Using RPA, a key process that has been automated at Emcure Pharmaceuticals is the posting of bulks GST invoices. After the successful delivery of a pilot, the process will be rolled out across the entire organisation. The process that is being automated, from beginning to end, is this: invoice receipt, login to SAP, invoice posting on SAP and acknowledgement of the posting. The process automation works for both the variations: vendor invoice with and without reference to a purchase order (PO).
Key benefits
The key benefits are two-fold: (a) reduction of manual effort by 90 per cent in the automated state, which enables us to reallocate potentially 90 per cent of the resources to other higher value-add activities, and (b) elimination of errors from manual posting.
“I believe RPA is a highly desirable technology in our digital journey. Financial decision-making at pharmaceuticals is highly manual. The reason for this is the regulatory and compliance-related requirements of this industry. Since FDA audits are critical to the viability and growth of business, I believe the use of RPA positions us strongly in terms of easily demonstrating our compliance with regulatory needs. In addition, by incorporating (RPA, or the initial elements of AI) into the processing of financial transactions, we are enabling intelligent decision-making while eliminating errors,” says Amitabh Mishra, Global CTO, Emcure Pharma Group.
Evolution of RPA
Mishra believes that RPA will grow to handle more complex operations in the future, e.g. finance, accounting and supply chain management. “I see concrete use cases that can be covered by RPA, such as procure-to-pay, quote-to-cash, record-to-report, order processing, payments, email automation, inventory management, vendor selection, supply planning and demand planning. As I explained before, RPA brings the beginning elements of AI into the picture without the uncertainty around the ‘intelligent’ aspect of the technology. Whether a technology is truly intelligent or not can be debated; whether it automates a process is clear to see,” he added.