Whether paying your bills or recording your favorite television show, automation is a part of your daily life. Automation has dramatically changed the way that we live and do business, and it is quickly making its way into construction with tools like bricklaying robots and 3D-mapping drones. But the use of robots and automation in construction extends beyond the worksite. Robotic process automation (RPA) can optimize your operations for the 21st century. Introducing robots into the back office may sound like science fiction, but it’s already a reality.
Company leaders who are able to quickly bring RPA into their business stand to increase efficiency, reduce costs, and gain a competitive advantage, which has proven to be particularly valuable in today’s tight labor market and uncertain economy.
Robots as Software
The robots used in RPA aren’t walking, talking humanoids, but rather virtual bots that are housed on a server or in the cloud. Each bot is a software program that mimics human actions in order to complete structured, logic-based tasks, such as drafting and sending invoices, consolidating documents for an expense report, or handling various administrative human resource tasks.
Essentially, you can train a bot to learn the steps of a given task by recording the steps a person takes to complete that task on a computer.
Bots are designed to augment a human workforce, making workers more productive by eliminating their need to spend time on repetitive, low-value activities. For the construction industry, which has tight margins and an ongoing labor shortage, the ability to free up staff to work on other tasks by using this emerging technology could make a significant difference to a company’s bottom line and can add agility to the organization.
Why Now?
RPA has existed for more than a decade, but only recently has it hit a maturity point as implementation costs have become more accessible at a wider scale and the technology has become more user-friendly. The underlying technology driving RPA has also improved over the past few years, allowing it to take on increasingly complicated tasks and complete them more quickly, ultimately driving quicker time to value.
A recent survey by RSM US LLP found that the vast majority of middle market company leaders are “investing in automation or information technology in response to staffing challenges pointed to an increase in efficiency (85%) as the reason compared to a substitute for labor (11%).”1
RPA adoption initially grew the quickest in the finance and insurance industries, which have numerous repetitive, digital tasks ripe for automation. In construction, which has historically lagged in technology adoption, the uptake has been slower. However, forward-thinking managers who institute RPA can benefit from a leap forward in digitization and more efficient processes.
Implementing RPA requires little change to existing infrastructure, so putting it in place doesn’t require large-scale changes to business processes. RPA is platform agnostic; it can integrate into any existing system and can pull data from multiple legacy systems, even if those systems don’t currently work together.
For example, RPA can automatically pull data from a spreadsheet, an e-mail program, or even a PDF and use it to populate fields in construction management software.
The Case for RPA in Construction
Because it’s about the process rather than the task itself, RPA can be used in virtually any business department. It’s best for repetitive, rule-based tasks as well as those that don’t require any critical thinking or analysis. The more often the process is performed, the bigger the cost and time savings realized from implementing RPA.
Historically, implementing technology like RPA fell under the sole purview of IT departments. But today, RPA conversations often include not only a company’s chief technology officer, but also its CEO, CFO, and COO, who realize that RPA has the potential to transform operations and dramatically cut costs.
Here’s a look at some of the ways that the construction industry could make use of RPA.
Client or Owner Invoice Creation
It can take hours for one employee to pull together all of the necessary documentation and backup data needed to create a client/owner invoice. RPA can pull together the required information, consolidate it into a single package, and send the invoice out for review within minutes.
Updating Client, Vendor, Supplier, or Subcontractor Lists
Company contacts change frequently, leaving employees to manually update databases on an ongoing basis. RPA can automatically update client lists and repopulate any forms with the corrected contact information.
Document Management
The construction industry heavily relies on paper documents, which must be organized, filed, and maintained. Rather than utilizing an outdated filing system that can lead to errors or lost documents, RPA can automatically file scanned documents into a centralized, easily managed system.
Recruiting
Given the labor issues facing the construction industry, recruiters can spend hours searching for qualified prospects for project engineer, project manager (PM), or project accounting roles. RPA can automatically scan LinkedIn for candidates with specific education, certifications, or experience.
Cost Monitoring
PMs who need to keep a close eye on costs may run a cost-to-estimate report every day or every week to spot potential issues before they turn into larger problems. RPA can take over the production of that report by pulling in data from contractors and suppliers, importing it into the project budget, and generating real-time analytics into regular weekly, daily, or on-demand reports that show exactly how a project’s costs are aligning with the budget.
E-Mail Blasts
RPA can create and send mass e-mails (to potential leads, current clients, both internal and external project team members, or a broader community) based on lists or other rules that you’ve created.
Estimate Generation
Once you’ve collected basic information from a customer, whether it be in person, over the phone, or online, RPA can use that data to generate a preliminary quote for potential work.
Tax Preparation
RPA can pull tax-related data and documents (such as invoices and contracts, expense reports, payroll, etc.) from various systems, making it easier for staff accountants or an outsourced team to easily access the information needed to file taxes.