RPA in the automotive industry: key use cases, examples & best practices
October 24, 2023
RPA in the automotive industry enables car manufacturers to automate repetitive, voluminous tasks and enhance the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of their business processes, including supply chain management, auto insurance, reporting, analytics, and vehicle financing.
Itransition’s robotic process automation experts consult automotive market players on the possibility of upgrading their business processes, as well as develop and seamlessly implement robotic process automation solutions into their practice.
Top 8 RPA use cases in the automotive industry
RPA has proved its worth in many areas, including the automotive sector. RPA bots can perform many time-consuming and repetitive tasks vulnerable to human errors. Let’s explore the most potent use cases of RPA in the automotive industry.
Inventory management
Streamlined inventory control is at the core of efficient supply chain management. Traditionally, automotive manufacturers employ supervisors who ensure their inventory levels match the demand. By nature, this is a manual, low-value-adding task, which is also highly susceptible to human errors. With the increasing adoption of industrial IoT and abundant data on partners and customers at hand, automobile manufacturers can maintain their sufficient stock balance by integrating RPA.
Example
One Fortune 500 automotive company required demand planners to manually enter their estimates into the ERP system. The organization decided to deploy an RPA bot, developed by Birlasoft, that mines for important data points in demand planners’ emails and updates the safety stock levels without any human intervention.
Auto insurance
In the auto insurance industry, claim processing speed and accuracy are the core factors affecting customer satisfaction. With ever-rising customer expectations, streamlined claims processing is paramount to overall business success.
However, processing claims manually is a very labor-intensive and error-prone task. Traditionally, claims adjusters must gather relevant data from disparate sources, analyze it, and transfer it into the policyholder’s digital record. This is where RPA can bring additional document management benefits, like reformatting and data verification.
Similarly, RPA can speed up underwriting. For example, auto insurers often need to browse public databases to check claimants’ criminal records. RPA can autonomously access these records and transfer data to the company’s internal system.
Example
One of the largest insurance companies in Europe, PZU Group, hired UiPath, Itransition’s long-term partner, to implement a robotic process automation solution, aiming to free their insurance agents from the most time-consuming and repetitive tasks and allow them to provide more personalized customer service. The RPA solution had multiple use cases within the insurance company processes, including calling for assistance after an accident, initial analysis of car damage claims, calculating refunds of vehicle repairs based on invoices, and data entry for direct costs and policyholder information changes.
Vehicle financing
As with robotic process automation for the banking industry, automation can be beneficial for car financing as well. Auto lenders often need to simultaneously access multiple siloed systems and databases to complete certain operations. RPA can be used to automatically consolidate information stored across disparate systems into one interface, which can speed up analysts’ decision-making and, consequently, improve customer satisfaction.
Most importantly, RPA is comparatively fast and easy to implement. As a payoff, auto lenders can mitigate the risks of human errors and leave employees with more time to engage in value-adding and mentally-demanding activities.
Supplier onboarding
Most automotive companies have to communicate with dozens of suppliers to operate. With seamless data sharing being a pinnacle of efficiency, automotive companies now explore RPA capabilities to transfer their corporate information securely. RPA helps solve the challenge of data scattered across different systems and ensuring uninterrupted data flow between the business ecosystem participants.
Example
A leading automotive component maker, Yazaki, turned to RPA to streamline digital collaboration with its customers and suppliers in the Americas and Europe. In their case, RPA helps streamline supplier onboarding through automated provisioning, significantly reducing the time it takes to onboard new partners. As a result of this cooperation, Yazaki managed to integrate and support communication and document exchange between 120+ manufacturing, corporate, and distribution locations and several hundred customers and suppliers.
Freight management
Along with AI tools for transportation, RPA can significantly enhance freight management, which is conventionally plagued with manual deficiencies. Traditionally, employees would need to enter customer data into the TMS, identify the best possible freight options and transport routes, send this information to the customer, and wait for confirmation. While carrier choice requires human decision-making, it is, in fact, an entirely rule-based process. By integrating RPA into the TMS, the system can autonomously assess the information, generate quotes, and book shipments, significantly speeding up the process.
Example
A global auto manufacturer has implemented an RPA solution to deal with demand spikes and facilitate a complex and cumbersome process of preparing a Shipper’s Letter of Instruction (SLI) for overseas shipments. With their RPA solution, the company managed to automate this process, save 2-4 person-hours per day, and significantly decrease SLI preparation cycle times.
Vehicle recall management
Vehicle recalls due to identified safety risks or failure to meet all the necessary safety standards is a challenging aspect of the car manufacturing business. Timely vehicle recall management requires speedy and accurate communication with affected dealerships and customers. Robotic process automation tools can streamline the recall process, automating faulty vehicle identification and subsequent coordination of replacements and repairs.
Example
Car manufacturers can implement RPA bots to facilitate and speed up vehicle recall management. RPA solutions can instantly scan vehicle identification numbers (VINs) across databases and identify the affected cars. Then, RPA bots can generate personalized recall messages to owners and dealerships and schedule repair or replacement procedures. This approach will streamline the recall process, mitigating safety concerns and saving car manufacturers from legal consequences and litigations.
Dealer network management
Сar manufacturers usually have an extensive geographically-distributed dealership network. Smooth management of its operations involves multiple administrative tasks, such as reporting sales figures, payment processing, and maintaining compliance documentation. Robotic process automation can facilitate dealer network management by automating data collection, verification, and reporting.
Example
GM Financial, the financial services arm of General Motors, has implemented an RPA solution into its dealership network management processes. RPA bots freed human agents from collecting and processing unstructured sales reports and other documents, verifying the data, and creating performance reports. Robotic process automation reduced reporting errors and speeded up data processing: a process once requiring five minutes of a human agent’s time can now be automatically done in 30 seconds, highlights GM Financial.
Customer data management
Accurate and up-to-date customer information is essential for any business, including automotive companies. It affects sales operations, personalized marketing campaigns, and streamlined customer service. RPA bots automate customer data gathering, validate the information, and facilitate timely updates in the CRM system, eliminating duplicates and human errors.
Results
Maintaining accurate customer data in CRM
Facilitating personalized marketing campaigns
Improving customer service
Enhancing customer engagement and satisfaction
RPA implementation best practices
To reap the maximum benefits from robotic process automation solutions for your automotive business, consider the following best practices and adoption guidelines proven by our RPA experts.
Key application areas
Establishing a solid framework for identifying opportunities with the highest ROIs is critical. Choosing the right use case is paramount to successful RPA implementation. Besides ROI calculation and KPI estimates, it's important to consider the benefits of robotic process automation that can't be measured. For example, employee morale boosted by manual task automation can be a priority just like higher productivity.
Here are the main attributes of an RPA-ready automotive business process:
- It’s repetitive
First, look for repetitive processes that don’t require any cognitive input. Highly mundane and repeatable tasks should be the top priority for RPA integration.
- It’s stable
Choose the most stable processes and environments. Ask an important question: “Is this system expected to change in the future?” Consider that even slight changes in the system’s structure might require RPA reconfiguration.
- It’s rule-based
Pure RPA can only make decisions based on predefined rules. The technology will require a human assistant or augmentation with AI if decision-making flexibility is necessary and the probability of exceptions is high.
Game-changing vision
Decision-makers within your organization should have a clear vision of the total RPA implementation value and the cost of its implementation. Your automotive company should develop a sound automation strategy, which can require a fundamental restructuring and new business goals set with automated processes in mind.
Together with your RPA implementation partner, you should develop a high-level RPA implementation roadmap, focusing on attaining the set automation targets step-by-step.
In the early automation stages, simple RPA bots can deliver quick results and guarantee swift progress with minimal business disruptions. Moving further, more intelligent automation methods, including AI-enabled automation processes, can be added.
Thinking bigger, you’ll have to define and prioritize where to put extra employees’ time and resources, freed up by automated processes, to generate new business opportunities and gain a competitive advantage within the automotive market.
IT involvement
Hiring a trustworthy RPA implementation partner could be critical to the success of your automation initiative. However, the result still lies within business owners’ responsibilities. Close cooperation between your tech partner and your internal IT department is required for smooth RPA solution rollout within the company’s infrastructure.
Focus on people
If an automotive organization goes for company-wide automation, it could result in significant personnel changes. Many members of your team will have to change their processes and adopt new work patterns.
Therefore, your human resource managers should be involved in the automation project from the very beginning to coordinate employee retraining and facilitate the shift to new work processes. Moreover, RPA bots in HR practices can help human resource specialists to manage employees more effectively, facilitating employee performance management and analytics.
Want to improve your automotive processes?
Leading RPA platforms for the automobile industry
According to the Gartner Magic Quadrant for RPA 2022, multiple platforms could fit well into your automotive business. Here are the top three leading RPA platforms to consider:
Itransition’s long-term RPA partner, UiPath offers a leading hyperautomation platform, combining robotic process automation solutions with a suite of intelligent automation capabilities. The platform can fit large international organizations and SMBs. The platform's outstanding feature is a drag-and-drop interface, enabling users to build and set up automated processes.
Key features
- Cloud delivery and API integration
- Drag-and-drop interface and pre-built templates
- Intelligent document processing
- Integrated artificial intelligence (OCR, NLP, ML)
- Low-code visual tools
- Fit for multiple processes within the automation lifecycle
- A powerful community
- Numerous training and networking opportunities
- Centralized compliance and governance
Another long-term leader in intelligent automation, Blue Prism's RPA platform can help automotive companies to improve the efficiency and accuracy of their workflows, speeding up supply chain management, logistics, and other operations.
Key features
- Plug-and-play access
- A robust execution engine
- Built-in AI technologies (OCR, NLP)
- Ready-to-use solutions
- Easy integrations through multiple connectors
- A visual process designer
- Advanced analytics
- An enterprise-grade security
- Digital automation expert support
Automation Anywhere’s RPA platform, Automation 360, is a cloud-native end-to-end intelligent platform, allowing automotive businesses to automate various business processes and deliver AI-powered capabilities to enable hyperautomation.
Key features
- 1,200+ pre-built bots, packages, and digital workers
- Capability to work with both modern and legacy software
- Multi-layered security and governance
- Macro recorder that builds task logic without sequential actions programming
- Task scheduler
- Single-click web data extraction
- Reduced setup, bot creation, and deployment time
- Broad partner ecosystem
- Free community edition with learning resources
Benefits of implementing RPA
The most praised benefits of implementing robotic process automation solutions include greater workforce efficiency, increased revenue, and lower reliance on manual activities. Moreover, it is relatively easy to implement and can bring quick ROI. What else makes RPA bots a technology of choice for your digital transformation?
RPA implementation challenges and solutions
Challenge
Solution
Vendor choice
The abundance of RPA software platforms makes it difficult to assess all their distinctive features and choose the one that best fits your automotive business.
Usually, automotive companies don’t have experienced automation specialists in-house. Therefore, they delegate assessing various RPA platforms and finding the necessary one to a hired automation implementation partner, like Itransition. With vast experience handling numerous RPA projects, we can thoroughly analyze your company’s needs and offer the optimal solution.
Technical challenges
RPA bots require regular upgrades, maintenance, and configuration checks. Besides, hundreds of implemented software robots represent another layer of IT infrastructure, demanding oversight by an IT department.
Even if you opt for a platform-based off-the-shelf RPA solution, you’ll need enough skilled tech specialists to support and maintain its stable performance, manage licenses, and communicate with the RPA platform vendors. Your RPA implementation partner can cover these tasks, freeing you from all the technical issues.
Change management
RPA adoption brings a new set of responsibilities for all the users affected by new automated processes. If your team is not ready for workflow changes, it can cause frustration, dissatisfaction, and resistance to change habitual routines.
Successful RPA adoption and sustainable operation require commitment and collaboration from an entire automotive organization. A clear vision of how to manage the automation at scale and distribute responsibility is a critical step before launching RPA tools.
Results assessment
Striving for quick wins, business owners can overlook some significant opportunities. Feeling pressed to showcase the immediate benefits, they can focus on less critical but easier-to-implement use cases for the RPA adoption, missing the longer-term vision.
To get the best results from the automation initiative, automotive companies should elaborate an overall strategy capturing the potential value that can be reached by automating large processes. Sustainable results, including operational cost savings, typically require a fundamental organizational transformation.
Automate your automotive business
Robotic process automation can transform multiple processes and digital operations in different business sectors, including automotive. Similarly to industrial robots improving the performance of vehicle assembly lines, RPA bots can handle multiple digital functions vital for automotive business growth. Like any digital transformation initiative, RPA requires a solid implementation strategy and dedicated experts who will take on the project, lead it to a successful rollout, and guarantee its support and maintenance. Itransition’s RPA Center of Excellence is always ready to build unique robotic process automation tools for your organization and help you increase the ROI of your automation project.
Transform your workflows with RPA
FAQ
Should automotive companies replace their legacy software to implement RPA bots?
The level of transformational changes, including the use of legacy software, is discussed separately for each automation project, taking into account the requirements of a particular business. However, RPA is considered non-invasive and can be integrated with automotive software in place.
Can RPA bots work 100% automatically without requiring human supervision and decision-making?
There are different kinds of RPA bots, including unattended, attended, and hybrid robots. The level of human intervention and supervision depends on particular tasks they fulfill and particular use cases within your business workflows.
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