Robotic process automation may help to unleash employee creativity?

Global business services (GBS) ecosystem is currently thriving in Lithuania. According to Invest Lithuania, GBS industry has contributed 1,5% to the country’s GDP in 2019. To date, the majority of the international companies in Lithuania are continuously creating new products as well as implement innovative business development solutions. Robotic process automation (RPA) is one of those solutions. Currently, around 85% of the services centres in the world are deploying RPA.

With the increasing amount of work that requires creativity and the new generation entering the labour market companies have to implement more interesting employment opportunities. Consequently, to look for innovative solutions to improve their operating efficiency and the quality of customer services. Automation of repetitive processes, rule-based tasks, which usually are mundane generally more mundane is one of the solutions. Deployment of RPA in the company provides more opportunities for employees to spend more time on high added value tasks and creative thinking.

In Lithuania, 34% of GBS centres have already adopted RPA solutions. According to Gintautas Jonutis, Head of Automation Center of Excellence at Western Union, such processes are just a first phase. They are followed by the implementation of automated controls and creation of high added value jobs.

“Western Union in Lithuania has created more than 100 robots that carry out about two million of successful tasks per year helping teams to work more efficiently and to spend more time on more creative work. However, this is only the initial step. The company is looking for more innovative solutions based on the methods of data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence that would pave the way for building essentially new processes within the company,” Jonaitis said.

“Process automation is only the first step that allows organizations to see quick results and enables employees to improve their competencies or to requalify. This is particularly important in order to start training talents for adopting more sophisticated technologies: data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence,” Mantas Katinas, the Director of Invest Lithuania said.

For half a year now, Invest Lithuania has been actively investigating the impact of RPA on the GBS industry both in Lithuania and globally. The need for upskilling and reskilling as well as lack of a titht-knitted community are some of the most important measures that have to be taken in order to strengthen RPA presence in Lithuania. At the moment a requalification project is pending and new study programmes are being approved by universities. Attempts are being made by Invest Lithuania and Create Lithuania to build a processes automation community and to organise the first meeting of the GBS’s that are deploying RPA. This is an unprecedented initiative, as only individual activities are made in other countries.  without looking for complex solutions. Creating such a community and searching for complex solutions will strengthen the role of Lithuania in the fields of cognitive automation and artificial intelligence.