Let’s try to understand what individual terms in RPA mean:

• Robotic: This term relates to robots, which are designed to mimic humans and their actions.
• Process: It is an activity that comprises a series of steps performed to get a specific end result. For instance, making tea is a process, and it involves several small steps such as boiling water, adding tea powder, sugar, milk and so on in required quantities to get the desired taste.
• Automation: This refers to the use of automation for performing the process. In this case, the robot functions as the automated equipment.

When we read all these definitions together, RPA can be defined as an activity where a robot mimics human actions to perform a series of steps aimed to achieve a desired result, to reduce operation time and error

RPA in eCommerce can be deployed at various levels to reduce time, efforts, and investment, as well as boost efficiencies of processes that would otherwise need heavy human intervention or heavy upfront investments.

Over the years, eCommerce has evolved for the better due to the rapidly changing technology landscape. Today, it has become more customer-centric than before. As an experienced eCommerce and web data operation company we understand it better than anyone else. We have been helping our clients implement RPA in eCommerce efficiently. There are various RPA use cases for eCommerce that can support your business needs.

Our complete understanding of processes involved in eCommerce such as warehouse management system, invoice processing, merchandising, product data upload, data creation, vendor coordination, eCommerce chat support, customer care, refund processing has enabled us to support our clients through RPA in eCommerce adaptations. Our experiences have also helped in deriving multiple Use Case of RPA in eCommerce.

When we read all these definitions together, RPA can be defined as an activity where a robot mimics human actions to perform a series of steps aimed to achieve a desired result, to reduce operation time and error

RPA in eCommerce can be deployed at various levels to reduce time, efforts, and investment, as well as boost efficiencies of processes that would otherwise need heavy human intervention or heavy upfront investments.

Over the years, eCommerce has evolved for the better due to the rapidly changing technology landscape. Today, it has become more customer-centric than before. As an experienced eCommerce and web data operation company we understand it better than anyone else. We have been helping our clients implement RPA in eCommerce efficiently. There are various RPA use cases for eCommerce that can support your business needs.

Our complete understanding of processes involved in eCommerce such as warehouse management system, invoice processing, merchandising, product data upload, data creation, vendor coordination, eCommerce chat support, customer care, refund processing has enabled us to support our clients through RPA in eCommerce adaptations. Our experiences have also helped in deriving multiple Use Case of RPA in eCommerce.

Here is the view of How RPA in eCommerce is deployed

• Stock updating and Stock keeping by Robots using RPA: This is one of the most complex processes in eCommerce. Now, retailers and eCommerce players can take advantage of RPA for automating the process. Commonly, eCommerce players receive stock update requests from brands or suppliers. These requests are usually processed in CMS, ERP, or other places. Many times, these systems are not connected and do not offer a unified view to eCommerce businesses, thereby leading to confusions and errors. All these issues can be avoided by using robots, which can be deployed for updating stock information based on inputs from multiple systems. RPA can offer great advantages to retailers who may be publishing their products across various channels apart from their eCommerce portal. In such situations, manually performing stock checking across these websites and maintaining files and formats may be difficult for a retailer. RPA can be utilized to create stock keeping files and formats which differ across various marketplaces and channels.
• Invoice processing with OCR support by RPA: Invoice processing is one of the common RPA use case in eCommerce. It has been implemented on a large scale across industries that demand huge investment in terms of human resources to replicate image data or PDF into the Excel of the ERP system. RPA can process up to 10K invoices or more in a day, which otherwise would take several days and months for humans to process.
• Product Data upload and QC using RPA: Data operations is another use case for RPA in eCommerce. A RPA process can bet set to eliminate repetitive tasks such as uploading image folder on CDN, product data quality check, uploading and creating products on CMS, quality check to see if the products are uploaded correctly, as well as tagged accordingly.
• Deployment of RPA for Vendor Support: Robots can be used to improve the productivity of the eRetailer vendor and catalog support team. These robots can be programmed to identify tickets, set priorities based on the activity and other factors, as well as tag them to a particular ticket, track and update the vendor about the open ticket and so on.
• eCommerce Merchandising with the support of RPA: This is another interesting use of RPA in eCommerce Deployment, large websites can use robots for scheduling processes that help them to run promo, create time or occasion-based offers to boost their sales, and also perform bulk operations, which is otherwise not supported by legacy CMS systems.
• Chat and Customer Care using RPA: Customer support forms the base of any eRetailer. All the use cases discussed to this point were either directly or indirectly related to the customer support. Automation is nowadays used to guide customers through categories and to answer their queries. The bot can be used to produce better customer experience, as well as manager product returns faster.
• Catalog Automation: Catalog creation involves product data sourcing, tagging, and many activities, which requires a lot of effort from the catalog team. RPA can be used to ease the process. It can be programmed to perform tagging based on rules, or category guidelines. This will help avoid errors and ensure efficiency of a repetitive task.
• Price Comparison and Assortment intelligence: There are various technology solutions available for assortment intelligence and price comparisons with heavy upfront investment. A simple use case of RPA in eCommerce can creating a process which picks competition data including assortment details, prices, and produces a comparison analysis, which would be read by the merchandising leader to win over the competition.

RPA can help reduce operation cost and streamline multiple eCommerce processes, but the key is to understand the process in detail, map all touchpoints and understand the impact.

At Sirius Alpha, we understand the requirements of eCommerce lifecycle across different categories from luxury fashion to hardware and have a vast experience working across multiple levels of vendor and catalog management with an in-depth understanding, experience, and knowledge of various processes involved from invoicing to shipping. This enables us to guide you through the RPA deployment using both unaided or aided RPA for your eCommerce vision.