Tag: Robotics
It apparently took 20,000 to 30,000 men to lay 2.3 million blocks to build the pyramid of Cheops, and it would have taken approximately 20 years to complete if the stones were laid at the rate of one every two minutes. Manual labor – tedious and time-consuming! Thanks to Robotic Process Automation (RPA) technology, most businesses can now be liberated from arduous work and improve their business process to gain increased profit.
Robotic Process Automation technology is bolstering businesses across industries. Software robots do repetitive and lower-value work and advanced robots can even perform cognitive tasks like interpreting the text, understanding unstructured data, and plying advanced ML models to make complex decisions.
Are you a business leader considering whether to move to RPA or not move to RPA? This blog can clarify any doubts you may have about RPA.
But what exactly is RPA?
What is RPA?
Robotic Process Automation is a software technology that is capable of imitating human actions while interacting with digital systems and software. Like us, it can understand what is on the screen and perform a wide range of defined actions. The only difference between us and RPA is that software robots can accomplish tasks faster and more consistently than we can ever do. Plus, they don’t need to stretch or go for a coffee break.
How RPA Is Impacting Today’s Businesses
Robotic Process Automation is a clear and viable way to maximize efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance productivity. Though RPA is fairly new, it is gaining rapid traction across industries. Businesses are turning to RPA to minimize human effort.
According to a Deloitte RPA survey, 53% of respondents have begun their RPA journey by 2020, and this is expected to increase to 72% in the next couple of years. Why are so many companies adopting RPA? Here are a few reasons:
- Employees spend 10%-25% of their time on repetitive tasks. Implementing RPA will save that time for more productive work.
- Typical rule-based processes can be automated by 70% – 80%.
- IT departments of an organization spend 30% of their time on basic low-level tasks. Obviously, RPA adoption can save precious time for the IT department, which can be better used elsewhere.
Why Your Business Needs RPA?
RPA is a user-friendly and cost-effective tool. The advantages it can provide are drawing interest from organizations from various sectors globally. Here are some business benefits for your consideration:
- Easy implementation: RPA implementation does not require programming skills. Non-technical staff can teach the bot how to perform an automated task with the help of a process recorder feature.
- Less prone to make mistakes: RPA bots are extremely accurate and consistent. They are less prone to typo errors than a human worker. This feature is extremely beneficial in tasks such as setting up or removing user accounts, onboarding and offboarding employees or filling out information from another system.
- Meet strict compliance standards: Once configured, RPA bots strictly follow the step and provide an audit trail for each step. This controlled nature is well suited for companies that want to automate their processes end-to-end while meeting regulatory compliance standards.
- Work with existing systems: RPA doesn’t require any changes to your current system. It can be included as part of your automated business process.
- Increased productivity: RPA improves process cycles and completes them faster when compared to manual processes.
Read more: Is It the Right Time for Your Business to Invest in Robotic Processing Automation?
Now that you know why your business needs Robotic Process Automation, would you like to know what some potential areas of your business that can effectively implement RPA are?
Potential Business Areas to Implement RPA Effectively
Here are some sectors that use Robotic Process Automation effectively:
1. Report Generation: Report generation is a time-consuming and tedious task as data must be collected from multiple sources and collated accurately. RPA takes care of this task allowing employees to directly get to drawing actionable insights from the collated information.
2. Customer Service: RPA can be set up to quickly handle the first two or three customer interactions before reaching a human executive.
3. Accounting: RPA helps increase the speed of accounting, such as on-time invoicing and quicker fund release. You can fine-tune it to ask the vendor for relevant documents in case of any complexity.
4. Fraud detection: RPA enables banks to detect any anomalies in transactions and flag them against a fraudulent customer. It can reduce the time taken for fraud detection and investigation.
5. Data exchange: Data exchange is often time-consuming and error-prone. RPA can maximize productivity by reducing transaction times from hours to minutes. It can also minimize errors and maintain clean and organized data for business compliance results.
6. Reduce cost and manual labor: RPA limits your labor expenses and increases productivity. This contributes to consistent work. It also reduces errors at work, which prevents time wasted on correcting errors and redoing the work. Thus, it is more cost-effective while minimizing manual labor.
Top Sectors That Can Benefit From RPA
- Property management: Real estate businesses can use RPA to generate invoices automatically regarding property management. It can also reduce the turnaround time, leading to reduced operational costs.
- Retail: These businesses can use Robotic Process Automation to monitor inventory and email sales. It allows retail businesses to monitor competitors’ websites to gain insights on products or customer service.
- Finance: Finance companies can use RPS to manage customer accounts, data migration within accounts, sending and receiving payments, and more.
- Healthcare: Manually recording patient data and updating it can take enormous time. You can automate this process through RPA to reduce workforce concentration. Also, you can leverage these insights to provide more personalized healthcare services.
Read more: Deploying RPA for Finance, Healthcare & IT Operations
Tips To Choose The Right RPA Partner
Once you have your strategy in place, consider these points in choosing the right RPA partner:
- Skills: What skills or certifications matter to you most?
- Bots: What kind of bots do you need for your strategy?
- Capabilities: Do these bots have the cognitive capabilities to handle unstructured data sources?
- Recorders: Does your provider have tools to record workflow?
- Scalability: Can your partner scale as per your requirement?
- Solutions: Are their solutions reliable?
- Reusability: Does your partner follow a modular automation approach?
- Process designer: Can your partner provide you process designer approach that suits your business?
- Cost: Find out upfront if the cost includes licensing, ongoing maintenance, and support.
Read more: Robotic Process Automation: Choosing The Right Solution For Your Business
Ready to Transform Your Business With RPA?
Given the apparent advantages of Robotic Process Automation is one of the best tools to adopt in the current business world. However, selecting the right RPA partner can be a demanding process. Do your due diligence, speak with our experts and see what exactly you need to be looking for and if we are a good fit for you.
Once implemented, you can be confident that your business will benefit from better results and improved efficiency, which translates into higher revenues.
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is not just a “nice-to-have” option anymore. If you want to remain competitive it is an absolute necessity.
As a most promising technology enabler, RPA helps improve speed, quality, and productivity. RPA strengthens the organization, ensuring that it is ready to deal with disruption and change. This blog will discuss how it is making a mark in Finance, Healthcare & IT operations.
What Is RPA?
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is an end-to-end approach that can automate workflows without the intervention of a human being. This approach allows users to configure software that enforces business processes. RPA software can collect, interpret and orchestrate applications to perform various repetitive tasks.
RPA is a technological breakthrough for industries like finance, healthcare, IT, telecommunications, banking, insurance, retail, property management, and many more. Industries that implement RPA can automate their workflows, infrastructure, and other labor-intensive and time-consuming processes.
RPA is both cost-effective and user-friendly. It is no surprise, industries are racing to unlock value from RPA, including digital labor.
Watch now: How Robotic Process Automation Is Building Better Workplaces
How Is RPA Revolutionizing Industries?
- Increased Accuracy: Bots are less prone to make mistakes or typos than human workers.
- No interruption of workflow: Virtual robots can operate 24/7 without staff initiation.
- Meet strict compliance standards: Configured bots can provide an audit trail for each step and retrace the steps, in case of a process review.
- Work with existing systems: Robots do not need extensive IT resources; they work with the layers of existing applications.
- Improve employee morale and experience: Bots offload manual tasks from employees and enable them to focus on strategic, revenue-producing activities.
These advantages sound good. But, how does this ‘digital worker’ (RPA) streamline business processes? Let’s see.
How Can RPA Streamline Processes?
1. Employee Onboarding
Employee onboarding is a costly and time-consuming process. Zippia’s research showed that the average cost per hire is $4,425, or 40% of an employee’s base salary. Not just that, it takes about 36 to 42 days to complete the onboarding process.
Fortunately, RPA can reduce both the cost and the time taken to onboard an employee. How can it do that? It can do it by automating all repetitive and rule-based tasks.
For example, a bot can accurately source an applicant 24/7, and without any bias. After which, it can assist in screening resumes and candidates. Further, a bot can handle much of the paperwork that the company needs to fill out.
2. Auditing
Although audit practice has improved over the last 30 years, a massive amount of manual, repetitive, and rule-based tasks still take up much of the auditor’s time.
Examples of these tasks include file organization, the performance of basic audit tests in excel, manual annotations, and many more. These tasks are not only labor-intensive, but they are also prone to error.
RPA offers the ability to connect otherwise unintegrated audit activities. In addition to the obvious time-saving benefits of RPA, there are financial advantages. For instance, PwC estimates that 45% of repetitive work can be automated, and this would save $2 trillion in global workforce costs.
Beyond simple cost savings, automation can enhance an auditor’s ability to do his job. By freeing up an auditor from mundane, repetitive tasks, RPA allows them to focus on the more complex aspects of their job.
By sifting data more accurately than human auditors, RPA can help human auditors to scrutinize whether an accounting treatment or client behavior is reasonable. With such improved efficiency, auditors can make a final determination about optimizing costs.
3. Invoicing
Invoice processing is a crucial business operation. Yet, these tasks are labor-intensive, error-prone, and do not directly generate revenue. RPA is designed to manage such tasks effortlessly and efficiently.
For instance, when invoices come through various channels, they have to be matched to purchase orders, and then most often, they need to be approved by different people for payment.
RPA allows you to automate the purchase order matching process to flag any errors for further scrutiny before submitting the payment. You and also create rules to send invoices to the right people for approval automatically. RPA can automate all the data entry and manual processing involved in accounting and finance.
These are just a few examples that show how RPA can drive faster response and improve business processes.
Now that we understand how RPA streamlines processes, which of the top industries benefit from adopting RPA?
Read Whitepaper: Learn how RPA can bring a difference to your business and give you a competitive edge!
Top Industries That Can Benefit
Some industries that think automation is a costly effort have witnessed early adopters of RPA outperform the rest of the businesses with an increased ROI. According to Gartner, the RPA market is expected to grow at double-digit rates through 2024.
1. Robotic Process Automation in Finance Sector
Finance sector applications include managing customer accounts, migrating data between accounts, updating loan and mortgage data, and more. Just by defining the rules, Robotic Process Automation can help financial services to meet compliance standards.
RPA technology is accurate. Hence, it significantly reduces risk in the finance sector. Faster RPA cycles are highly scalable and rapidly deployable.
2. Robotic Process Automation in Healthcare
The pandemic has increased the volume of patients substantially, and healthcare industries are prioritizing efficiency and cost reduction. These two are major benefits of RPA implementation in the healthcare sector.
- Improved quality: RPA implementation automated and simplified entry process, claim process, maintenance of medical records. This enabled healthcare personnel to tackle the large volume of patients, especially those who need individual care and attention.
- More human workforce to care for more patients: RPA implementation replaced the workforce that performs mundane repetitive tasks. Healthcare professionals now have more time to spend on core activities rather than perform mundane tasks.
3. Robotic Process Automation in IT
Today, business operations depend on how well the IT system is managed. Leveraging RPA in IT operations is worthwhile. Consider why:
- Helps manage high volumes of data: Managing high volumes of data from different locations and different departments can be challenging. In contrast, RPA can process large datasets with greater agility, and complete the process faster and with no errors. Moreover, Robotic Process Automation systems can also update changes in the data in real-time.
- Enhances customer experience: Employees are required to respond to any inquiry adequately and on time. Anything less could push your customers to your competitors. Automating repetitive tasks frees up agents to focus on more customer-related tasks such as pitching in a sale or providing end-to-end product engineering solutions.
- Better patch management: Manually patching IT systems is always a bad idea because it leaves more room for errors and is time-intensive. Implementing RPA can help synchronize the vulnerability database, scan machines for missing patches, and deploy the missing patches. This way automation ensures that the system is always protected.
Read more: Drive business growth with RPA!
How Fingent Can Help Deploy RPA Seamlessly
Successful implementation of Robotic Process Automation depends on a clear understanding of the task at hand. At Fingent we can make the implementation a lot easier. We can help you automate parts of your process or the entire thing.
With automation under one wing and cognitive technologies under the other, Fingent software development experts ensures you are in complete control. We can help you discover new, effective automation ideas. As a professional partner, we help you identify your strengths and areas of improvement and then work with you to build an action plan with tactical and strategic solutions.
Fingent also provides both onsite and offsite training and maintenance to ensure you get maximum ROI. Give us a call and let us help you get this rolling.
As digitalization is gaining a lot of significance, many enterprises are turning to emerging technologies such as Robotic Process Automation(RPA) to streamline their operations and reduce costs. RPA automates mundane processes allowing organizations to devote more time to serving customers or other important work.
According to Gartner, Inc. , Global RPA software is projected to reach $1.89 billion in 2021, an increase of 19.5% from 2020. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, the RPA market is estimated to grow two times by 2024.
Read more: How to accelerate your business growth with Robotic Process Automation
What is RPA?
In simple terms, RPA is an application in which a software bot leverages a combination of automation, computer vision, and machine learning technologies to automate repetitive and high-volume tasks.
RPA solutions are best suited for processes that are labor-intensive, repetitive, and have predictable interactions with IT applications. Typically, these processes may be too small in value to be automated via IT transformation. RPA tools help improve the efficiency and effectiveness of such processes without changing the existing infrastructure.
RPA software bots can perform various business processes by mimicking how humans interact with applications through a user interface and simple rules to make decisions. As a result, robots can complete the entire end-to-end process with very little human interaction.
Benefits of RPA include;
- Improved accuracy
- Flexibility and scalability
- Speeds up the processing time
- Better employee morale
- Reduces manual and repetitive tasks
- Enables better customer care
- As per Forrester, projects see a 15-month payback, 229% ROI on average
Key business challenges RPA helps address are;
- Login automatically into a system as a user
- Helps navigate around the software, using menus and shortcut keys just like a human moving the mouse or typing on the keyboard
- Interpret labels to read values from the screen. If the screen content or web page is dynamic, RPA can help find the right value on the screen.
- Read values and data from PDF reports automatically and add them to data tables.
- Inputs values into a capture screen automatically by mimicking the user’s actions. However, it can process it several times over with different values for each pass.
- Read emails and messages to understand the information they contain. For example, is the sender placing an order, making a booking, looking for information, or sending an invoice? Based on the intent, RPA will trigger the process with the message.
- Help trigger a process in a system by logging in as a user and clicking buttons.
- Collate different pieces of information and identify the next best action in the process.
Read more: How Can Businesses Overcome The Barriers To RPA Adoption?
Who is using RPA?
RPA can be leveraged by any business, especially if it involves repetitive tasks such as banking, healthcare, finance, insurance, and telecommunications. For example, RPA can be used in finance to automate governance, reconcile accounts, or process invoices. Additionally, RPA can help automate processes such as data entry, predictive maintenance, and after-sales service support in the supply chain.
Telecommunication companies utilize RPA solutions to organize new services and all the related billing systems for new accounts. RPA also helps these companies pull data from multiple systems when old equipment outages or predicts problems.
Regardless of the industry, RPA benefits the larger organizations and small and mid-size companies with its ability to streamline business processes and improve efficiency.
Should you invest in RPA?
The pandemic has caused a sudden surge in RPA as businesses are turning to cost-effective solutions to fill the workforce gap due to a shortage of employees. But again, if there is a lack of data or the process is obsolete, opting for RPA may not be a wise decision.
With the RPA market evolving, it is becoming affordable for even small and mid-size businesses who want to stay ahead of their competitors. According to the Grand View Research report, in 2019, the large enterprise segment accounted for over 67% of the global RPA while the BFSI led the market in terms of application with over 29% share of the global revenue. However, from 2020-2027, it is estimated that SMEs will witness the highest CAGR, with the pharma and healthcare sectors leading the way application-wise.
While RPA can fill the gaps in the current system and benefit the organization as a whole, companies that have large volumes of data and time-consuming business processes with well-defined rule-based steps are ideal candidates for RPA implementation.
Once the decision-makers finalize the processes that need automation, assessing ROI for individual processes is essential to quantify the benefits. A successful deployment takes one-two month, and the ROI is approximately three-twelve months.
Read more: An Extensive Whitepaper on How RPA Can Bring a Difference to Your Business
Things to consider before implementing RPA
1. Third-party integration
You will have to redesign the existing Robotic Process Automation processes and ensure they are compliant with third-party tools. It improves the scope of what RPA can achieve for a business process. For example, ERP and CRM integration is something that you must consider.
2. Cost-effective
For RPA to become a cost-effective solution, an organization needs to know which tasks are suitable for automation. Ideally, mundane and repetitive labor-intensive tasks need to be automated to impact a direct bearing on the costs of the RPA deployed. As bots work more efficiently than humans, it results in better productivity, fewer errors, and cost less. All this impacts productivity in a significant way making RPA a worthy investment.
3. Training time
For a smooth roll-out of implementing the RPA system, organizations will have to set aside time to train their employees. Therefore, you will have to be certain about the time required, especially if you plan to implement RPA across functions.
4. Deployment speed
Typically, the speed at which an organization deploys an RPA software depends on how soon it wants to reap its benefits. While some businesses cannot wait to take advantage of the RPA system, others are skeptical about their roll-out plans. In most cases, businesses that wish to implement an RPA system adapt to save costs as quickly as possible.
How can Fingent help?
If you’re looking to improve profitability, productivity, and compliance with Robotic Process Automation, contact our experts today. Our custom software development experts will not just help you strategize an automation process but also get the most out of your investment by identifying the best time to introduce RPA into your business.
Robotics in Logistics: Dawn of a New Era
Since the advent of e-commerce, getting goods to the customer’s door or stores from the factories or warehouses has become a mammoth task for logistics companies. Forecasts say that “worldwide warehousing and logistics robot unit shipments will increase to an estimated 620,000 units annually by 2021.” The solution for this herculean task of transporting goods far and wide thus becomes apparent: the dawn of robotics in logistics. The use of robotics in logistics offers far greater levels of uptime over manual labor, bolstering productivity in a vast array of professional environments.
Retail giants like Amazon and Walmart that have already deployed robots in their warehouses and fulfillment centers will only expand their deployments, especially in the wake of current situations. Leveraging robotics in logistics cuts around 70% of warehouse labor costs and helps businesses function day and night with minimal costs. Want to find out how? This post will help you understand the importance of utilizing warehouse robotics in the supply chain.
A Surge in Warehouse Robotics in Supply Chain
The first robot in the supply chain was capable of moving material about a dozen feet. For several years, robots were used only in industrial manufacturing because it was not safe for people to be around them. However, over the last few decades, innovative logistic robotic companies have worked hard to mesh AI and machine learning, better sensors and response capabilities, warehouse management software or logistics management software.
Recently, warehouse robotics in the supply chain has picked up pace exponentially. There has been huge funding and investment in the industry. For example, Alibaba invested $15 billion into robotic logistics infrastructure and Google invested $500 million into automated logistics for JD. It is also estimated that the global market for warehouse robotics in the supply chain is projected to reach a market value of $22.4 billion by the end of 2021.
Evidently, the dawn of robotic logistics is right here now!
Read More: How Robotic Process Automation Is Revolutionizing Industries?
What is Robotic Logistics?
The logistics industry is what is holding our modern world together. It includes a huge amount of different processes. Ordering, transportation, warehousing, picking, packing, delivery, inventory, and routing are just a few of those processes.
So, robotic logistics means the application of robotics to one or more of these processes. A few common robotic applications are robotic palletizing, robotic packaging, robotic picking commonly used in warehousing or any other logistics software solutions.
So, what kind of robots could be useful for your warehouse?
Warehouse Robotics in Supply Chain
1. Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMR)
AMRs use sophisticated sensor technology to deliver inventory all over the warehouse. They do not require a set track between locations. They can understand and interpret their environment through the use of maps, computers, and onboard sensors.
These warehouse robots are small and nimble with the ability to identify the information on each package and sort it with impeccable accuracy. They cut down on the redundant manual process which is prone to human error.
2. Aerial Drones
Aerial drones aid in optimizing warehouse inventory processes. They can quickly scan locations for automated inventory. They can scan inventory much faster than a human can and send an accurate count immediately to your warehouse inventory management software.
These drones do not need markers or lasers to guide them. They don’t take up valuable space in your warehouse. They can travel quickly and assist in hard-to-reach areas.
3. Automated Guided Vehicles
Automated guided vehicles and carts (AGVs and AGCs) transport inventory around your warehouse following a track laid in your warehouse. These warehouse robots are perfect for larger warehouses because it reduces the time spent by workers just moving from one area to the next.
4. Automated Storage and Retrieval System (AS and RS)
Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems are robot-aided systems that can place or retrieve loads from set storage locations. AS and RS differ depending on the system needed, the type of task, or the goods that they will be working with. They can be programmed to work as a craft that moves and works on a well-defined path or a crane that retrieves goods between aisles. There are also aisle climbing robots that retrieve customer orders.
These free up the time of workers who can then concentrate on more complicated processes such as packing and posting the goods.
Read more: What Are Cobots and How Can They Benefit Industries?
What is Driving the Need for Collaborative Robots in Logistics?
Although there has been a boom in logistic robotics, there are two specific factors that are driving the current need for collaborative robots in logistics.
- The growth of e-commerce: When products are directly shipped to customers, there is a huge variety of different packing requirements.
- The lack of available workforce: Shortage of skilled workers can affect logistics.
What are the Benefits of Adopting Robotic Logistics?
The logistics industry can see many tangible and clear benefits of adopting robotic logistics.
- By reducing human errors, robotic logistics can bring in significant profits and can also reduce warehouse costs.
- Robotics can allow for workforce adaptability.
- Robotic logistics improve safety for workers by taking over dangerous jobs such as getting items from high racks or storage spaces.
- Reduced human error and increased delivery speed brought about by robotic automation will increase customer satisfaction.
Read more: Open source robotics process automation
Enjoy the Freedom To Do More
Robots are being used rather extensively in logistics. Due to the complexity of supply chain processes robots will be increasingly used for dull, dirty, and dangerous tasks freeing your workers for more complex tasks. This means cost-effective, fast, and error-free operations. If you’re seeking to revolutionize your business with the incredible potential of robotics, Fingent, a top custom software development company, is here to assist you.
Today’s consumers are tech-savvy, demand consistency and know they can switch brands at any time. Therefore, Customer Experience (CX) is extremely important now more than ever. Customers aren’t just buying a product. They are looking to gain a good experience throughout the customer journey – before, during and after their purchase.
Imagine the pressure of not slipping up in any instance! If it wasn’t for AI and robotics, this could be a daunting affair. Thankfully though, the application of robotics and AI has streamlined the entire customer journey. As a CTO, leading the company towards this technological transformation is a great responsibility. This blog will take you through 4 ways in which robotics and AI can improve customer experience.
1. Personalization
Hyperconnected customers of this digital age highly value personalization. This personalization is expected at all touch points and marketers are employing various strategies to achieve this. In the basic sense, this includes presenting personalized recommendations using algorithms and predictive analytics. Algorithms mine transaction data, browsing patterns and purchasing behaviors to gain customer insight. This information then enables to design personalized offers and create cross-sell opportunities.
Machine Learning is going one step further with AI-Augmented Contextual Analytics. Contextual Awareness is made available through machine learning and human curation. This awareness is implemented across the entire data and analytics workflow of the company. Thus, personalization is made possible throughout the operations and can be implemented at any touch point.
Sentiment Analysis is the next big thing that companies are implementing in order to improve customer experience. Voice, text and visual engagement can be analyzed by technologies to gauge sentiment and emotion. Voice biometrics over phone calls, parsing of facial expressions during video chats, and texts through chatbots can be used to understand emotion and intent. This insight helps companies measure and deliver customer satisfaction more effectively.
Read More: Predictive Analytics: The Key to Effective Marketing and Personalization
2. Improving Internal Processes
As we have discussed, customers expect a satisfactory experience in all touch points. This includes the way the company is run, the backend and the corporate image. Efficient processes and effective decision-making filters down to a profitable company and happy customers. AI and robotics can be used to achieve this.
Mark Robinson, co-founder of the world leading SaaS solution Kimble talks about how augmented intelligence helps businesses grow. “Using augmented intelligence to make suggestions to staff, and to record their response, means that humans and the machines can work together to come up with the best solutions,” he says. “There is less need to worry that people are going to miss important actions or take wrong decisions because of the visibility of what’s going on.”
It is believed that AI has the power to increase productivity by 40% or more by 2035. By automating processes and supporting innovation, AI can improve manufacturing and business processes. One example is smart product ordering systems, which use the power of AI to streamline order fulfillment. Our recent blog brought out the opportunities in this: “From ensuring that the product is personalized and available where the customer wants it, to streamlining the order shipment and delivery process, the customer experience is enhanced by the intelligent product ordering system.”
3. Effective Pricing
“What I ‘charge’ today has nothing to do with yesterday or tomorrow. It has to do with ‘now’!”
– David Wayne Wilson
This has profound significance today, where pricing drops or increases by the second. However great your marketing, your technology and other systems are, it all comes down to pricing. If a consumer gets the same benefits and quality at a lesser cost, he will opt for a cheaper option. Pricing is therefore a vital component in competitive advantage. This means that businesses must keep a close eye on competitors’ pricing behavior.
That is where Dynamic Pricing Science holds significance. With the power of Artificial Intelligence, cognitive algorithms, big data and machine learning, businesses can now effectively adjust their pricing strategies in real-time. Dynamic Pricing Science enables tailor-made pricing solutions to customers at the right time and consistent across channels. It helps understand buying patterns, identify effective correlations, compare competitor prices, match it across channels and create a customized offer – all in real time.
4. Improving Response Time
Response time is crucial in business. This is true in leads conversion as well as customer service. The importance of response time in lead conversion was brought out by Dave Elkington, the CEO and founder of InsideSales.com. Quoting a study he was involved in he says: “The study revealed that the odds of making contact with a new lead are extremely high if you call within the first 5 minutes of submission … a rep is 100x less likely to make contact if the first call is made 30 minutes after submission. The odds of making contact drop by 3000x if the first call is made 5 hours after lead submission.” Converting a lead into a customer is the first customer touch point and it is vital to get it right.
This is important in customer service as well. The State of Multichannel Customer Service report found that:
- 68% of people stop doing business with a brand due to a poor customer service experience.
- 34% of people feel that quick resolution of their problems was the most important feature of customer service.
- 61% of people on social media expect a response from a brand in less than 24 hours.
A bad response time could break a business as the numbers show. However, AI and machine learning have helped immensely in this regard. Chatbots are proving to be a great boon, especially when it comes to swift response on first-level queries. This ensures that there is an immediate response and minimizes time spent by personnel on repetitive queries. Agents can then handle deeper conversations and conversions with the assistance of AI.
China Merchants Bank is an excellent case study on the effectiveness of real-time chatbot interaction. Interactions through these bots had reached a record of 41 million by the end of 2015, with the chatbot handling 99.5% of the questions with an accuracy of 99.8%!
Power Your Customer Service With AI
As you can see, the power of AI and robotics in customer service cannot be overemphasized. Fingent works with clients across industries all over the globe. We would be happy to help you with any questions you might have. Drop us a message and let’s get this rolling.