Robotic process automation is easily adaptable to a large number of industries; it is the right glove for finance, healthcare, banking, accounting and more. RPA and the utilities industry is also one of these well matched technology - industry mixes.

This industry sector provides us with the basics of the civilized world. Water, gas, or electricity supplies are some of the things that we can hardly conceive our lives without. Robotic process automation is not there yet.

Nevertheless, we wish to argue that utilities and RPA go great together. Why? In the first place, it is worth mentioning the case of an energy company in the UK, presented in a paper from The Outsourcing Unit Working Research Paper Series. Back office robots have processed over 1 million transactions per month, which led to a 200% ROI the year after implementation. So confidence in the feasibility and thus the goodness of the match is justified by past experience. What’s next?

Let us now list 7 aspects that further justify, even call for, your future choice to implement RPA in your utilities company.

1.Many vital processes in the utilities industry are amenable to automation

The damages of human error interfering in capacity metering, for instance, could be higher than you are willing to pay, because customer satisfaction is more important than ever in these times of transformation that we experience in Australia. This is why it is wise to be open to automations

Metering, billing and settlements, consumption management, customer records management, complaints resolution, or customer transfer are some just a few examples of the repetitive processes that could be better, faster and more efficiently performed by software robots. But of course, not everything goes! The intrinsic need for creativity and divergent thinking would keep processes such as strategy advancement and control outside the scope of automation (for now at least).

Below we have a case study of an Australian company from the utilities industry that used robotic process automation to automate asset management database updates.