I’m always surprised by the clunky processes that some businesses put up with. We see lots of companies where well-paid team members spend hours on repetitive tasks: things like manually keying data from one system into another, or pulling the same reports week after week.
Now, these are definitely useful tasks that need to be completed, but it’s becoming increasingly hard to justify them being done by a human. That makes them prime candidates for Robotic Process Automation (RPA): the process of building bespoke software ‘bots’ that automate boring, repetitive work with speed and accuracy. There are a few different ways you can build these bots, but at Systems iO we’re big fans of using UiPath.
If you know there’s room for improvement in your business processes, but you’re not sure where to begin with RPA, we’ve listed nine common tasks that you could look at. Automating these will give you some quick wins and great ROI to get you up and running with RPA…
1. Payroll processing
Payroll is something that no company can afford to get wrong, yet it typically involves repetitive data validation across HR and finance platforms. RPA can streamline the process by checking timesheets, calculating deductions and even triggering payments. It’s a win-win for your internal teams, improving both accuracy and speed.
2. Customer onboarding
For many businesses, onboarding new customers involves multiple steps: identity verification, credit checks, data entry into CRM systems and initial comms. RPA automates these steps, reducing onboarding time, while giving new customers a great first impression.
3. Statements of accounts
Preparing regular monthly or quarterly statements for clients can be a time-consuming job for accounts teams if done manually. RPA bots can automatically consolidate transactions, calculate balances and generate statements to your chosen schedule. They can even distribute them directly to clients. We’ve seen first-hand with our clients how much time this can save.
4. Invoice processing
Invoices are a classic source of unstructured data and are supplied in various formats: PDFs, email attachments, even paper scans. Manually keying this data into an ERP system is time-consuming and error-prone. RPA bots can extract invoice details, validate them against purchase orders and update financial systems automatically – accelerating payment cycles and reducing mistakes.
5. Data migration
Migrating data between legacy and modern platforms can be slow and risky, especially where APIs are poorly documented or non-existent. RPA is well-suited to transferring structured data while performing validation along the way. It’s a speedy process and frees up your top developers to focus on more challenging areas.
6. Claims processing
In insurance, claims often require validation across several systems. Manual checking introduces delays and increases the chance of error. With RPA, bots can check claim details, route approvals and flag anomalies. The outcome: faster results, fewer mistakes and happier customers.
7. Report generation
Managers and analysts can waste hours gathering data from multiple systems to produce reports. RPA can pull information automatically, generate dashboards and distribute reports to a schedule, without any manual intervention. You’ll still get all the insight and analysis that you need, but you’ll free up time for interpreting your data rather than preparing it.
8. Payment collection
Following up on overdue invoices is essential for cashflow, but it often means finance staff spend time sending reminders and updating records. RPA can monitor outstanding balances, trigger personalised reminder emails and log responses automatically. Bots can also escalate long-overdue cases to collections teams. With consistent, automated follow-up, organisations see faster payments and more time for staff to focus on valuable tasks.
9. Compliance monitoring
Regulated industries face constant pressure to document and prove compliance. Fully manual monitoring is very expensive, but RPA provides a scalable way to capture data, perform checks and maintain a transparent audit trail. It reduces risk and ensures that companies are always audit-ready.
How to get started
We hope these examples have given you some inspiration. The key is to start small: identify a handful of repetitive tasks, automate them and measure the impact. By targeting the right processes, companies can unlock some big efficiency gains, while improving both employee and customer experience.
If you’re not sure where to start, a simple audit of your operations will reveal dozens of hidden automation opportunities. Drop me a message if you’d like our RPA experts to help.
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