Automation Shaping Businesses
Technology has always been reshaping businesses, however, automation is the new game-changer. With businesses always coming up with ways to improve efficiency without sacrificing service and quality, this is where automation comes to great use. Automation is on the rise in every industry, ranging from manufacturing to service and even now, finance.
Having the great foresight, 3E Accounting founder Lawrence Chai formed the firm’s Digital Research and Development (DR&D) team to lead development in new technological growth areas like robotics business automation (RPA), ML and AI. Today, 3E Accounting is the first firm in Singapore to adopt robotics technology.
What Is Robotic Process Automation?
Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a way to automate business processes through the use of robots. The robots are computer coded software and typically performed within a back-office function, they are programmed to replace humans performing repetitive rule-driven tasks and is cross-functional. RPA can be used to process transactions, manipulate data and communicate across systems.
The 7 skills possessed by RPA are namely gathering, collating and validating data, analyze both structured and unstructured data, record and transport information and data, perform calculations and decision making, communicate with and assist users, manage activities, monitor detect and report operational performance and forecast.
3E Accounting’s Automation Journey
Following the expansion of 3E Accounting and transforming the business through technology, the firm has invested time and effort on refining the technologies used. As part of the firm’s digital journey, a digital master plan was developed by 3E Accounting’s DR&D team to map out the business’s digital transformation and in just 15 months, the team successfully completed the digital transformation of 3E Accounting and is fully equipped to digitally process company incorporation, accounting, tax, human resource and secretarial services.
Aiming to build intelligent robots to perform tasks and work with human co-workers to improve productivity and enhanced value creation for both 3E Accounting’s internal and external stakeholders, 3E Accounting has successfully developed two robots, namely the Financial Report Robot and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) robot and is currently in the process of developing the Tax Robot and Bookkeeping Robot.
With the strong belief that automation will transform the business landscape, 3E Accounting has invested over $2 million in researching and developing automation robotics and IT infrastructure. By making great investments in technology, 3E Accounting is able to continue exploring new technological areas to provide greater services for the clients.
Benefits of RPA
RPA can work on multiple processes across multiple functions and can replace humans for manual rule-driven tasks. Organizations who have implemented RPA feedback that the implementation has an attractive payback period within 12 months, not only does RPA meet the needs of providing accurate, timely results, it is also flexible and improved compliance. Many organizations are seeking ways to reduce cost without compromising on their quality, RPA provides the solution to this problem and brings about increased productivity and economic growth too.
With RPA replacing most manual repetitive tasks customarily performed by humans, human workers are now able to focus on other tasks that value adds to clients and organizations, including learning and upgrading their skillsets.
These benefits can be seen from 3E Accounting’s implementation of RPA, with their staffs focusing on other activities like using data generated by robots to derive insights and make better decisions. 3E Accounting’s employees no longer need to perform repetitive tasks like data entry but their concentration is shifted to other value-added tasks. Furthermore, with the use of robotics technology and digital tools, there is a significant time and manpower savings, allowing 3E Accounting to support a much bigger client base and provide more efficient services for their clients. For example, a usual company incorporation process that requires two days has been shortened to just within 1 hour.
Being the pioneering robotics accounting firm, 3E Accounting has utilized automation to improve productivity and efficiency with the deployment of robots saving 90% of time spent on tasks and improving 3E Accounting’s productivity by 99%.
