Unattended Automation Examples, Management, and Optimization

When you search for unattended automation on Google, many articles and videos come up displaying the difference between running unattended and attended bots.  

AI Multiple and TechTarget, for instance, provide summaries of both unattended and attended types of robotic process automation. However, resources like these don’t dig deep enough into managing and optimizing unattended automations for their industry.   

In this article, Developer and Cloud Evangelist at OpenBots, Nicole Carrero breaks down the mechanics of using unattended automation to improve your business. 

What Is Unattended Automation? 

Robotic process automations (RPA) are “unattended” when they run independently without human input. The automation can perform tasks any time of the day for an unlimited amount of time without relying on help from a user. 

These processes run in the background as they trigger and complete tasks automatically. Unattended robots are the ones who run the automations without the need of a human because they work on their own. Many businesses consider this end-to-end automation since these robots can execute entire processes independently.   

OpenBots uses these robots to automate back-office processes at scale using Cloud Server, Agent, and scripts created in the Studio. Cloud Server is an RPAaaS orchestration tool that allows organizations to operate automations on a preset schedule or workflow.

Unattended Automation Industry Examples 

Here are examples of unattended automations that are in use today: 

• Finance & Accounting: processing invoices 
• Retail: sending receipts or inventory management 
• Human Resources: onboarding and off-boarding clients 
• Payroll: processing and voiding checks 
• Customer Support: chatbots 
• Healthcare: claims processing and documentation 
• Other Industries: emailing notifications to users and data entry or data processing
• Additional case studies and examples can be found here.   

Challenges of Unattended Automation 

Unattended automation sounds like an excellent way to optimize processes in an organization, yet businesses need to be mindful of some challenges with using such technology.   

If something goes wrong during the automation, this stops the entire workflow. Logic needs to be set in place to combat any exceptions or issues that may arise and alert the organization that an error has occurred.  

Related Read: Which Processes Can Be Automated Using RPA: Top Use Cases  

With OpenBots products, developers can throw exceptions, raise business events, send logs with screenshots, and send emails to combat this issue. Businesses need to remember that formulaic or rule-based processes with explicit steps are the best tasks suited for automation. 

Anything a bit more subjective or complex would not be a good candidate for automation in general. It needs to be kept in mind that automations are meant to be repetitive, high-volume, and simple with step-by-step instructions. 

Benefits of Unattended Automation 

Although there can be challenges in building an automation, it reaps many more benefits. Running unattended automations reduces operating costs because the bot does not have to wait or depend on a human to continue its work. This means they have a limitless capacity to operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.   

As a result, it immediately improves ROI since it removes workers from the tasks entirely and increases productivity as unattended bots can take on repetitive, rule-based processes from start to finish. It also eliminates human margin for error and frees employees from repetitive work or tasks to handle the more complex issues at hand. 

Related read: The Benefits of RPA in the Insurance, Banking, and Financial Services Industries

Since the process runs repeatedly, it improves compliance by following rules to the letter every time. Unattended automations are designed to collect, sort, analyze, and disburse large amounts of data in a record amount of time and can be accessed remotely.   

Unattended bots can run on workstations, servers, or using RPA in the cloud. This remote access promotes seamless task executions as users can have complete oversight over the bot’s activities through the Cloud Server’s scheduling, reporting, auditing, monitoring, and modification tools. 

Unattended Automation Management 

Since unattended robots can run seamlessly in the background, it is imperative that these bots are managed appropriately and optimized to ensure the best use of time and energy is spent on doing the task it was intended to do.  

Cloud Server is a management tool that is meant to be a centralized hub for all the organization’s automations so users can have a greater capacity to collaborate and communicate with the automation platform. Scheduling allows the users to set time frames in which the bots will run from every few minutes to every week.  

Reporting allows logs to be shown to the user along with any additional screenshots sent to monitor and ensure the automation is running as expected.  

The auditing feature allows users to monitor all changes that are being made in the Cloud Server, as modifications may be necessary as changes in a process may be made for improvement or bug fixes. 

Unattended Automation Optimization 

To optimize unattended automations, businesses should remember that they need to execute batch operations that do not require human interaction. These operations should be on a preset schedule that is not too fast or too slow for the process to complete in the time frame given or triggered by a predetermined set of facts or rules. 

Related read: Three Steps to Starting a Successful RPA Program 

By managing and optimizing unattended bots, these automations will allow companies to scale quickly as they experience fluctuations in customer demand. This means that employees will not be needed for tasks such as managing inventory, processing orders, or handling payments. 

Improve Your Business With Unattended RPA 

Automating processes so that humans only need to schedule, monitor, and manage can positively impact a company. As long as these bots are managed and optimized using efficient methods, companies will see how beneficial unattended automations can be.  

OpenBots applications such as Cloud Server, Studio, and Agent are great places to start creating, managing, and optimizing bots as there are plenty of features that will enable companies to run unattended bots from anywhere successfully.   

To get more information on how to get started automating with OpenBots, check out our tutorials and certifications, as well as programs to get started automating today, such as OpenBots QuickPacks.