How does RPA work in manufacturing and retail?

Sales and production are two important processes in the business model of every business. Both these processes need to be improved and modern technologies applied to improve labor productivity. Currently, many companies have switched to a fully automated production and sales model. The software robot they use is Robotic Process Automation. The following article of WinActor will introduce you to the applications of RPA in production and sales.

RPA in Retail

The sales system includes a lot of different jobs. In the past, without the help of RPA, companies would spend a lot of money hiring labor to carry out sales work. Since software robots appeared, everything has become easier. Businesses also feel more secure when the accuracy of RPA is almost absolute. Here are some of the jobs RPA is doing in retail systems.

Business and Sales Analytics

In business strategy, sales analysis is the key to their successful implementation. RPA will replace them to perform analysis and synthesis of necessary data to build specific directions and strategies. The software robot automates this sales analysis by providing reports based on several factors:

• Data
• Purchase history
• The customer’s preference
• User behavior related to specific aspects of the product

With this report, businesses can analyze in detail why customers are dropping or not using their products. From there, you will have new directions to retain customers. In addition, RPA analysis also helps predict and support the optimization of the company’s stock.

Product Categorization

Product sorting is a difficult and time-consuming job for employees. To make the correct classification, they will have to go through a thorough research process and consider many factors. Sometimes, employees will be confused at a certain step leading to the wrong product classification.

For example, a product will need to be studied for the following factors before classification: market demand, country, characteristics, storage order. If you do not learn all the information, product classification will be difficult, and confusion will occur.

Therefore, businesses have applied Robotic Process Automation to the goods classification process. You only need to install the program for RPA and set the conditions required to classify a product. RPA will remember and correctly classify each product into the appropriate category. From there, working performance will be significantly improved. Employees will not have to do stressful, boring jobs.

Demand-Supply Planning

What is Demand-Supply Planning? This is a term to refer to the supplier’s supply planning work based on user demand for a certain product. Traditionally, businesses would plan supply and demand by collecting data, normalizing data, and other similar activities. Because supply and demand planning is completely manual, sometimes the data will not be accurate. The planning work is only guesswork, and reliability is average.

When applying RPA to the retail sector, the work of supply and demand planning will be automated. The software robot can extract and synthesize data with high reliability. From there, business owners can make the right decisions based on available data for asset management, customer support, supplier management, and more.

Marketing Planning

Marketing Planning is essential in the retail business process. However, using manual labor for this operation will take a lot of time and cost. Why? Because marketing planning is a job that requires accurate data collection and analysis. If we do not effectively implement these two stages, the planning will not succeed.

Thus, RPA has been applied to this field to assist businesses with successful marketing planning. Software robots can collect and synthesize data much faster and more accurately than humans.

For example, discount management is essential in the food industry. It is a marketing planning activity aimed at improving product sales. If we don’t know the user’s data, preferences, and needs, we can’t discount the product.

RPA in Manufacturing

RPA is applied in the retail process, but it also supports businesses in the manufacturing processes.

Bill of Materials

The Bill of Materials (BOM) is an ever-changing raw material, parts, components, and customer products to create new products. The job of the staff is to refer to the document to master the necessary information. Then, they will come up with ideas about where to buy, what products to buy and how to purchase. If this work happens wrong, it will cause heavy losses for the business.

Using RPA for BOM will help companies plan effectively, minimizing data processing errors. From there, businesses will create products faster, with high data accuracy and on-time completion.

Administration and reporting

Operating is a very difficult job for every business. The management department will have to manage a lot of different jobs to cover the company. To relieve pressure on the management department, RPA was applied to perform on their behalf. 

RPA will handle all reports on production activities and some other work. From there, businesses can make accurate decisions and run their business more efficiently.

Customer Support and Service Desk

Customer service is an important factor determining the success of the company. Process automation will help businesses improve the quality of customer care and support services. RPA is used for the following tasks:

• Notice, remind customers
• Maintain a contact schedule if a customer makes a complaint
• Search and synthesize necessary data for customers in a short time

Above are some activities of RPA in the field of manufacturing and retail. Not only stopping at the above 7 applications, but RPA also has many other applications in these 2 areas. For the production model to be optimized, business processes to be understood, RPA is essential. Because it is an important tool to help businesses make breakthrough decisions, creating a premise for the company’s development.

>> Read more: How does RPA work