August 2018 RPA – Tomorrows must-have technology How robotic process automation can speed up your business 2 Roland Berger Focus – RPA – Tomorrows must-have technology "Robotization" is quickly gainingground in various end of companies anymore, but need to be embedded in industriesand across corporatefunctions. Firms every single corporate function and process. RPA is to- should now start looking seriously into robotic pro- cess automation (RPA). To fully leverage this promis- ing new technology, companies need to understand what it is, recognize its benefits, and then decide how morrows must-have technology, a core part of the next generation of operating models. Companies are plagued by sub-optimal utilization of re- sources due to excessive repetitive "click-copy-paste" and when best to implement it. Overall, we foundtransactions. Human error is a universal challenge in that up to 40 percent of tasks in administrative de- partments and operational business functions have a significant RPA potential. Firms can achieve annual transactional activities relating to manual data entry and reconciliation. It is paramount for firms to maxi- mize efficiency, increase cost flexibility and ensure se- savings of up to 40 percent of therespective costs cure and agile processes – all areas where RPA delivers and reductions in processtime of 40-70 percent significant benefits. thanks to the automation of repetitive tasks. The To identify the current level of maturity, we conducted a payback period for implementing the new technology is highly attractive, often at just six months to a year. study of more than 20 firms in different regions and in- dustries. The results were impressive. For many compa- nies RPA was much more than a performance improve- ment tool. Deploying the technology across functions set a digital spark among entire teams and department