Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) is the engine behind some of the most critical tasks in the day-to-day operations of many industries, regardless of industry. IT decision makers and software engineering leaders are always looking for ways to maximize their budget, while staying in the constant search for how to improve efficiency and integrate enterprise systems into their operations.
Cue Robotic Process Automation (RPA), which is the automation platform that builds scripts to integrate applications via a user interface and a control dashboard/orchestrator in Oracle EBS. In short, RPA helps automate repetitive, routine, rule-based, predictable tasks.
The need for automation, and hyper-automation for that matter, is greater than ever as the COVID-19 pandemic evidenced the lack of true application modernization and robust strategies for digital transformation, all of which are key to not only respond to business demands with agility and assertiveness, but to also meet the increasing demands of entire workloads moving to online settings.
RPA helps reduce and prevent human errors in manual processes, automate rule-based processes with the help of artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data analytics, and more.
It’s no surprise that EBS users are looking for effective ways to tap into the power of RPA in their EBS to streamline and automate processes to strengthen their operations and technical efficacy.
In this blog post, we’re going to detail the top RPA trends 2022 that we can look forward to and expect this year, as well as the key business use case scenarios of when to leverage RPA for EBS.
RPA Trends 2022 in the EBS Market
The RPA software market remains one of the fastest-growing enterprise software segments in the IT industry, growing at a rate of 38.9% as of 2020. RPA solutions are critically focused on expanding their automation capabilities by focusing on crucial elements such as embedded process discovery, intelligent document processing, artificial intelligence, machine learning, low-code development, and complex workflow automation.
In response to the growing need for automation, Oracle EBS can leverage RPA to include managed services and business processes tailored to accelerate digital transformation and ERP modernization.
With several RPA Trends 2022 to look forward to, there’s no question that RPA is outpacing other software markets and will continue to greatly exceed expectations in the overall enterprise software market in 2022. These are the key RPA trends 2022 in the IT landscape that you can expect to see more of:
Hyper Automation
Software engineering leaders are scaling beyond tactical automation to achieve superior efficiency, business agility, efficacy, and flexibility thanks to an increased focus on hyper automation. But, what is hyper automation and why is it one of the biggest RPA trends 2022? It’s the discipline that orchestrates technologies to drive end-to-end, event-driven, and intelligent automation delivery. The great thing about hyper automation is that in RPA, the solution can sit on top or join neighbor technologies to support the goals of hyper automation.
New Capabilities
RPA is taking decisive steps forward beyond orchestrated screen scraping technology to a more sophisticated, rapidly-evolving platform with embedded process discovery, intelligent document processing, artificial intelligence, machine learning, low-code development, and complex workflow orchestration. RPA is responsible for offering composable automation features including bots, serverless bots, nanobots, and microbots.
Other emerging RPA trends 2022 and capabilities of RPA include API connectors orchestrated with UI scrapers, low-code UX to create UI front-ends for bots, and headless or serverless automation workflows, also known as headless bots.
The Rise of Low-Code and No-Code
In what some refer to as “citizen developers,” there’s a steady increase in low-code and no-code development platforms that offer non-developers the opportunity to create applications in simple drag and drop interfaces with pre-built elements that require little to no coding involved.
In fact, Gartner states that by 2024, “80% of technology products and services will be built by those who are not technology professionals.” While trained developers won’t be replaced, in the case of RPA, we can expect to see tools that focus on mimicking repetitive, human interactions that can be automated. All in all, both RPA and low-code and no-code platforms are enablers of hyper automation, and we can certainly expect to see more of them.
The Intersection Between RPA and AI Grows Stronger
Artificial intelligence helps augment the capabilities of RPA, and as such, we can expect the two to work even closer together in 2022. Many artificial intelligence and machine learning use cases couple well with RPA, making it a prime example of smart technologies working together to make the lives of individuals and enterprises more easy.
For example, if RPA is used for certain customer service tasks, artificial intelligence algorithms can be embedded into the process to give representatives options on how to act on their behalf. In short, these two technologies can be leveraged to optimize simple automation jobs and make them more efficient, complex, and effective.
Streamlining EBS Processes with RPA
There are plenty of benefits of using RPA for EBS, and here’s a sample of the areas that can benefit from RPA in EBS:
- Customer Relationship Management: From e-Billing, Order Fulfillment, Sales Business Intelligence, and more, can all be automated with RPA.
- Business Intelligence: Users can glean actionable insights by processing massive amounts of data in real time to enhance data-driven decision-making as RPA integrates with leading BI industry solutions.
- Manufacturing: Automation can help improve manufacturing processes, communication, and collaboration as vehicles to manage data, optimize manufacturing production, inventory management, invoice processing, procurement, returns processing, and more.
- Supply chain management and logistics: RPA helps boost speed and reduce the cycle time for supply chain processes including data monitoring, freight management, inventory management, incident management, shipment processes, tracking, P2P, and more.
- Human Resources: RPA helps automate Human Resource tasks to streamline key processes like payroll, compliance, reporting, and more, helping users avoid manual effort.
- Finance: RPA automates financial workflows including accounts receivable, forecasting, budgeting, accounts payable, invoicing, and more.
Conclusion
RPA adoption has grown beyond what anyone could have predicted, and it’s estimated that at the end of 2021, RPA software revenue reached $2 billion. Despite COVID-19 uncertainties, software engineers are scaling beyond tactical automation to achieve greater efficiency, business agility, and efficacy with hyper automation, and as such, RPA remains essential to achieving efficiency with hyper automation.
To harness the benefits of RPA in your EBS, you need to ensure your system is modernized. To achieve modernization of your EBS, there are three roads ahead, to upgrade to release 12.2.x, migrate to the cloud, or engage in a hybrid coexistence by moving specific workloads to the cloud while remaining on-premises.
For many EBS clients, staying on-premises is crucial to their unique business needs, and as such, it’s essential that they find ways to expedite their upgrade process as early this year, clients who didn’t upgrade lost Premier Support, and with it, new features, fixes, and security patches.
Read our latest ebook about how to minimize upgrade downtime during the upgrade effort to Oracle EBS R12.2.x.
