In 2018, the global Robotic Process Automation (RPA) market size was $477 million, and it is expected to exceed $1.9 billion by the end of 2025. It’s fair to say that the RPA marketplace is going to be incredibly profitable within the foreseeable future.
Ready to jump start our career in a new booming industry? Of course you are! But hold your horses, bucko! You can’t jump into a new space without first learning the lingo. If you haven’t done so already, now would be a great time to stop and read my very first blog post – A Beginners Guide to RPA – in order to understand the basics of RPA.
In this post we will be discussing the 11 most important terms to know in order to increase your value within the RPA industry. I have chosen the terms based on how often they are used in my day to day life as an RPA developer.
1. Robotic Process Automation (RPA)
Robotic process automation is the process of creating and deploying software bots that mimic human actions within digital systems to optimize business processes. RPA automation captures data, runs applications, triggers responses, and communicates with other systems to perform a variety of tasks.
2. Attended RPA
An attended RPA bot (also known as an attended bot) is any RPA process in which your RPA software has to wait on input from a human in order to proceed. This type of automation is very popular within call centers.
3. Unattended RPA
An unattended RPA bot (also known as an unattended bot) is any bot that needs little—or no—human intervention to carry out actions once triggered. These bots complete work continuously in a batch-mode model that allows for around the clock automation.
4. Automation-first era
The automation-first era is the idea of a time in the future where software is being built with the question of “how can we build this in such a way that it is friendly to automation” instead of “how can we build this in a way that is user friendly”.
5. RPA Center of Excellence (CoE)
A Center of Excellence (CoE) is a department within a company created to support the implementation and ongoing deployment of RPA. This team uses RPA tools and technical experience to identify and manage ongoing RPA implementation. This team should include members from multiple departments across an organization.
6. Enterprise RPA
Enterprise RPA is the implementation of an RPA software into a company’s environment with the intention of scaling to multiple business sectors. Scaling is the keyword here.
7. Graphical User Interface (GUI)
A graphical user interface (GUI) is a user interface that includes graphical elements, such as windows, icons and buttons. It was created in order to make using computers easier for the masses.
8. Full-time Equivalent (FTE)
Full-time equivalent (FTE) is used as a unit of measurement for the amount of work a full-time employee does in a department or on a project.
9. Optical Character Recognition (OCR)
Optical character recognition is a feature within RPA software that singles out letters, numbers, and symbols in PDFs files, images, and paper documents. A user can transform an image file with text within it into text that can then be manipulated as a string.
10. Structured Data and Unstructured Data
Structured data is anything stored as rows and columns – think databases or a standard form in a PDF/Word document. Structured data accounts for about 20% of all data stored on servers and the data that is most often used by programmers. Unstructured data is the opposite. It is stored with no clear format on servers – think YouTube videos, Facebook posts, photos, and emails. Unstructured data accounts for about 80% of all data stored on servers.
11. Business Process Management (BPM)
Business process management is the practice of using modeling, automation, data insights to optimize business activities, enterprise goals, and employee operations.
Now that you have learned these essentials terms you are one step closer to becoming an RPA expert. Of course there are many more you should learn along your journey, but I feel as though these will give you a good starting point to be able to have a high level conversation about RPA with someone who is already in the field.