Pharmaceutical conglomerate GSK has revealed that it will be seriously prioritising robotic process automation (RPA) technology over the next 12 months as part of plans to really push digital transformation throughout the organisation.
John Johnstone, director of global applications development with the brand, explained that they launched the initiative at the beginning of 2018 but by the middle of the year didn’t have more than a handful of live bots working, Computing.co.uk reports.
Slight criticism of the new system came from chief digital and technology officer Karenann Terrell, he went on to say, who would have expected 300 live bots after having a platform in place for six months, rather than just three.
Mr Johnstone, speaking at a recent Computing IT Leaders’ Forum that focused on RPA, went into detail about GSK’s approach, initially beginning with a decentralised model that didn’t seem to appeal to businesses within GSK. From there, a more centralised approach was taken where brands could bring their ideas to the table and have bots built centrally and supported on their behalf.
“Another thing we did was establish some full-time teams around this. If you’re serious about doing this, I don’t think you can do it part time. You need a full-time team dedicated to doing this,” he went on to say.
Another change that was brought in was to “really engage the business”, sponsoring the idea through different groups in GSK’s corporate functions, including real estate, finance and the supply chain, showing them what a “fantastic opportunity” bots represent to take some costs out of their operations.
What is robotic process automation?
RPA allows companies to configure their software in such a way that enables them to communicate more effectively with other systems, manipulate data, process transactions and a whole lot more. The main benefit of it is that business processes can be run without having to increase costs or hire more staff.
It also helps to reduce the chances of human error and, since bots are low cost to create and easy to introduce, they can really benefit businesses of all kinds, across all industries, with ease.
These robots are able to carry out routine business operations by replicating how people would interact with software and applications, and following a few rules in order to make the necessary decisions. They’re particularly useful for processes that are repetitive, rule-based, prone to human error, time critical and so on.
