Category: Automation

Automation is changing insurance and here’s why

  • Automation is changing insurance and here’s why

Recently, we had a meeting with one of Canada’s largest insurance companies discussing Robotic Process Automation(RPA). The internal champion had spent months reviewing the top RPA software vendors. His conclusion was that they all do essentially the same thing. He found there were some major differences in how much these systems cost and a big difference between the price of unattended and attended robots.

Innovation

This insurance company is no stranger to innovation as over a decade ago they made the leap to transform their company from 70% paper: 30% electronic to 70% electronic: 30% paper. At this time they were at the forefront of innovation and almost 20 years later the challenges are less about paper and more about how people are working with scanned documents and the manual processes that still hold the company back from optimal efficiency.

The Challenge

The new challenges ahead are equally as daunting as they may have seemed when making the transition to a paperless office. In a large organization there are many stakeholders and all departmental decisions inevitably effect each other. Robotic Process Automation is a department agnostic solution as its only prerequisite to improve a processes speed is if the process is highly manual, repetitive, high volume and rules based.

Homework

Our team was impressed by the work that had already been done internally. This champion had identified over 80 different processes that could benefit from RPA. Each process had been documented in an excel file that included aspects of our RPA opportunity checklist. It was an extremely thorough document and we were happy because it made the next step a lot easier.

Where to start

No matter how big a list of processes you hope to automate, they all start the same way. Selecting one process for a Proof of Concept(PoC). Possibly the most important step in any RPA process is picking the right first project. If it is too simple it may not have the impact and ROI that is expected. This could stunt future investment in rolling out other RPA initiatives. If the selected process is too complex it could delay the completion of a successful first PoC. Just like Goldilocks and The Three Bears, you want to select the one that is just right.

Launching an RPA project

If you are looking to launch an RPA program within your insurance company. It’s realistic to have a fully functional full process within a 4 week period. At Tangentia we break down the Proof of Concept as follows:

Week 1. Prepare and Engage

  • Collaborate with stakeholders to identify and assist in identifying the candidates of RPA PoC.
  • Engage process owners via discovery workshop to confirm scope of PoC (assuming prior engagement to this point)
  • Prepare base infrastructure to host the RPA application.
  • Install the RPA tool in single environment.
  • Set up system access and credentials

Week 2. Select, Build and Analyze

  • Select & confirm 1 process for PoC.
  • Conduct workshop for documenting current state process via existing documentation and job shadowing.
  • Meet with process owners or stakeholders to explain what will be done in the PoC
  • Confirm the objectives of the PoC and “success” criteria
  • Build PoC

Week 3. Build and Test

  • Continue Building PoC
  • Test PoC with test data
  • Record a “before and after” to communicate the concept to a larger audience.

Week 4. Demo, Document, and Plan

  • Demo the PoC to stakeholders
  • Document key learnings, point of view on key questions and next steps
  • Document Requirements to move RPA bots into other environment

4 Weeks?

There is a lot of work to be done in 4 weeks. However, at Tangentia we are no stranger to doing what other companies can’t. For example, before beer and wine were available in grocery stores in Ontario, Kathleen Wynne made an announcement that alcohol would be available in Ontario grocery stores by Christmas. At the time, Christmas was only 6 weeks away. There were a number of companies that bid on this LCBO project but did not want to stick their necks out to deliver the project in that amount of time. They all said it couldn’t be done. We knew that simply wasn’t true.

Success

We won the project and successfully worked with the LCBO, its suppliers and vendors to support them and the millions of dollars of commerce that flowed through our backend system. This project was a big win not only for Tangentia but for the people of Ontario, who now have a more convenient way to pick up a bottle of wine.

Why choose Tangentia?

Now, why would you choose Tangentia to provide you with Professional Services for your RPA project? With over 150 people globally and a recognized partner with the top 3 RPA platforms including UiPath, Automation Anywhere and BluePrism, we understand business and RPA very well. In addition, RPA companies don’t want to be in the business of Professional Services and rely heavily on partners like us to carry the baton over the finish line.

How can I help?

I advise companies in insurance, banking and finance on robotic process automation. I am also a certified RPA developer. When you sell technology I believe it’s important to know your products and to use them yourself. Only then can you truly be an trusted advisor. If you would like to have a conversation about RPA leave a comment below or send me a message and I will be happy to help.

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Interested in Automation but don’t know where to start? Looking for a reliable Automation reseller with the best possible pricing? Looking for somebody to help maintain, support and enhance your existing bots? Or just want to say hello? Contact us now. We promise a human will answer your query, not a bot.
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Pros and Cons of Robotic Process Automation Implementation

  • Pros and Cons of RPA Implementation

Pros and Cons of Robotic Process Automation Implementation

Tangentia Automation

The global robotic process automation (RPA) market size is expected to reach USD 3.11 billion by 2025, according to a new study by Grand View Research, Inc. When implementing a new technology, you must consider the benefits and potential drawbacks. Robotic Process Automation has many benefits and potential challenges in the form of product selection, process evaluation, bot architecture, user training, and scaling up.

When evaluating RPA solutions, it is important to understand that there are many adoption challenges and opportunities. To take full advantage of an RPA solution, it's the teamwork that makes the dream work. It all starts with asking the right questions. Like, as “What are the challenges with implementation? What value-added services are there to ensure RPA success? What are the tough lessons learned during implementation that have led to success?”

An automation strategy's costs and benefits are complex as they can affect both front and back-office processes. This is why we'll highlight both the pros and cons of implementing RPA within your organization. Some of the leading software providers like UiPath, Automation Anywhere, BluePrism, Work Fusion and Pega RPA, all have their strengths and customer success stories.

However, finding the right product for your RPA initiative is an important step that starts with discovery and education. Let's take a look at what RPA can do for your business process.

The Pros of RPA

Picture a Credit Union (CU's) thinking about introducing automation in an effort to streamline administrative tasks. To make the CU's business process much more efficient, this CU is looking for an automation solution to rapidly transform there back office processes. They are interested in leveraging the increased accuracy and speed of its business services. By implementing robotic process automation, this Credit Union can foresee immediate benefits including reduce time for consumer loan processing, enhanced accuracy of manual data input, and the elimination of repetitive copy and pasting between applications.

The benefits of RPA are quite similar across industries. RPA's capabilities are of course quite incredible, and this is really a case where seeing is believing. The following are some less obvious benefits that Credit Unions find important.

Improved Compliance

Data gaps between separate sources of information are removed and all actions executed by the RPA robots are logged during automation. This allows for simple compliance management for running regular internal reviews. RPA systems work across many industries and have been built with a compliance first architecture. If compliance is important to you, RPA makes it easy to stay in line with even the strictest regulations.

Non-Invasive Compatibility

RPA is compatible with virtually any system that a human uses on a computer. Robots recreate the same activities people do everyday like copy & paste, navigating the internet, using banking applications and of course Microsoft Excel. With incredible speed, a bot can move between applications to get more work done, faster. The RPA technology works with the user interface elements on the presentation layer of your screen. This means you do not need to update your legacy systems when you bring RPA into your company. RPA is a unique type of automation because it is Non-Intrusive. It can also reduce the time pressure on IT as users do not need coding ability to work with the RPA.

Increased Management

RPA provides a platform to centralize an organizations management of bots, auditing and analytics to remotely model, monitor, control, schedule, and execute the deployment of RPA software robots. Enhanced governance can be achieved by creating automation rules to manage business operations. High levels of security can be managed and maintained through secure remote server control.

Enhanced Customer Experience

Relieving employees from the burden of repetitive work is what most companies view as one of RPA's big benefits. Even though back office automation doesn't seem to impact front office work. RPA can drive customer improvements. Through automation an organization can deliver quality services faster and decrease the chance of errors.

The Cons of RPA

It’s easy to see how RPA can benefit a CU by improving business operations and customer service. Rolling out a new enterprise solution without challenges isn’t realistic based on most organizations historic experience.

Here are some of the challenges that you should look out for if you are considering the successful implementation of RPA for your Credit Union:

Employee Resistance

People are habitual and organizational change can cause stress among employees. Employees who are part of a new technology implementation might be put-off by taking on new responsibilities. It means learning something new and not everyone shares the same level of enthusiasm. Setting the right expectations and communicating them through corporate leadership and executive sponsors will ensure employees stay informed during the RPA implementation process. For successful RPA adoption its best to create a culture of innovation to accelerate adoption.

Process Selection

It is best to select tasks that are repetitive, rules-based, high volume, and do not require too much human judgement. Those tasks are real winners as they will help you see the fastest ROI and greatest company-wide impact. Think “Where do we use copy-paste a lot? Where does data migration take a while?” The more non-standard the process the more difficult it is to automate and the more human interaction required to complete the task. More complex tasks include interacting with customers and developing human relationships. Of course, the upfront time it takes to identify the right process is necessary to successful process selection. You may not need to automate everything right away. Think “What one process could we change that would make the biggest difference?“

Managing Expectations

So as to not disappoint, be mindful when it comes to setting internal expectations for a new technology like RPA. The excitement for what’s possible should not be overshadowed by the practicality of the processes that need to be improved first. RPA will not fix all operational problems or broken processes. Companies need to decide on the right technology for their unique RPA needs. By communicating expectation regarding results, point to other companies successes stories so people can see a road-map where they are going.

Navigating Obstacles

Proper prior planning will help you conceptually manage all the moving pieces. Working with a partner that has experience in the trenches of RPA projects can prove to be invaluable. To get the full benefit of an RPA solution, partners like Tangentia can provide best in class lean operation principles to your organizations workflow. When weighing the Pros and Cons of and RPA implementation, the right partner can really tilt the scale in your favor as you navigate the uncharted waters of RPA for your company.

PwC says in their white paper Organizing Your Future with Robotic Process Automation that “a couple of RPA’s greatest benefits are often overlooked…[such as] its ease of deployment.”

When you overcome the challenges of the automation selection process and minimize employee resistance, you will experience RPA implementation success. Few things are more gratifying than identifying a process that needs improvement and working together as a team to drive innovation. During the process, new ideas will emerge for other areas of the business to be automated. Widespread adoption can help the company realize the full cascading benefits of a true world class RPA solution.

Whether you are interested in UiPath, Automation Anywhere, BluePrism, Work Fusion or Pega RPA. Here at Tangentia we understand process automation very well and can help you throughout your implementation from initial discovery conversations to enterprise multi-bot rollout.

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RPA has been embraced by many sectors, such as medicine, hospitality, retail, & manufacturing. Now, the financial sector is gearing up for a shift in financial management that will see companies digitize and streamline financial processes. Read our latest blog on how financial companies and internal finance teams are looking to RPA to become more efficient in day to day operations.
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Paperless Factory: Invoice Processing Digitalization

  • Paperless Factory: Invoice Processing Digitalization

    By Shantanu Paknikar

Overview

Terms like “Paperless office”, “Paperless factory”, “Digitized Office” have been around for a long time, as an aspiration for the future. And yet, even today, the ground reality is that there are a lot of paper documents that are still in existence. Purchase Orders, Invoices, Shipping Notes, Goods received notes, Proof of delivery notes, and several other documents are still generated, received, and processed in large numbers in companies all over the world. Processes to handle paper documents are largely manual, time and effort consuming, prone to errors, require data re-entry at multiple stages, and result in operational inefficiencies. The need of the hour is to leverage technology to digitize such documents and automate the processes to handle them.

Example use case: Accounts Payable (AP)

Consider a typical use case for Accounts Payable (AP) and the Procure to Pay process at a factory that receives shipments from its suppliers. Trucks arrive at the factory gate with an invoice for the goods they are delivering, along with associated documents such as a shipment note and sometimes the purchase order (PO) corresponding to that shipment. Let us look at how the documents are typically handled.
The invoice and associated documents are in the form of a hard copies (physical paper copies). At the factory gate, this physical invoice is manually inspected, and tallied with the ERP system data. Once done, the gate clearance is recorded (manually again) on the physical invoice, or printed out as another physical document to attach to the received invoice. The invoice is then passed on for further processing.

The further processing might involve invoice being sent to a verifications team, where the received shipment is checked for quality. Once done, the ERP system is updated (manually) indicating that the shipment received has cleared the quality check. The quality clearance might then get recorded manually on the physical invoice document, or a QC certificate might get printed out and attached with the invoice.

The invoice (and the received goods) are then sent to the stores section where there is a quantity verification (counting) process. This involves matching of the ordered quantity of goods from the original PO in the ERP system, with the quantity in the invoice, with the actual quantity received. The matching requires a visual inspection and a manual comparison of the PO and Invoice for quantity as well as other details.
Once the matching is completed, the goods are accepted at the store, the ERP system is updated (manually), a Goods Received Note (GRN) is printed out and handed over to the supplier's delivery associate, and the physical invoice is sent to the accounts team for the payment approval.

Business Challenges

The limitations of this process are obvious. It is inefficient to have the paper invoice (and other documents) being sent across from one department to another. There is quite a bit of work on data entry and re-entry including updates to the ERP system, which could also result in data errors. Also, with a paper-based process, search and retrieval of documents later (e.g. during audits) is a very painful process since the actual physical documents are not easy to find. These inefficiencies impact both the cycle time as well as productivity of the factory personnel involved in receiving and processing shipments.

The solution: Invoice Processing Digitalization

These inefficiencies can be addressed by a technology solution that involves converting the paper-based manual process into a digital, automated process. Such a solution involves two main steps:

  1. Digitization of the physical invoice
    This involves the following

    • Scanning of the invoice and converting into digital (e.g. PDF) form
    • Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to extract specific data fields and values from the document
    • Generating and adding “tags” or “meta-data” to the digital document, to help describe the document and to help for later search and retrieval
    • Storing the digital documents in a document repository or document management system (DMS), to be accessed when needed
  2. Intelligent automation

    Just converting the documents to digital form and storing them is not good enough. The next step is to have a process automation/workflow engine that can orchestrate the document workflow via a process application. The process application will handle approvals, automatic forwarding of the document to the right stakeholder, automated alerts and notifications, and integration with any back-end systems that might be needed. Process applications can be made “smarter” or “intelligent” through technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). The use of AI to complement automation is in fact what has given rise to the term “Intelligent Automation”.

Benefits

Invoice processing digitalization offers some obvious benefits. The scanning and conversion of the document to PDF form can be done at the gate itself, after which the physical documents can be sent for filing immediately, eliminating the risk of the physical document getting lost or damaged. Search and retrieval can now be done on the digital documents, reducing the time required from a few hours to a few seconds. With intelligent automation, manual data entry or re-entry can be automated fully or partially, reducing the chances of data entry errors. Overall, digitalization offers direct improvements in operational efficiencies with invoice processing cycle time reduction, reduced costs, and improved staff productivity.

Summary

While this article covers the AP area and a portion of the Procure to Pay process, digitalization equally applies to other areas such as Accounts Receivable (AR) and Order to cash processes. These processes are a part of any organization and digitalization of such processes goes a long way towards achieving the vision of the “digitized office” or “paperless factory”. This is of course, provided that companies are willing to invest in digital technologies such as intelligent automation. A lot of companies have already implemented such solutions, or are in the middle of doing so. Where does your company stand?

Footnote: Tangentia’s Invoice Digitalization Solution is designed to help you address the challenges related to handling physical invoices and related documents. Leveraging the power of Robotics Process Automation (RPA), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Workflow / BPM technologies, the solution delivers all the benefits of digitalization including reduced invoice processing cycle times, reduced invoice processing costs, elimination of data entry errors, improved staff productivity, significantly reduced time and efforts for document search and retrieval and zero risk of documents getting damaged or misplaced during processing. The solution is a part of our Digitalized Office / Paperless Office offering, which includes automation solutions for Procure-to-Pay as well as Order-to-Cash processes.

Please contact us for a complimentary, no-obligation demo and a free consultation with one of our experts.

Write in to automation@tangentia.com today!

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Interested in Automation but don’t know where to start? Looking for a reliable Automation reseller with the best possible pricing? Looking for somebody to help maintain, support and enhance your existing bots? Or just want to say hello? Contact us now. We promise a human will answer your query, not a bot.
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Tangentia Global Innovation Lab Launch Event

  • Introducing the Tangentia Global Innovation Lab

Tangentia is proud to announce the launch of the Tangentia Global Innovation Lab. The lab will showcase Tangentia’s breakthrough technologies and consulting services. The new initiative is intended to be a discovery event series for both current and prospective customers. “The Global Innovation Lab has been a long time coming. We do many things really well and this event is an opportunity for us to highlight our strengths.” says Vijay Thomas, Tangentia’s CEO. With products and services tackling business-critical work in automation, digital, security, cloud and EDI; there are no shortage of questions to be answered.

A quick look at Tangentia.com will illustrate just how diverse a skill set the technology teams at Tangentia manage. In the world of automation we’ve recently been working on a number of projects involving Robot Process Automation and Artificial Intelligence. As a long time IBM partner we’ve developed a close relationship to tackle today’s the biggest automation challenges.

The latest trend in increased threats in internet security has made Blockchain a promising technology for the future. Many businesses are asking the question “How can Blockchain help my business?” This question and many others will be discussed in detail at the Global Innovation Lab. To really begin leveraging the internet in a more secure way, Blockchain is worth taking the time to understand.

Tangentia’s Digital division oversees everything from mobile development, omni-channel e-commerce, and in-depth enterprise analytics. You can look forward to gaining project insights that can help you avoid costly mistakes. With a rise in public awareness of data privacy breaches in large companies. Nothing is more important than keeping your sensitive information secure. It can be incredibly costly to be hacked. If you are interesting in learning more about Tangentia’s security practice, our experts at the event can shed light on Cloud Security, IAM, End Point Management and data privacy.

A technology event would not be complete without a conversation about Cloud services. With Tangentia cloud services across all major cloud providers including Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), IBM Cloud, and more. Whether it is Cloud First, Cloud Native, or Cloud APIs – Tangentia has the answer.Lastly, we’ll discuss the industry standard electronic highway for processing purchase orders with major retailers, EDI. Whether it’s keeping on top of your 850, 857, 810 or 997’s – Tangentia has a network of more than 2000 major retailers with 100% reliable compliant mappings. If any mapping changes are requested by your trading partners, they can be updated across all our customers in real-time. Keeping your business running with less stress and frustration. Got questions about integration with your ERP system? Join us at the event and we will walk you through it’s application as it relates to your business.