount of data and automatically store the data into the database.
- Add users in batches
RPA can also easily perform the simple and repetitive operation of searching for mobile phone numbers and adding users as Qiwei friends.
- Send messages in batches
RPA can realize some of MA's automated marketing functions - sending promotional information in batches. For example, a fast-moving consumer goods brand uses RPA to build a Taobao store mass messaging application, and group chats push coupons and trial products in batches during major sales and daily activities.
03 RPA+ expands application scenarios
The core technology threshold of RPA software is not high, and the manufacturers entering the market have expanded from the volume of price and volume services to the volume of the product itself; including RPA product operations and product functions.
The first is to roll up product operations - process reengineering, that is, how to make RPA easier to use . Although RPA claims to be able to complete the design of automated processes by dragging and dropping icons, in fact it is not easy for non-technical personnel (otherwise RPA manufacturers would not have so many self-study courses to teach users how to use their own software).
- RPA+ machine learning can automate the process design process . Just deploy the RPA platform to terminals such as computers and mobile phones, and the system will silently capture the user's behavior traces and business data. Employees only need to operate according to their daily working methods. With the help of machine learning technology, the RPA system will identify automatable business processes from a large number of behavioral trajectories.
- RPA+ ChatGPT class can realize the automated process of conversation generation . Recently, domestic RPA manufacturers have released the latest product introduction (testing phase). By posting requirements in the chat box, the system can automatically generate automated processes. The final effect is unknown, but it is a good direction.
The second is to expand the scope of product use - RPA+AI, making RPA's application scope wider .
- RPA+OCR can extract paper data and open up online and offline processes . It is most widely used in financial and automatic audit scenarios. For example, the OCR system can be used to bring offline data online and realize the automatic flow of business processes.
- RPA+ intelligent customer service truly solves user problems . In the after-sales scenario, ordinary intelligent customer service can only answer users' questions, but after-sales issues such as returns and exchanges still require manual intervention. However, paired with RPA, it can truly solve user problems. If the user has after-sales needs after purchasing the TV, the intelligent customer service will confirm through the set questions that the master needs to come to the door for repair. At this time, the RPA system will automatically arrange for personnel to come to the door and call the corresponding accessories from the nearest warehouse.
- RPA+NLP/ knowledge graph improves business understanding capabilities , turning RPA from an assembly line worker into a semi-expert. For example, RPA added to the knowledge graph can automatically correct errors in the content of the listed annual report and identify content that violates legal/policy regulations.
04 What RPA manufacturers are there in China?
Due to the low threshold of RPA core technology and wide application scenarios, there are currently many domestic RPA players, as shown in the following figure:
Typical representatives of each module:
- Native RPA manufacturers: That is, pure RPA players focus on the RPA track from the beginning. For example, the more representative Shadow Blade RPA is a manufacturer focusing on automated office in the e-commerce industry;
- Manufacturers incubated by technology giants: For example, Alibaba Cloud RPA was formerly called "Code Stack" and was initially developed to meet internal needs. As demand increased, it began to provide external services;
- Established manufacturers in the T0B software industry: such as UFIDA, Kingdee, etc.;
- Manufacturers entering other technical fields such as AI/NLP: For example, Laiye Technology started in the AI field and later entered the RPA track;
- Entering manufacturers in the financial technology field: Banks are the main application areas of RPA, and they have also moved from procurement to independent research and development to commercialization.
05 Limitations of RPA
threshold for use
Any tool has its own threshold for use. No matter how many advantages it has, it will not be an advantage if it is not used, and RPA is no exception. At present, if you really want to use RPA well, you still need to invest a lot of time in learning, such as the most common and simple data acquisition. In actual operation, you will still encounter various small problems that will eventually lead to the inability to execute the entire process.
ROI-based considerations
The biggest attraction of RPA to enterprises is to release human efficiency-saving money. If the business volume is not large enough and the cost of purchasing the system and training employees is much higher than the cost of directly hiring people, the company will not consider accessing RPA.
Let the process solidify
In the long run, is it the best solution to automate all processes with RPA? Its potential harm is that it will solidify the wrong process and ignore the optimization process itself. This is not just a matter of a few mouse clicks.
Original link :
Getting Started Guide | What is RPA? Eight major applications in digital marketing
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