Robotic Process Automation (RPA) for Marketers [An Expert Interview with Charlie Weidman]

As a marketer, you know that anything that saves you time or money is good for business. This is especially true for tasks you need to complete on a regular basis. And if your business is like most, there are plenty of these kinds of items on your organization’s To-Do list.

Whether it’s researching information on prospects on the internet or manually transferring data from one spreadsheet or database to another, these critical processes are nevertheless a drain on your finite resources. What if there was a tool that would let you check the box on these kinds of tasks quickly, efficiently, and with little to zero human interaction?

Can Marketers Leverage RPA?

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with Charlie Weidman, an expert in the rapidly evolving field of robotic process automation (RPA), to talk about whether “software robots” can help marketers work more efficiently. Now, a quick point of clarification: these “robots” are not the physical kind you see swarming around car frames in manufacturing plants to weld pieces in place. In RPA, the robots are small software programs that execute simple and very specific tasks.

For example, a software robot might be designed to help clean your customer database by determining if past purchasers are still in business. Or it could automatically search the web for companies in a specified city that meet certain criteria and populate a database with key pieces of information about those organizations. Why use a robot to perform these kinds of tasks? As Charlie explained to me, there are a number of reasons:

• Cost savings. A task that might take human worker hours each week to complete can be performed by a software robot in minutes or even seconds. And, of course, time is money.
• Accuracy. Even the most diligent human workers make mistakes from time to time. Software robots do not. They function with 100 percent accuracy every time they execute.
• Better resource allocation. With software robots handling repetitive, mundane tasks, your team is freed up to focus on higher-level, more valuable work.

In the 5-minute long interview below, Charlie shares how marketers can use robotic process automation to work more efficiently:

4 Key Takeaways on RPA for Marketers

If you don’t have time to watch the video right now, here are some additional takeaways from my conversation with Charlie regarding RPA and its usefulness for marketers:

• The sky’s the limit as far as what software robots can do. If it’s a data-related process, a bot can be developed to automate it.
• You don’t need IT support to implement software robots (what Buddha Logic refers to as Buddha Botz). With some guidance and training from a provider like Buddha Logic, you can quickly become self-sufficient.
• RPA is a very cost-effective way to handle repetitive tasks, and the ROI can be significant.
• Once you’ve created a software robot, it’s easy to duplicate and tweak that bot to take on other tasks.

Conclusion

Can your company use RPA to streamline operations, reduce costs, and increase profitability? In many cases (if not most cases), the answer is “Yes!” The team at Buddha Logic is happy to talk with you about your needs, and I am happy to put you in touch with them. Contact me to learn more.