Several of my colleagues have recently been commenting on the impact of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) on the workforce. Not only will it change the nature of our work on a day-to-day basis, it will also influence whom and for how long we work for the same organisation. This will affect the Not for Profit sector as well, as work patters change significantly over the next few years.
RPA is a software ‘robot’ that can sit in a company’s IT environment (on a server or desktop) and perform ‘robotic’ tasks. RPA mimics or maps tasks performed by a person in various systems and data sources (eg excel) into a repeatable activity to be run by the bot. Many of these tasks are manual, repetitive, laborious, slow and error-prone, leading to compliance issues, inefficiencies, poor customer experience and demotivated employees.
Not-for-profit organisations encounter many of the same challenges that other businesses face. RPA is ideal for reducing the time that scarce human resources spend on manual tasks. This can include entering data into accounting systems, generating reports, performing reconciliations, rekeying data into multiple systems or generally manipulating and moving data around.
Over the last number of years, one of the major challenges faced by all charities, community and voluntary organisations, has related to the increasing costs incurred in respect compliance and the lack of funding received specific to these costs. Whether the compliance obligations are required by funders, regulators or purely to ensure an increase in transparency to the public, there are many instances of duplication in reporting and information requests.
There have been many calls on the Government to act to reduce this duplication in reporting and information requests as well as the need to provide for the significant costs of compliance facing these bodies.
