The adoption of robotic process automation (RPA) technology in Thailand is projected to keep rising as a slew of businesses are gearing up for business process re-engineering with automation to improve their performance, says ABeam Consulting Thailand, the local operating unit of the Japan-based consulting firm.
With the Covid-19, RPA tech is likely to facilitate various business sectors with enhanced business process engineering and targets achieved, such as process enhancement, improved customer experience, service delivery improvements and cost reduction, said Ichiro Hara, managing director of ABeam Consulting Thailand.
Enterprises are being urged to learn and adopt RPA in their businesses in order to thrive in the new normal from both consumer and business side, as well as to be ready for the next wave of disruption in the future.
"From now on, the new normal will impact every business sector because consumer behaviour is changing," he said.
All sizes of businesses across all industries should learn and adopt RPA for their business, which can start with for processes with high transaction volumes or which are highly repetitive, such as data entry, data processing, reconciliation, and report generation in the back office, Mr Hara said.
It will not only help to cope with the new normal but also prepare companies to be ready for the next wave of disruption to come, he said.
Based on the company's research on the country's digital transformation situation, many firms in Thailand expressed interest in adopting RPA for their business.
RPA can support any organisation across different industries, as the technology allows anyone today to configure computer software, or a robot to emulate and integrate the actions of a human interacting within digital systems to execute a business process.
According to Mr Hara, through partnership with UiPath, a leading RPA tech developer, ABeam is capable of providing RPA service capabilities in the area of business process re-engineering utilising UiPath RPA tools.
ABeam's RPA service value in Thailand increased by more than double in 2019 and is projected to continue with strong demand from the market in 2020.
"RPA technologies have been adopted more and more in the past year, particularly by the banking and insurance sectors," said Mr Hara.
Last year, ABeam conducted a survey through its 180 clients in Thailand by looking into digital transformation approaches.
In terms of the planning level of digital transformation strategy, which is divided in three development stages, most Thai enterprises were found to be in the first stage with no strategy ironed out.
The second stage concerns individual digitalisation that has been put in place in particular divisions or areas, while the third stage involves a broad digital strategy adopted throughout a company.
ABeam also looked into the stages of digital adoption in the execution level. Most Thai enterprises were found to be in the second stage, where they have connected with other business partners through digital tech with recognised value improvement.