English
In a not-so-distant future, where technology seamlessly intertwines with everyday life, there exists a bustling (hypothetical) financial business called GoldCorp. Or, it seems to be bustling – from the outside. But at the heart of GoldCorp’s business processes are tons of complex, time-consuming, repetitive tasks.
The business faces challenges
GoldCorp’s employees are tired, overworked and bored. They want to do more interesting work. They want to use their creativity and stay engaged. Their work effort starts waning, and because of that, profitability and customer services also suffer. GoldCorp’s leaders worry they’re falling behind their competitors. The organization isn’t meeting its efficiency targets, and more and more employees are leaving the company. It’s not going well.
Let’s zoom in. Andrea has landed her dream job at GoldCorp – at least, that’s what she thought when she accepted the position. But since day one, she’s had a rocky start.
New employee woes
First, Andrea’s new employee onboarding takes longer than expected and she doesn’t get the hardware or software she needs to get started. The human resources (HR) team scrambles to get Andrea’s paperwork together and ensures she learns all of GoldCorp’s best practices. But by the time Andrea’s laptop comes in, she has missed half of her mandatory training and is launched straight into the deep end feeling ill-prepared.
Errors, inefficiencies and bad processes
Unfortunately, Andrea’s nightmare doesn’t end there. Once she digs into her work, she finds it rife with human errors, missing information and incorrect calculations. Slow logging and data entry have left their mark on GoldCorp’s business data. And since the company uses so many different systems and applications, Andrea spends half her day just clicking from one tab to the next, searching for the right information, then typing it up by hand.
Within her first month at GoldCorp, Andrea thinks about leaving. There’s no way she can stay on top of all this work! But then, Andrea discovers how robotic process automation (RPA) can help.
All the tasks slowing Andrea and her colleagues down – and costing the business tons of money in operational costs – can be simply solved by applying RPA. Andrea digs into RPA’s capabilities at once:
What are the capabilities of RPA?
RPA uses digital assistants, or “bots”, as they’re affectionately called, to perform mundane tasks with lightning speed and precision. They sift through mountains of data, extract relevant information and generate comprehensive reports in a fraction of the time it would take a human.
With their tireless efficiency, the RPA software robots can revolutionize GoldCorp’s business operations and make Andrea’s job easier! She shares this idea with her coworkers, but some people are worried these digital assistants will take over their jobs. Andrea decides to dig beyond the surface-level capabilities of RPA:
Will RPA take over human jobs?
Andrea discovers how technologies like RPA can augment her and her colleagues’ work, allowing them to get back to the exciting, strategic initiatives they were hired for. With RPA taking over mundane processes, Andrea and her team can actually do more – and better – activities. They can upskill, stay engaged and ensure new hires get the best onboarding experience to prepare them for their new role.
Andrea wants to share RPA with GoldCorp’s team leaders. But before she can do that, she has to understand the technology fully. How does RPA work? Who can use it? And how much will it cost the business? Andrea types in her next search:
What are the core functionalities of RPA?
What she uncovers is a wellspring of untapped potential. RPA isn’t just about automating repetitive tasks; it can adapt and learn, becoming more intelligent with each interaction. All it takes is artificial intelligence (AI) infused with business process management (BPM). That cognitive concoction of digital technologies creates intelligent automation (IA).
Okay, so RPA is a component of intelligent automation (also called business process automation). RPA automates tasks. IA can take that automation further to cover end-to-end enterprise automation solutions.
Andrea can already see RPA’s benefits and continues her research by listing out the challenges she and her colleagues have faced in the past. If RPA can solve these, it might be just the solution she’s looking for:
What are the features of RPA?
Business challenges |
RPA’s features |
How it works |
|---|---|---|
Disparate systems and applications. |
User interface (UI) automation. | RPA software can interact with various applications and systems through its UI, mimicking human actions to move files, click, type, and copy and paste data. |
Boring, repetitive tasks. |
Rules-based processing. | RPA follows predefined rules and instructions to execute tasks, making them ideal for repetitive, predictable workflows. |
Time-consuming work that keeps piling up, making business growth impossible. |
Scalability. | RPA solutions can scale up or down according to business needs. You can automate across processes, departments and functions. |
Information is difficult to track down. |
Automated data extraction. | RPA extracts data from structured or semi-structured sources and inputs it automatically into other systems or databases accurately and quickly to aid decision-making. |
Overly complex workflows. |
Workflow orchestration. | Often, RPA includes tools for designing and orchestrating complex workflows. You can automate end-to-end processes with multiple steps and systems. |
Old systems and databases are hard to navigate and keep up to date. |
Seamless integration. | RPA tools can integrate with existing IT infrastructure including legacy systems, databases, web services and APIs without requiring significant changes or updates. |
Errors are missed and difficult to spot. |
Error handling and exception management. | You can program RPA bots to handle errors and exceptions, with built-in mechanisms for logging, alerting and retrying failed tasks. RPA bots work efficiently and accurately to reduce errors. |
Logging and tracking activities take way too long and requires lots of paperwork. |
Audit trails and compliance reporting. | Most RPA platforms offer features for tracking and auditing bot activities, helping ensure compliance with accurate, detailed logs. |
It's almost impossible to calculate if the business is meeting its goals or how people are performing. |
Real-time analytics. | RPA solutions often provide real-time analytics so you can monitor bot performance, identify optimization opportunities and track ROI. |
What are some use cases for RPA?
Andrea finds an example of where RPA can help a financial services institution analyze a wide range of complex financial data. The RPA bot, or digital worker, can analyze the data in real time to provide actionable insights to decision-makers. And that’s just one example. The more research she does, Andrea finds tons of RPA use cases and knows she can help her organization get all the benefits of RPA.
She learns about the largest global fund administrator, SS&C GlobeOp, who used SS&C Blue Prism RPA to reduce their loan process handling times by 57% and eliminate the need for time-consuming corrections.
She finds another example from one of the world’s largest independent investment management firms, Shroders, who used SS&C Blue Prism IA to save 5,000 hours a month in the business. IA digital workers checked their fact sheets with 100% accuracy.
The last case study she finds strikes a familiar chord. Discover Financial Services used SS&C Blue Prism IA to improve employee and customer satisfaction. They returned 1 million annualized hours to the business and helped their employees level up their skills.
Developing an RPA business case
Armed with all that proof, Andrea collaborates with her team to develop an RPA strategy, incorporating advanced machine learning (ML) algorithms and natural language processing (NLP) capabilities, then presents it to their team leaders. The result is a sophisticated bot that can not only crunch numbers but also interpret financial trends, identify anomalies and even generate predictive models
Implementing an automation solution
GoldCorp’s leaders are so impressed with the team’s business case that they implement RPA technology right away. They turn to SS&C Blue Prism’s intelligent automation platform – an all-in-one suite for all their automation needs that can scale as their business grows. They deploy intelligent digital workers into a few processes using SS&C | Blue Prism® Enterprise.
Continuously optimizing and scaling
As the project progresses, Andrea and her team work tirelessly, fine-tuning their RPA solution until it exceeds all expectations. When the time comes to unveil their creation to other departments in the business, the response is overwhelming. People are excited to make the business better!
Andrea’s RPA solution not only meets the organization’s requirements but surpasses them. It revolutionizes how GoldCorp approaches their end-to-end workflows. And the business results? GoldCorp now stands as the competitive leader in their market and gives outstanding employee and customer experiences every time.
Now, people see GoldCorp as a visionary, pushing the boundaries of what was thought possible with RPA. But for Andrea, the real reward is seeing the positive impact of her work in the day-to-day. And thanks to her efforts, GoldCorp can now operate more efficiently, freeing up time and resources to focus on innovation and growth.
Are you making the right digital transformation efforts for your organization? Speak to an SS&C Blue Prism expert today.