Robotic process automation, in other words, RPA, is a technology for emulating and integrating human actions in a digital system. Just like humans, the user interfaces of RPA robots can be used for data manipulation and to capture data. When performing multiple repetitive tasks, human error is a genuine risk, but RPA robots which eliminate those risks. RPA robots accurately trigger, communicate, and interpret responses from other systems and perform a variety of repetitive tasks. They can work with any application such as MS- Excel, ERP systems, email programs, or internet pages. Compared to traditional IT solutions, RPA easily allows for automation in every business at comparatively lower costs and less time. It is non-interruptive in nature and leverages existing infrastructure and IT systems without adding additional cost or complications. RPA is a byproduct of automation and highly benefits businesses by decreasing upfront investment, allowing companies to become highly scalable and adaptive to the ever-changing business environment.
Compared to other industries, real estate has historically been behind in adopting the technology. Within the current technological landscape, however, more real estate companies have journeyed into applying RPA to boost daily business and transactions and have gained tremendously as a result.
Here’s a little example of how RPA in use within the real estate world. The most challenging area of any company is the back office. Mundane tasks, such as downloading bank statements from multiple banks and then comparing and reconciling them with ERP General Ledger, can all be handled by Robotic Process Automation. Virtual bots can upload the downloaded statements on to a shared drive or into a financial application for reconciliation. It can also reconcile the OCR statements with the entries in ERP systems mark transactions as reconciled.
Automation helps scale up the back office process from 9 to 5-weekday effort to 24 by 7 Robot work, robots which will never fatigue or get bored by doing the repetitive routine task. We also can easily upscale when the volume of work increases.
Without a doubt, RPA has already helped in reducing manual effort with data-intensive activities. The future for Real Estate and RPA cannot be more exciting; you can build smarter smart buildings faster and for less by correlating with digitalization.
The next frontier in RPA involves adding artificial intelligence and machine learning to the workflow so that the robot can make some decisions along with the process automation. It is possible to handle cases such as structure suggestions, prioritization of alternatives, decision preparation, and even decision making. Some examples of these include analyzing move-in images and move-out images to identify when to create a repair work order or damage charges to tenants.
Considering COVID 19 and the resulting need to work from home, RPA has become even more relevant, and this field is expected to grow rapidly in the future. There is no argument that the real estate industry stands to gain monumentally from RPA.
Assetsoft has been successful in implementing some of these emerging technologies and help many in the industry. If you have any questions about RPA or any emerging tech within real estate feel free to reach out to us at contact@assetsoft.biz