Robotic Process Transformation (RPA) is changing the way organisations do business. It allows organisations to do more with less by optimising several work processes which otherwise require human supervision.  

Non-profits are known to spend a disproportionate amount of time on repetitive and manual tasks. These laborious processes not only take up a lot of time, but also stops employees from undertaking more value adding activities that matter. RPA can also be of great advantage to non-profits as the software can improve the quality and auditability of transactions that is required in highly regulatory environments.   

Every non-profit like any other organisation aims at delivering outstanding service to the community. A key part of achieving this is by continually transforming the way it delivers value by implementing new ways that reduce costs and increase efficiencies so more funds can be spent on those in need. And robotic process automation can help achieve this to a large extent.  

Here are some of the ways RPA can be very beneficial to non-profits:  

1. Reduction in operational costs  

Deploying digital technology to automate hundreds of routine tasks can increase productivity and improve decision making for non-profits, and greatly reduce the costs and time associated with carrying out these tasks.   

A great example in this regard is that of  DWP Digital, a large government department in the UK. The company automated the process of new pension claims which was otherwise a heavily manual process causing backlogs. By automating these manual tasks with RPA, the company was able to achieve multimillion-pound savings each year.  

2. Speed of deployment  

One of the greatest advantages of RPA adoption is its speed of deployment. Introducing any new technology to an existing process usually takes anywhere between six to nine months. However, RPA can move from concept to deployment in just weeks.   

There are several examples of organisations seeing business critical results of RPA right from the pilot stage. The European Public Service Organisation, for instance, adopted RPA to accelerate its digital transformation. This helped them cut down their time spent on processes by 25 percent and save around 100 hours per week, thereby increasing their process efficiency with little or no additional cost involved.  

3. Highly scalable  

As organisations expand, everything from operations, teams, management and business processes also change. Finding technology that adapts itself to the inevitable growth within companies is hard. But not with RPA.  

With RPA, the problems with regards to scalability can be solved. The growing need for data processing can be done through automation without having to depend on hiring additional and skilled staff for backlog work. As automation practices grow, RPA allows the ability to add additional functionality and automation timings at the pace and of the organisation involved – all in a customizable manner.   

4. Improved accuracy and quality of output  

The scope of human error in manual tasks can be high and is creates risks in the highly regulatory non-profit environments. With the implementation of RPA, the scope of error is zero and the results are always accurate. The solutions are flawless and performed in a consistent manner.   

RPA also helps to provide an audit trail of work performed, which can always be referred to at any point during audits. 

5. Lower risks of regulation  

Most work processes at non-profits are subjected to ever expanding regulations where compliance is critical. Updating these rules every now and then and changing the manual processes can be time consuming and prone to human errors. These errors almost always puts non-profits at risk of non-compliance as the new process gets embedded into the organisation. 

RPA can ensure that all rules are adhered to and new ones are easily updated whenever there are change in regulations.   

6. Higher employee morale  

This is a long-term benefit of implementing RPA, and a very significant one. Most employees dislike the parts of their jobs that involve a lot of repetitive manual work. With RPA, each employee has the chance and time to work on what they value. It gives them a real sense of purpose that comes with non-profit. This leads to higher satisfaction levels about the job itself, leading to a more productive workforce.  

As an example, with the implementation of RPA, Curo Fund Services was able to re-purpose 35% of its employees’ time into more customer-centric processes. By having to deal will less repetitive tasks, the staff now has improved morale and higher job satisfaction levels.  

Applications of RPA in the non-profit sector  

Let’s look at some application of RPA in non-profits. For one, non-profits often need to manually maintain several different government and internal systems with similar information. RPA will allow these updates to be made automatically whilst providing higher quality and auditability of information at speed and lower costs.  

Another way could be smoothening the fundraising campaigns. This might require a range of activities such as pulling out past donor information, getting marketing materials, communicating with past and prospective donors, collecting payment information, updating databases and much more. Most of these steps, if done manually, take months to get done. And the risk of confusion and errors remain high. With an RPA solution, most of these processes can be automated and employees can focus on strategic aspects of the non-profit business.   

When it comes to deriving benefits from RPA, only the surface has been scratched. There are many more complex operations that are still manual and have the scope of getting automated. Going forward, it looks like it will become the new normal.