Automating Project Management | Automation Anywhere

Project management aims to deliver the best possible scenarios throughout the organization. One way to move toward this goal is through project management software. RPA adds AI, natural language processing, and machine learning (ML) for a robust solution to everyday project management woes.

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) impacts our teams, workflows, and business processes. It automates manual, repeatable tasks, performing them quickly, accurately, and with high outcome predictability. For example, using software bots, managers can set up workflows and project management tasks with one click for regular projects like onboarding clients or employees.

Whether your organization is large enough for a PMO or so small that the CEO is the sole proprietor, automation software can help streamline your business processes for better outcomes.

What are the benefits of RPA in project management automation?

RPA impacts project management in several ways. First, automation makes project completion faster and easier and reduces time spent on redundant tasks. While these tasks are necessary, using bots allows humans to engage in higher-level tasks.

Increases Productivity

RPA does productivity really well. One way is to streamline workflows throughout the organization and, in doing so, increase the ability for departments to collaborate. In addition, automation helps handle interdepartmental dependencies, including sending notifications to key stakeholders when approvals or additional work is needed.

Scales To Your Needs

One way to build a proof of concept is to use intelligent process discovery, which helps locate where automation can help relieve manual project management processes. It's not unheard of for the first implementation to be for a specific process or stream of relevant processes in the same workflow and then scale up from there.

Ensures Transparency

Project management automation promotes a high level of transparency within the organization. It helps to shed light on each team's productivity and boost team performance with automatic, real-time status updates, templates for deliverables, and easy collaboration. Transparency means more gets done in less time.

Removes Human Error

Let's face it; humans make mistakes. You can mitigate the number of errors by applying automation tools, like IDP, to project management tasks. For example, your OCR software can automatically read documents, identify the data, and file them away to be easily located later.

Task Prioritization

RPA provides intelligent task prioritization based on set criteria. For example, in IT, bots can access tickets and prioritize based on the issue. For CSRs, bots can move tickets to the front of the line. For project planning, prioritization can be set with templates and stored workflows.

Lower Operation Costs

Project teams can use automation to monitor and alert them of potentially costly issues. For example, if someone is overloaded, it can cause bottlenecks. Workflow automation can catch bottlenecks before starting, optimize processes, and reduce overtime to achieve the best results.

Who benefits from the use of RPA in project management automation?

RPA adoption takes the frustration out of manual processes for PMs, allowing team members to adopt the Agile methodology, "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools" better. The benefits are recognizable in every area of the organization.

Financial and Administration

Automation software helps with new project tasks such as cost estimation, cash flow analysis and financial tracking. For example, setting funding limits ensures cash flow is closely aligned to project costs. In addition, bots can notify stakeholders when projects are nearing budget restrictions.

IT Department

When applied to structured, rule-based processes like those in the IT department, RPA shines. For example, onboarding new employees - setting up accounts and passwords, sending new employee surveys, etc - can be done quickly via AARI, the Automation Anywhere Robotic Interface.

Human Resources

HR departments are notorious for backlogs as teams struggle to manage several projects and keep stakeholders updated. Automation can streamline the hiring process, track productivity, manage budgets, etc. It also eliminates the "copy all" email chains that plague businesses.

Customer Services

Automation improves customer response rates, enhancing customer satisfaction. Easily integrating with legacy CRMs, cloud RPA helps CSRs respond quickly and accurately to customer issues. In addition, RPA reduces "please hold" instances, keeping agents with customers and providing better experiences.

CPFL Energia embraces automation so teams have more time to dedicate to analytical and strategy activities

"Automating processes with the Automation Anywhere Enterprise RPA platform has helped us increase employee productivity, mitigate operational risks, and increase customer satisfaction. Now, we can deploy the digital transformation to all CPFL’s groups."

– Aloisio Kukolj, RPA Program Manager

hours saved daily

processes automated in one year

155K

automated transactions/year

Read Case Study

How RPA in project management can help your business

As you can see, project management automation has the ability to benefit every area of an organization across industries. But how can it directly impact your business? Here are a few ways:

Improved Resource Capability Planning

Accurately analyze the impact of project and service delivery on resource capability
Get real-time, accurate insights on employees to locate necessary skill levels for team building
Review company resources for necessary materials, software, and equipment from a single source of truth
Automatically create requirements based on project details entered into a user-friendly dashboard
Forecast toolsets, competencies, project roles, responsibilities, and project pricing
Build out a resource schedule and calendar based on stakeholder availability

Consistent Project Planning

Build and deploy custom workflows based on specified aspects of the project
Accurately forecast the length of time for like projects based on accurate data
Instantly notify key stakeholders when a project is waiting on their approval
Project planners receive organized feedback in a central place for easy review
Notify project leads when there is a change in the status of their requests
Plan better with complete visibility into organizational resources and timelines

Improved Time Spent

Save time logging into multiple apps with Single Sign On (SSO) capabilities
Reduce time spent searching through various data locations with a centralized source of truth
Remove data entry from project management tasks with intelligent document processing
Reduce project development time with continuous monitoring of task status
Create in depth project reports on demand for oversight committees
Save PMs time by automatically performing the repetitive yet straightforward tasks

Better Data Management

Remove human errors by using bots for accurate data entry and retrieval
Track data usage throughout the organization with automatically created audit trails
Securely supply data on demand to project stakeholders with role-based access and metadata management
Update global data in real time from anywhere in the organization
Get better data quality with bots that profile, clean, link and reconcile with a master source
Accurately extract data from unstructured sources with OCR to create searchable metadata

What to look for when using RPA in project management

Project management automation can be applied to developing healthcare initiatives, redeploying an ERP solution, or building out employee training programs. Not all industries are the same; what you need in an RPA platform is dependent on your business.

For example, some industries require a higher degree of security than others. In this case, a key feature would be bank-grade security, encrypted data transfers, and levels of ISO certification.

Food, beverage, and retail industries need to make sure their RPA solution includes being able to integrate with third-party and legacy Point of Sale systems. In addition, companies transitioning to digital would need a cloud-native SaaS flexible enough to embrace their infrastructure.

Does it scale to fit company expansion or downtimes? Can it integrate with your third-party apps and legacy systems? Is it user-friendly? All of these aspects should be considered when choosing your RPA solution.

How to get started

Getting started is as easy as point, click, cloud RPA. Start a free trial to get an idea of the processes you can automate. Then, request a demo for a custom demo led by one of our automation experts, able to answer your product questions or help with a proof of concept.

We also offer role-based learning paths at Automation Anywhere University for hands-on learning. For example, employees can learn how to build bots on our no-code, drag-and-drop dashboard.

START FREE TRIAL REQUEST DEMO

Project Management Automation Resources

Blog

Key reasons why you need a PMO

Blog

6 steps to introduce RPA to your employees

Blog

All your IQ Bot questions answered

Product

Getting started with RPA