Tag: intelligent automation

How RPA Can Help Companies Weather Uncertain Times


  • How RPA Can Help Companies Weather Uncertain Times

    Vijay Thomas

One fact we can’t ignore is that we never know what is waiting for us in the future. If the current COVID-19 pandemic has taught us anything, it has taught us that. Whether it is a pandemic, natural disaster, war or another potential unknown, there is always the possible repercussion of economic uncertainty and a disruption in work routines and productivity within a company.

Fortunately, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a technology that can help companies in any industry maintain operational efficiency during difficult times, at the same time improving employee health and safety in the workplace. And with 2020 well under way and turning out far different than anyone expected, it is time for a serious shift in how we use automated technology.

What RPA Can Do

RPA has the capacity to automate many of the repetitive tasks humans typically do using a computer, keyboard and mouse. The driver behind RPA is not to replace humans, but to augment human capabilities to improve efficiency and accuracy. Examples of the types of tasks that can be automated include:

  • Filling in forms and updating databases
  • Automate the billing process
  • Customer account management
  • Automate the verification and auditing process
  • Detect fraudulent invoices and transactions

The key here is that companies identify end-to-end business processes that can be automated in part or in full and determine how RPA can be implemented to improve these processes. This includes determining how RPA can help pick up the slack in situations where employees are unable to work.

This is critical even when a company has taken measures to allow people to work from home, because no matter where they do their work, employees can still get sick. In contrast, RPA bots never get sick and are on the job 24/7.

Proper RPA Implementation

It is important to understand that while RPA is highly effective in helping a business automate processes and tasks that would otherwise be tedious for humans, it is not the answer to everything. Not every task can or should be automated, and companies must take a close look at their processes to determine what can be fully automated and what requires a mixture of automation and human interaction.

In addition, it can be easy to view only the short-term results of RPA implementation, without taking the time to understand how it can impact the company over the long-term. For this reason, it is important for a company to launch RPA implementation with the use of a comprehensive strategy that includes the following:

  • A full assessment of processes within the company that are good candidates for automation. This includes both back office and front office processes that relate to core competencies and that are relevant to customers, as well as employees.
  • The creation of a specialized team to manage the complex nature of RPA implementation. This means monitoring RPA performance and gaining new information that will help them continuously improve RPA initiatives.
Timing Is Everything

The bottom line is simple. The world of business is increasingly full of uncertainty, yet companies are required to maintain high profits while keeping costs down. This will require the innovative use of technology to automate as many processes as possible, thus cutting costs. RPA is one of the best resources we have to maintain productivity and lower costs during both normal and challenging times.

However, it is critical that companies be proactive. It takes time to adopt and implement an RPA solution, to integrate it with existing systems and processes. Instead of waiting for tough times to rear their ugly head, it is important to capture the true value of RPA now. That way you can go about the implementation the right way, without the pressure of staff shortages and economic instability hanging over you.

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Tangentia is a Platinum Partner of IBM and well as partners with Automation Anywhere, UI Path, Blue Prism, Adobe, Microsoft, Salesforce, Amazon and leading enterprise software vendors. We work with customers globally with offices in Canada and India to implement their RPA strategies using an agile methodology.
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RPA and Bots Helping Organizations Maintain Operations and Protect Employees

  • RPA & Bots Helping Organizations Maintain Operations & Protect Employees

With the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic that is spreading rapidly throughout an increasing number of countries, the impact to the economy is already being felt. The stock markets are in turmoil and the OECD reports that the global economy is at risk of dropping 2.4% in 2020. Yet, we are also seeing an unprecedented response from governments, companies and other organizations around the world.

As companies strive to protect employees, technology is playing an increasingly important role in the workplace. In particular, we are seeing the benefits of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and bots in helping to protect employees and the general public in innovative ways.

The Role of RPA in Protecting Company Employees

Employee health is a major concern for companies during the COVID-19 pandemic. With weeks, possibly even months, of disruptions to normal work routines and many employees now working from home, many governments are requiring companies to track the health of their employees.

This requires taking each employee’s temperature, checking their travel history and having them fill out a short health survey each morning when they arrive at work.

This is a lot of data to go through on a daily basis, particularly for medium- and large-sized companies. To take current employees away from their regular work or hire new employees to go through this data is a massive drain on resources.

Fortunately, RPA is invaluable when it comes to the collection, organization and analysis of this data. The way RPA works is simple and can benefit localized companies and companies that have offices and teams spread around the globe.

RPA can automate the delivery and collection of the daily health questionnaire for each employee, track which employees have filled out the survey, send reminders to those who haven’t and analyze this information along with the daily temperature readings for each employee.

RPA can quickly and easily collect and analyze the data and organize it into daily reports that are delivered to all levels of management. This saves companies a lot of human hours that would be wasted on the tedious nature of sifting through employee health data and eliminate potential human error during data analysis.

The Role of RPA and Bots in Healthcare

With COVID-19 putting an increasing amount of stress on an already stressed healthcare system, human resources are going to be stretched thinner than ever. Fortunately, there is plenty of room for the automation of routine tasks in healthcare, which can help take the burden off staff during the COVID-19 outbreak and beyond.
Here are some important tasks that can be fully automated to ensure healthcare staff can focus on what really matters – the patients:

  • Electronic bots will make it possible to streamline online scheduling by taking all the relevant information, compiling it into a report and forwarding it to the person responsible for making the appointment.
  • RPA will improve the care cycle of all patients by organizing and analyzing all the relevant patient data to increase the chances of an accurate diagnosis. In all situations, including a COVID-19 scenario, this gives doctors more time to provide human care to their patients.
  • RPA can streamline healthcare workflows, which means better management and coordination of individual cases and the overall care provided to patients. It also means an improved ability to provide remote monitoring of a patient, something that is of critical importance with so many COVID-19 patients in self-quarantine.
  • RPA makes claims management easier for the healthcare provider by making is easier to input, process and evaluate the data and deal with any appeals that are made.

All of this automation reduces the occurrence of human error, while providing a personalized user experience for patients and increasing employee satisfaction in the workplace.

The Reality

The COVID-19 situation is changing daily and the long-term effects on how we live and work are uncertain in these early days. However, technology has been developed to the point at which it can provide tools to front line workers that will vastly improve our response to this novel infectious disease. This will ultimately help keep employees, as well as customers and the general public, safe in a variety of workplace settings.

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Tangentia is a Platinum Partner of IBM and well as partners with Automation Anywhere, UI Path, Blue Prism, Adobe, Microsoft, Salesforce, Amazon and leading enterprise software vendors. We work with customers globally with offices in Canada and India to implement their RPA strategies using an agile methodology.
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Barriers to Implementing Robotic Process Automation in Finance


  • Barriers to Implementing Robotic Process Automation in Finance

The final days of humans performing tedious and repetitive tasks in the world of finance are drawing near. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) offers companies within the financial sector and companies with a finance and/or payroll department the ability to automate many of the tasks associated with day-to-day operations. And more and more companies are making the leap to automation. According to a survey conducted by PwC in 2019, more and more
organization in the financial services sector have been adopting RPA and IA. However, fewer than 20% of respondents have achieved adoption of automation across their entire organization.

The benefits of RPA for your business, regardless of its size, are attractive. It is worth investing in an evaluation of how your business can implement an RPA strategy in 2021. However, it’s important to keep in mind that, as with any technological advancement, RPA does not come without its challenges. Yet, these are challenges that can be overcome, if you plan ahead.

Barriers to RPA Implementation

As technological changes sweep through the financial industry, it takes time for companies to incorporate these changes and adjust to them. Shifting from manual processes to digital automation can be particularly jarring and can raise a number of issues within a company. What follows are the most significant barriers faced by the financial sector when it comes to implementing RPA.

Resistance from Employees

Whenever a new technology is introduced, particularly one that takes over tasks once completed by humans, it is common for employees to be concerned. They might worry that their responsibilities will shift, or worse, that their skills will no longer be needed, and they will lose their job.

The solution is to ensure there is constant communication with employees throughout the entire RPA transition. This communication should include what is expected from them during the transition and what they can expect their role to be once the implementation of RPA is complete. If they know they will keep their job, they will more fully support the transition to automation.

Reluctance to Fully Adopt

Even as employees are brought on board with the implementation of RPA, there can be a lot of hesitancy when it comes to full adoption of the technology. While RPA is implemented to take over repetitive and tedious tasks, making better use of human time, it is common for CAOs and corporate controllers to feel the need to maintain some human interaction with the system.

The need for this constant human presence subtracts from the significant savings of time and money that RPA can provide a company and holds them back from enjoying the full benefits of the automation. One way to avoid this is to run the automation in tandem with the traditional manual operations for a period of time to assess the performance of each in relation to each other. This will help everyone become more comfortable with the fully automated approach.

Poor Process Selection

In order to be a good candidate for RPA, a process must be well-defined and repeatable without the need for human intervention. Ideal processes include tasks like data collection, data migration, and copy-and-paste tasks. However, it is common for companies that want to implement RPA to select processes that aren’t good candidates for automation.

Tasks that require human involvement, such as customer interaction, are a prime example. With this in mind, it is critical for a company to thoroughly review all processes being considered for automation to ensure they are standard, repetitive, and can be done without the need for human intervention.

The Need to Standardize Processes and Overcome Organizational Challenges

Traditionally, IT has been a separate entity to the business side of finance. This creates a challenge in the implementation of RPA that is directly related to the need to standardize processes across an organization and redistribute roles and responsibilities to ensure there is more than just minimal communication between the various departments and teams involved in RPA implementation.

This relates directly to the above point of selecting the processes to which RPA will be applied. When choosing the processes, there can be disagreement as to how these processes understood by the teams involved and how they should be executed. IT must have input here, but also those teams that work in the relevant business departments. Ensuring there is a dedicated manager role to help tie the disparate teams together to ensure strong communication and a smooth RPA implementation is critical to success.

Lack of Compatibility with Legacy Systems

It is common for banks and financial institutions to be using banking technology that is decades old. This includes COBOL software that has been running mainframes since the 1950s and 1960s. When integrating a mainframe with the cloud, there will be issues with transaction volume. There are also issues related to a lack of updated/thorough documentation on all the business rules on which the legacy system has been built, updated, and patched over the decades.

This takes time and financial resources that can be daunting. However, it is a necessary step in the evolution of finance technology, and it requires a holistic digital transformation process that will move the entire organization forward.

Ultimately, the implementation of RPA for financial tasks relies on thorough planning from the very beginning. This makes it possible to educate employees, retrain where necessary, and make sure everyone is on-board. It also makes it possible to ensure the right processes are chosen as candidates for RPA. When this planning is done adequately, it makes the transition to RPA smoother for everyone involved.

Tangentia with more than 17 years of expertise in global project implementation and change management, is in an unique position to deliver seamless RPA projects through its Agile methodology. Contact us today to start your automation journey.

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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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Robotic Process Automation Paves the Way to More Efficient Financial Management

  • Robotic Process Automation Paves the Way to More Efficient Financial Management

As the world of the 21st century transitions to a fully digital, cloud-based infrastructure, businesses are constantly facing the need to “do more with less.” While this might sound cliché, it doesn’t make this phrase any less relevant. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is one way in which companies have been able to improve processes and deliver higher quality results more efficiently and at a lower cost, all while taking full advantage of digital technology.

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. McKinsey reports that 80% of business are either considering the implementation of RPA technology for managing their financial processes or are already using it in some capacity.

The use of RPA offers tremendous benefits to businesses of all sizes. It has the ability to automate what would normally be considered tedious, repetitive tasks, resulting in:

  • Reduced costs
  • Elimination of human error and increased accuracy
  • Increased processing speed
  • Increased productivity
  • Improved quality
  • Improved customer service
  • Improved regulatory compliance and reporting
  • The ability to free up employees and other resources to focus on new initiatives

Consider the financial cost to a company to fix human-made errors that would have been eliminated with RPA. According to Gartner, 70% of accounting work to correct preventable errors before a financial close has to be done manually, at a cost of as much as 25,000 hours and $900,000 per year for a company with 40 full-time accounting employees. In addition, RPA costs about one-third the cost of one offshore employee.

A great example of the use of RPA is a financial institution that provides loans. The loan process can be long and tedious. It can take days to run credit checks and determine whether a borrower is eligible for a loan. RPA makes it possible to implement this loan approval process more quickly and more accurately by using it for back-end tasks that take time to complete and are subject to human error.
Other tasks financial institutions can manage using RPA include:

  • Compliance processing
  • Data management
  • Automating the verification and audit process
  • Account management
  • Processing new applications
  • Making credit decisions
  • Producing audit trails

However, a company doesn’t need to be a financial institution to make good use of RPA. Any company with a financial and/or payroll department will be able to reap the benefits. For examples, when it comes to accounts payable, it is common for many businesses to still rely on manual methods to process payments going out to employees and suppliers.
RPA can streamline the accounts payable process to ensure all payments go out on time every time by:

  • Automating the accounts payable process
  • Tracking duplicate payments
  • Processing all payments
  • Issuing purchase orders and invoice receipts
  • Detecting fraudulent invoices and transactions

In addition, RPA can help companies automate financial tasks like:

  • On-boarding suppliers and customers
  • Doing price comparisons
  • Setting contract terms
  • Gathering market intelligence
  • Tracking and gathering data from portal queries
  • Exception processing for special orders
  • Delivery reconciliation

RPA is a solution that is turning heads as it is adopted by more and more companies as a way to automate many back-end financial processes. The key to making the best use of RPA is to identify tasks that are a waste of valuable time and resources and allocate those to the automation process. This frees up financial resources and employees to focus on other initiatives that will help any company remain competitive and ultimately increase its bottom line.

Tangentia with more than 17 years of expertise in global project implementation and change management, is in a unique position to deliver seamless RPA projects through its Agile methodology. Contact us today to start your automation journey.

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With 2019 Nearly Over- Where are AI, RPA & EDI going in 2020?

  • Where are AI, RPA & EDI going in 2020?

    A perspective by Tangentia CEO, Vijay Thomas

2019 was a significant year for Tangentia. As a recognizable ‘global boutique’ consulting firm that provides bespoke services in Canada, USA and India—we are excited about the progress we saw.

Whether it was our core B2B business of EDI(Electronic Data Interchange) and Ecommerce or the development of our new AI(Artificial Intelligence) and RPA(Robotic Process Improvement) segment, we empowered many businesses to improve their core operations.

But what trends really defined 2019? And which ones will continue to lead the way into 2020?

2019 Was a Milestone Year For Tangentia

2019 was the year we committed to automation through our AI and RPA service offerings. While we had some exposure previously (mostly through providing staffing solutions), we expanded our offerings by creating a new range of services that focused on key problems that businesses face in a multitude of industries. We expanded our partnership with IBM to become a Platinum partner of IBM for Watson AI. Also we are global partners for Automation Anywhere, UI Path and Blue Prism in the RPA space.

We also consolidated some of our legacy services, improving our B2B business segment—which includes our legacy EDI and Ecommerce business. These services continued to grow substantially outside of North America with many significant wins in 2019 in India including India’s largest retailer.

Our global headquarters also moved in Toronto, from Willowdale to the Waterfront district, which saw us join the likes of Google,Uber, LCBO, Royal Bank, and soon Microsoft in what is arguably the fastest-growing tech hub in the world. We are beyond excited to be located in such an innovative area of the city.

How Will 2020 Impact Digital Transformations?

Company accomplishments are important, but the real value is in the lessons we learned from the exciting technologies that we offer.

So, what were the main takeaways from 2019?

Automation Isn’t a Magic Bullet

The RPA industry saw between 600-1000% growth in 2019. These numbers are large and signify that many companies are investing in this technology heavily. Major players in this industry have become unicorns in the investing world as the markets realize the potential that automation has.

However, AI, RPA, automation, and similar technologies aren’t a guarantee. Companies that invested millions into this technology without a plan saw minimal results.

Automation is a catalyst for innovation, but your business needs the right systems in place to take advantage of it. The goal of RPA is to enhance existing systems that are already working. An automation solution will decrease costs, improve efficiency, and other core metrics- but only if an organization understands what areas they need to improve.

It’s important that a company makes small changes that compound over time. We encourage our clients to push for real value and not to fall victim to the marketing pitches that they’ve heard about automation. Our team even has a Continual Process Improvement(CPI) using RPA model that we encourage our customers to try out.

In 2020, we expect to see more companies identify how RPA can help their organization cut costs, improve productivity, and make their business more agile.

EDI Isn’t Dead. It’s Evolving

Yet again, critics made the claim that EDI is dead. But as an EDI solution provider, I can assure you that EDI isn’t going anywhere.

If anything, EDI is evolving and adapting to the digital age. At Tangentia, we see EDI as any B2B communications between two business entities and not through the traditional lens of ANSI X12 or EDIFACT. And while this traditional EDI may be slowing down, XML and API formats aren’t going anywhere—especially in the age of integration. Today, businesses rely on countless apps having the ability to communicate and synchronize flawlessly. This alone will ensure the longevity of EDI as companies look to simplify B2B communications.

Legacy companies will always rely on some form of EDI, while modern startups have the benefit of building out in the digital world. Still, even startups require EDI solutions using either the XML or API formats.

Digital Transformations Matter – But You Must Define What It Means to Your Company

Digital transformation is the buzzword today. Every company is claiming they are making a digital transformation.But what does it really mean?

An effective digital transformation should be all about making incremental changes that drive long-term value and improve the user experience.

For example, a business may use an invoicing system that takes one month to complete. They could realize substantial gains by automating this process down to several days.

One advantage that we can offer our clients is the perspectives we have gained from working in Canada, the United States, and India. We can help companies identify what’s working in one region and find ways to adapt that same technology in another.

Digital transformations aren’t going anywhere in 2020. Successful companies are always looking to modernize and improve the way they connect with customers, employees, and partners. However, we expect to see companies focus more on what their personalized digital transformation looks like.

Where Is Tangentia Going in 2020?

Agile Digital Transformation

Our unique agile approach to digital transformation has allowed us to deliver complex digital transformation projects for the largest beverage alcohol distributor in the world, the largest retailer in India and many mid sized companies worldwide. We will continue to stay true to our belief in the power of the iterative agile delivery model.

Global Boutique

Tangentia is a ‘global boutique’ firm. We know how to execute using a global delivery model with much less overheads than our competitors and that provides our customers with high-end services at a value driven price.

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Interested in Automation but don’t know where to start? 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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Teaming Humans with Bots – Workplace strategy for the Future

  • Teaming Humans
    with Bots
    Workplace strategy
    for the Future

Teaming Humans with Bots – Workplace strategy for the Future

by Rajhans Gupta and Nikita Mapari

“Robotgeddon” has become an awfully popular expression nowadays. The term was put together from the word “robot” and “Armageddon.” Could AI really replace humans? Let’s investigate a bit.

We are living in the golden age of digitalization: in the past few years, many new technologies have emerged. Two significant ones are artificial intelligence and automation. These rapidly developing fields have an effect on almost every area of business. If businesses want to work efficiently and successfully, they have no other choice but become better at AI and automation.

Automation or Artificial Intelligence

Automation means that a software (bot) does an activity automatically which could otherwise be done by using actual manpower. This is also the field where robotics is most useful. A machine that had been set up appropriately is able to do the task it has been programmed to do. Thanks to automation, you can put an end to boring and repetitive activities, which can easily and perfectly be done by a machine instead. The most important areas where automation is used are manufacturing, online marketing and sales processes.

Artificial Intelligence

AI is no different than a set of computers and automated software's that normally require human cognitive functions (e.g. the ability to learn). You can see that there are similarities between the two technologies, but there is a significant difference too: while AI is able to learn and apply the things it had learned in practice, automation can only perform those monotone tasks that it had been programmed to do. The most important companies to consider when talking about artificial intelligence are Google, Microsoft, and Facebook.

Productivity Fluctuation: Robots Vs Humans

Creating a balanced and even workflow will optimize productivity for robots – in the same way as it does for human workers. Surely robots don’t get tired, can work 24/7, are fully skilled at what they are programmed to do, and don’t have any pesky motivational issues – so must their productivity always be consistently high?

For a bot or human, productivity is best measured as a ratio of output: input. How much work did we get out for the amount of time we put in? For this to make sense we generally convert time into “capacity to do work” based on some idea of how much work could be done in a given time.

So, if Person A completes 75 tasks in a day and they had the capacity to complete 100 then their productivity was 75%. Similarly, if Robot B completes 500 tasks in a day and had the capacity to do 1,000 then their productivity would be 50%. As we begin to increase our investment in Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and AI: the productivity of this (potentially) cheaper processing resource will matter – if not so much now then certainly when everyone is employing RPA to do similar tasks within the same services.”

But why would Robot B only do 500 tasks? They wouldn’t dawdle because they didn’t like their boss. They wouldn’t spend hours on social media, and they would surely only be allocated tasks that they were 100% capable of processing. Maybe Robot B could only process 500 tasks because there were only 500 available to be done. The plain fact of the matter is that with humans and robotics increasingly working alongside one another in service operations a blended and balanced approach needs to be taken on the issue of productivity.

Working Together

When thinking about smart machines or robots entering many domains of our lives, several visions come to mind: robots taking over the world, jobs disappearing, and machines running amok and reproducing themselves. But a look at what’s being developed today, and the potential of these new powerful machines, yields an optimistic view of the future.

Despite generations of new technologies, we’re now working more rather than less. Adult male peasants in the 13th century in the United Kingdom worked an average of 1,600 hours a year; a manufacturing worker in the United Kingdom in 1990 worked 1,850 hours; an investment banker in New York today works close to 5,000 hours. There hasn’t yet been a technology that has resulted in our working less.

This is because machines don’t just replace what we do, they change the nature of what we do: by extending our capabilities, they set new expectations for what’s possible and create new performance standards and needs.

So will robots take our jobs?

You’ve got no reason to worry though. An article from Forbes sums up beautifully the biggest paradox that comes to mind in connection with automation and AI. It is a generally accepted view that a software can do a human job more efficiently and with a smaller chance of errors than an actual human being. If you want to apply this theory to all aspects of life, then that means that robots are actually better at educating people and raising children, too. And the paradox is right there: if humans do have to compete with such smart machines, then there are also machines among these which educate and train humans to be better and to take advantage of their qualities (and these people will continue to build robots and make them even better so that the robots can further educate them, and so on). This way, it is already not so easy to imagine that robots will take jobs, right?

To Sum It Up

Amateurs armed with good strategies and harnessing the computational power of machines turned out to be the winning combination! That’s the best metaphor for the evolving new machine-human partnership: with smart machines as our partners, we can operate at the level of grandmasters, not just in chess but in most domains of our lives, from science and medicine to gaming and commerce.

The combination of humans partnering with bots and using superior strategies opens up new worlds for exploration. The thought of robots taking over the world one day and people losing their jobs, there is no reason to worry about such things. Automation and artificial intelligence are rather a blessing than a curse – they actually don’t take jobs from people but complement them.

About the Author

The authors, Rajhans and Nikita work with Tangentia India Technologies and are based out of our Goa and Pune operations in India respectively.

Tangentia is an implementation expert in AI,RPA & Automation solutions & has partnerships with UiPath, Automation Anywhere & Blueprism.

To learn more about Automation & what Tangentia can do for you please follow this link .

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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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P&C Insurers – RPA & AI is a no brainer

  • P&C Insurers:
    RPA & AI is a
    no brainer

Introduction

Up until recently traditional P&C (Property and Casualty) insurers were protected from barriers to entry and disruption from new entrants. But the evolution of technology and customer interaction through various digital channels have opened up the floodgates for more nimble and efficient new operators to enter the market.

This has put the whole P&C insurance industry open for disruption and a shakeup. Added to this mix, is the fear among traditional insurers that the likes of Amazon, Apple or Facebook may enter their industry and by leveraging their digital platforms they can turn the process of buying a policy or filing a claim into one smooth and satisfying experience for the customer. So, the question then becomes what do they do to mitigate this threat? As they say the best defense is an offense.

Most P&C insurers see the clouds appearing on the horizon and that they have to embark on a journey of digital process automation and transformation sooner rather than later. In the digital age where information is available instantaneously, customers are not loyal to any one provider and gravitate to the one providing best value and experience for their money.

However, for traditional insurers this change may not be easy. Unlike the new entrants, traditional P&C insurers carry the baggage from the mainframe era and it may not be that easy to move faster to a digital based operational state from current state. This is where the services of a consulting partner can come in handy in speeding up the digital automation journey. We at Tangentia can certainly help in this regard. But before I talk about our value proposition it would be prudent to set the stage with the current state of affairs at most Insurers.

Current state of affairs

Most traditional insurers have their policy administration, billing, underwriting, and claims processes spread across their front, middle and back end office systems. The more progressive ones may have application platforms such as Guidewire for policy administration, Salesforce for customer relationships or Conversense for claims management.

While all those systems are steps in the right direction but we need to understand that the computerization at most traditional insurers began in the mainframe era and they still have legacy systems where the bulk of their old business resides. With the advent of internet, large investments were made in customer facing systems but the business continued to operate from a legacy system base.

As a result, while on the outside everything looks smooth but the inside is a different story. In the back-office operations, we find that the data gets replicated across multiple systems which creates added work with data being downloaded to spreadsheets and shadow databases and massaged or refined before being uploaded to another system. As a result, processes are broken and not very smooth, there are multiple touchpoints which slow down the operations and the whole process is prone to errors and delays. For a better customer experience, efficiency and effectiveness, processes need to be streamlined, seamless and digitally integrated from the point of origin to the point of delivery.

While the best solution would be to get a newer system that provides integrated seamless processes, yet this is not possible for most traditional insurers who have to leverage investments in their old systems. So, what do they do? The answer to that will depend on a progressive mindset and an openness to imbibe new automation technologies such as Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and AI. The good news is that we at Tangentia offer these tools and technologies for insurers. So, let’s look at our value proposition for P&C Insurers.

What does the Tangentia RPA & AI practice offer Property & Causalty (P&C) Insurers:

  • More than 12 years of Insurance Industry experience and deep knowledge and understanding of insurance processes and the insurance technology stack.
  • Implementation of consulting projects and Automation solutions at some of the top North American insurers.
  • Strong partnerships with IBM, Blue Prism, UiPAth, and Automation Anywhere for RPA and IBM Watson and Microsoft, Google, Amazon for AI .
  • Knowledge of Insurance industry software like Guidewire, Duck Creek, Insurity, Majesco, One Shield & DXC Technology.
  • A large technical pool of talent in USA, Canada & India.
  • A highly evolved RPA/AI implementation methodology that will guide you every step of your RPA/AI journey that will result in faster turnaround times and higher ROIs.
  • We can help in identifying processes for automation with our process discovery sessions and conduct a Proof of Concept to make you feel more comfortable with our implementation and delivery methodology and help you in setting-up a Centre of Excellence (CoE) for scaling and enterprise roll out.

About the Author

The author, Jaideep Kala, is a Sr. Manager with Tangentia Automation Practice (North America) based out of its HQ in Toronto, Canada.

Tangentia is an expert in implementing RPA solutions and has partnerships with UiPath, Automation Anywhere and Blueprism.

To learn more about Automation and what Tangentia can do for you please follow this link .

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RPA and AI : Powering the Intelligent Enterprise

  • RPA and AI
    Powering the Intelligent Enterprise

RPA and AI : Powering the Intelligent Enterprise

Current Landscape

RPA is making a real impact in enterprise space and empowering knowledge worker by helping them focus on the more meaningful and value-added side of their work and offloading more mundane and repetitive tasks to an RPA powered robot. There is an enterprise workforce revolution underway led by RPA and AI/Cognitive technologies.

What is RPA? RPA stands for Robotic Process Automation. As the name suggests, it is the automation of tasks within a business process that can be handled completely or in part by a software robot. These tasks are repetitive, rule-based and most often are not a good value for human intelligence or time. Therefore, it makes sense to have the robot take care of these tasks. The robot can handle these tasks either in Attended or Unattended mode. In Attended mode, the robot works with the user in completing certain tasks while in Unattended mode human intervention is not required.

There is a plethora of solutions providers in this space, each with its own specialty. However, there are three main vendors that come to mind. They are – Automation Anywhere, BluePrism and UiPath in alphabetical order. Among these, UiPath is probably the fastest growing since it has recently received funding from big Silicon Valley Venture Capital firms in series C and D rounds.

Going by the interest in RPA technology, even by small and medium enterprises, it is not surprising that RPA has gained so much traction in so little time. Gartner predicts that by 2022 worldwide RPA spending will total $2.4B with an expected CAGR upwards of 30% in the next five years. The industry itself has seen rapid progress with new providers entering the market to cash in on this big opportunity. The recent push towards integrating AI solutions with RPA notwithstanding.

So, why is there so much interest in RPA/AI? Is it just hype or is it for real? Should you invest in it or should you wait?
To answer those questions, one has to see the bigger picture and what is shaping at the macro level. Here are some of the trends:

  • Digital Transformation: Traditional businesses are faced with competition from the likes of Amazon, Airbnb, Uber, Google, Microsoft and Facebook to name a few and are forced to change their business models to adapt to the new digital reality.
  • The rise of the omnichannel: Consumers are increasingly preferring to do their shopping digitally and interact with merchants with minimum touchpoints in a seamless manner across all channels.
  • Availability of Actionable Data: Digital businesses are able to collect data and actionable insights about their customers in real time and adjust to the market demand accordingly. For example, Uber rates go up if there is a high demand in an area for its rides on account of some event. Similarly, Airbnb is able to hike its listing rates based on the demand in an area.
  • Scalability: It’s much easier to scale up if you are a digital business. It took much less time for Airbnb and Uber to overtake their traditional counterparts in terms of market size and market cap.
  • Flexibility: Digital business is more efficient, responsive to customer needs and able to cross-sell.
Merits of RPA

RPA has many things going in its favor:

  • It has matured as a technology in a very short time.
  • It is widely accepted in the enterprise space and almost all CIOs/CEOs have RPA and by extension AI technologies in their digital transformation strategic roadmap.
  • It is non-invasive and can sit right on top of the existing infrastructure.
  • It is fast and easy to develop, implement and deploy.
  • It does not cost as much as some of the promised technologies before it.
  • It can be used to integrate your broken processes and streamline them.
  • It can bridge the disconnect between disparate legacy/internet systems and achieve a high ROI.
  • It is the last mile solution for deploying Cognitive and AI technologies in the enterprise.
  • Its open architecture allows it to integrate with third-party solutions. In other words, you can fit in your in-house solutions and AI/ML models within the RPA.
  • Last but not least a robot is highly productive and does not suffer normal human traits. It does not take breaks, does not ask for a raise, is less prone to errors, can work 24x7x365 without complaining and does not mind doing boring and repetitive work day in and day out.

So, what’s not to like about it? Nothing really if you ask me!!

In my opinion, the biggest value will come from engineering business processes. RPA/RCA will make the business processes faster, less error-prone, more intelligent and self-improving. This will also make the tasks of C-Suite executives easier to transform their organizations digitally and as a result, become more proactive to marketplace dynamics and more responsive to customer experience. AI will play a vital role in all of this. Some of the areas where AI is already making inroads is in enterprise space are in:

  • Visual Understanding: Being able to understand a graphic and identify the elements
  • Document Understanding: Being able to understand the document context e.g. extract information from legal contracts, invoices, etc.
  • Process Understanding: Being able to observe user behavior to learn and discover common tasks and processes. Identify processes for automation based on ROI.
  • Conversational Understanding: Being able to analyze sentiment, chat and voice input and able to route requests to the right team or department and integrate with chatbots and voice

All this sounds great but as we all know the challenge lies in implementation. So, let’s consider what is involved and how we can go about implementing these technologies. The first step is choosing the right consulting partner. It is very hard to do everything on your own and doing it right is even harder. So, as a first step, it is imperative that you choose the right consulting partner.

What to look for in the consulting partner?

Consulting partners come in various shapes and sizes especially those that want to cash in on the flavor of the day. Here is what to consider when looking for the right consulting partner.

  • A strong commitment to client success over their own.
  • Strong brand presence and value recognition.
  • A rich history of past experience in implementing RPA solutions.
  • Knowledgeable resources with certifications in RPA solutions.
  • Strong domain expertise in specialized verticals e.g. BFSI, Healthcare, Telecom, etc.
  • A strong partner ecosystem that brings the best of breed solution offering.
  • A delivery model that is global and based on Agile Methodology and best practices.
  • A metrics-based approach to ROI.
  • Good past client references.

Identifying and working with a right partner is the most important and crucial step to ensuring a successful RPA journey. Here are the other steps once a partner is on board.

Steps in an RPA implementation roadmap

Below are 4 broad steps to implement RPA in your organization

  • Identify a suitable RPA implementation scenario
  • Have a phased approach to RPA implementation
  • Build a Robotic Operating Team to carry out the execution process
  • Establish a Center of Excellence or CoE
  • Have dedicated individuals for process discovery, governance and change management within the CoE.

Identifying and working with a right partner is the most important and crucial step to ensuring a successful RPA journey. Here are the other steps once a partner is on board.

About the Author

The author, Jaideep Kala, is a Sr. Manager with Tangentia Automation Practice (North America) based out of its HQ in Toronto, Canada.

Tangentia is an expert in implementing RPA solutions and has partnerships with UiPath, Automation Anywhere and Blueprism.

To learn more about Automation and what Tangentia can do for you please follow this link .

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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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