Role of RPA Business Analysts & Their Importance

RPA is abbreviated as Robotic process automation, which in any organisation converts some of the most repetitive and mundane activities and tasks that are computer-based by automating them. It has become one of the popular automation technologies. As a result, several job roles have emerged to make using this technology easier. One such employment avenue is that of an RPA Business Analyst.   

The best part of employing RPA Business Analysts is that they streamline and accelerate the work process. Generally, a Business Analyst evaluates and assesses data from different sources. While performing such analysis, there is a possibility that the process becomes continuous, and there would be a presence of manual errors. This is where RPA gets into the picture.   

According to Grand View Research, the global RPA market size will increase at a CAGR of 34% between 2020-27 to reach about £9.15 billion valuation by 2027. Check out this blog to learn about RPA Business Analyst, their roles and responsibilities, and their importance in business. Read more! 

Table of Contents 

1) Role of an RPA Business Analyst  

   a) Identification of Business Requirements 

   b) Analysis of Business Processes 

   c) Proposal of a Plan 

   d) Providing Solution 

   e) Testing and Reviewing 

   f) Update Final Report 

2) Why there is a need for an RPA Business Analyst 

3) Skills needed for any RPA Business Analyst 

   a) Having Strong Communication Skills 

   b) Knowledge of Business Trends 

   c) Database Management Skills 

   d) Documentation Skills 

   e) Knowing Tools in RPA 

   f) Logical Thinking and Problem-Solving Skills 

4) Conclusion 

Role of an RPA Business Analyst 
 

A Business Analyst in any organisation understands a customer’s needs, desires, and motivation and translates them into technical requirements. These analysts prepare a business document, communicate with the customers and discuss the development of new business processes with the technical team. To bridge the gap between the customer and technical team, they need to know both about the technical aspects, as well as the functionalities of the business. This business documentation, once understood by these analysts, is converted into instructions or processes that are implemented by programmers so that they can finally create software.   

However, an RPA Business Analyst must closely monitor business processes and identify potential automatable processes as well as potential pitfalls. The RPA Business Analyst, in most cases, has the following roles: 

Identification of business requirements 

An RPA Business Analyst identifies the business requirements that can help the company perform better. Such individuals also determine the processes that need automation and collaborate with different teams to find the best solutions to fulfil the firms’ objectives.   

Analysis of business processes 

The next role of an RPA Business Analyst is to analyse business processes by collecting data from various sources. These analysed data are then shared with the team to make them understand the processes and loopholes present, if any. In addition, they are also responsible for predicting the results based on past data. 

Proposal of a plan 

An RPA Business Analyst identifies potential automation opportunities and proposes a plan that aligns with the company’s targets and strategic direction. They must ensure the tasks are carried out correctly and within the time limit by interacting with the various teams and departments. 

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Providing solution 

An RPA Business Analyst should identify and give support for solution designs for production challenges and enhancements during collaboration with the business and the RPA team. This is a crucial role for a Business Analyst because the scalability of the RPA client architecture is assessed by providing the appropriate solution proposal. 

Testing and reviewing 

RPA Business Analyst reviews and tests the proposed solution developed by the development team to check for errors and ensure that the solution matches the customer's requirement. If there is any deviation from the customer's requirement, the corrections needed to be done in the solution proposal will be updated to the development team.  

Update final report

An RPA Business Analyst is responsible for developing both the Process Description Document (PDD) and Solution Design Document (SDD) in any organisation. These documents will be prepared to record and report the final outcomes. 
 

Why there is a need for an RPA Business Analyst 

We know that RPA can be used for converting some of the most repetitive and mundane activities and tasks by the approach of Automation. However, a lot of manual processes consist of unnecessary steps that can be identified by and removed by an experienced Business Analyst. The sole purpose of any organisation is to automate such processes so that they can achieve cost reduction by minimising operations. However, the non-availability of skilled resources and talent can make organisations neglect some steps in designing RPA that are critical, resulting in believing the ability of human judgement when such algorithms could have been applied for a better and consistent decision-making process. 

Some Benefits for specialising in RPA for a Business Analyst 

Following are some of the benefits of becoming an RPA Business Analyst:  

1) RPA can make a Business Analyst's work less tedious because it can easily deal with a large chunk of a database, as manually dealing with such a massive amount of data is difficult and can be prone to errors. This extensive database, irrespective of its structure, can be processed quickly and produce readable output.   

2) With the help of RPA, business analysts can reduce their team's workload by increasing the pace and quality of the job. Automating data-driven tasks will also help the team become increasingly productive as machines can work for a longer time, thereby making things quicker and with high precision.    

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Skills needed for any RPA Business Analyst 

There are definite skills that are needed for any RPA Business Analyst. Some of them include technical and management skills, cognitive skills, and, last but not least, a mandatory knowledge of the usage of RPA tools. We will discuss all those skills in this section below:    
  

Having strong communication skills 

A typical Business Analyst should have excellent communication skills because they need to understand what the client needs and deliver his outcomes based on their requirement. A lack of proper communication channels will lead to massive loss to the organisation because, ultimately, a Business Analyst acts as a bridge between RPA technical team and the client.      

Knowledge of business trends 

The next skill required for any RPA Business Analyst is the knowledge of the current trends in business by knowing every minute information about the business process. Business Analysts must also keep themselves up to date and be keen to learn new developments quickly. This results in a solution that will make the business profitable. In addition, the detail-oriented thought process of an RPA Business Analyst will help them find the weak points of the organisation, identify potential automation opportunities, and propose a plan for RPA strategy. 

Database management skills 

An individual can do the classification and evaluation of data sets with prior data analytics knowledge. Based on this evaluation, they can make the organisation understand the importance of this interpretation and improvise operations by recommending changes. With awareness of Database Management, Business Analysts know how to handle and alter data to make better decisions. 

Documentation skills 

An RPA Business Analyst is responsible for developing both the Process Description Document (PDD) and Solution Design Document (SDD) in any organisation. The creation of PDD is critical because a flaw in PDD will lead to failure, which will be detected during the RPA Life cycle testing phase. Therefore, this document needs to be genuine, complete, and changeable. Hence, Documentation Skill is a mandatory skill for an RPA Business Analyst as they assist the team by providing insights from the documentation. 

Knowing tools in RPA 

The different types of RPA tools by organisations are listed below:  

a) Automation Anywhere: Automation Anywhere is a web-based management system that follows a distributed architecture. It has three main components that achieve tasks by working together. They are Bot Creator, Bot Runner, and Control Room. The control room acts as the backbone of the architecture of this tool, and all the tasks to be automated are executed through this control room. This popular tool can automate complex activity through a robust and simpler RPA capability.  

b) Blue Prism: Blue Prism is the next RPA tool developed using Java Programming Language that automates clerical back-office processes with the help of software robots that function exactly like a human professional. This tool provides agility and cost-effectiveness in business operations by automating rule-based, repetitive tasks, thereby developing a Digital Workforce to improvise accuracy.    

c) Kofax Kapow: Kofax RPA is an AI-powered platform where business processes can be automated using smart software robots that run for hours and days. Using a centralised server, this RPA tool can develop, place and manage automated robots that can interact across websites, web portals, desktop applications, and internal enterprise systems without API scripting and complex coding.  

d) UiPath: UiPath tool in RPA is used for the automation of Windows desktops that can eliminate human intervention and automate repetitive tasks by using drag and drop functionality. 

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Logical Thinking and Problem-Solving Skills 

An RPA Business Analyst should think logically and have a knack for problem-solving because they are the ones who are the collaborators between the Robotics RPA tech team and key stakeholders. The reason is that during the RPA process, they must inspect, report and communicate solutions. If there exists any problem within the process, they should be able to look at the problem and solve it. 

Conclusion 

After reading this blog, we hope you have understood the various Roles and Responsibilities of a typical Business Analyst in RPA. The career path for the role of business analyst in RPA is fantastic, as it provides a lucrative career path and rapid growth. However, this profile is also critical and significantly impacts the company's performance as it assists an organisation in the cost-cutting of its operation. 

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