Robotic process automation : impact and best practices in portuguese banks

• Autor(a) principal: Carmo, Gonçalo Pires de Carvalho Mota
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.14/31129
• topic: Automation; Banking; Robotics; Back-office; Automação; Banca; Robótica; Domínio/Área Científica::Ciências Sociais::Economia e Gestão

Robotic Process automation is the technology that allows companies to configure software to emulate the interaction of an employee with digital systems. This software is also known as “robots” and they have the innate ability to perform tasks faster, more accurately and to work 24 hours a day. In banks, most support functions are located in back-offices and the tasks performed there are mainly repetitive tasks that follow a set of rules. These types of processes are a good candidate for RPA automation. The Portuguese banking sector is still in an early stage of digitalization. In general, banks are innovating in their front-offices, however, apart from a few players in the industry, their back-offices still heavily rely on paper and currently have a low level of automation. By conducting interviews with topical experts that have been present in RPA implementations in banks, this study determined the impacts of the technology in Portuguese bank’s back-offices and the best practices that should be followed in order for implementations to be successful in future endeavors. The results show that RPA can have a significant impact in the industry, namely a reduction in operational costs. Furthermore, always considering scalability for future RPA projects and providing functional and technical documentation are among the resulting best practices.