All these gift-giving holidays and family events can be a logistical nightmare. If we could just fast-forward to the actual FUN part of giving and receiving gifts, and sitting down for dinner, that would be excellent. It’s almost like the holidays are….work!
At Smartbridge, some of us sat around wondering just what it would be like if we could apply Robotic Process Automation to our personal lives. We’ve already played with bots that set meetings, create task lists, and set reminders. But what if they could manage the things about Christmas and New Year’s that make some of us cringe?
Here are some ideas to make the holidays easier with RPA. While some of these may be too late for this year, you have 11 months to build a bot for next year!
Have one of your own? Share them with us on LinkedIn, Facebook or Twitter!
Triage Present Wrapping !
Use your order shipping email updates to build your calendar for when gifts will arrive. Then create a to-do list that sorts your present wrapping by when you have the gifts and when you’ll be seeing that person.
Now that FedEx, UPS and even USPS allow for free accounts to monitor any mail going to your address, you will receive more package tracking notices than you can probably handle.
Build your gift list.
Do you have the tendency to forget people at the last minute? Maybe RPA can fix that for you. Simply by monitoring your digital activities over the year, you can build a list of people you engage with, ranked by frequency. You’ll have a list in November that will include Nancy this time (sorry about last year, Nancy!).
Do you have too many friends and family? Are you “friends” with hundreds on Facebook? Have a bot share a personal message of best wishes on the profiles of your social media connections. Nothing says “I’m thinking of you during the holidays” more than a bot doing all the work!
Create your New Year's Resolutions
What’s that Mr. Bot? I need to stick to my deadlines? Maybe be more responsive to emails or private messages? Using NLP and sentiment analysis, a bot will pick up on negative trends in your inbox. Maybe you have too many emails that sound like this: “Please provide an update ASAP, we’re waiting!”. A bot will come up with your New Year’s resolutions in style. It could even hold you to them. Time management resolutions, anyone?
It doesn’t take much to come up with ideas to automate the holidays. The trick is to understand the complexity that may come with deploying a bot to do a task – is it more of a headache than it’s worth?
At least in the professional world, that’s one thing Smartbridge excels at. Assessing your potential for RPA and the value it could bring over the long-term is an art. Maybe putting up with a Christmas task for 2 weeks isn’t the best case for RPA, but it sure is fun imagining what the future could be like! Though, anything that is repetitive in nature could equate to a simple bot that takes some of the stress out of the holidays. It’s just a matter of how much you hate shopping… ☺
Keep Reading: Getting Started with RPA
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