Navigating Global Supply Chain Challenges with RPA

Navigating Global Supply Chain Challenges with RPANavigating Global Supply Chain Challenges with RPA

Navigating Global Supply Chain Challenges with RPA

It has been difficult to ignore the global supply chain issues that have plagued us over the past two years. People who want to buy a new car are facing delays due to a shortage of semiconductor chips, possibly lasting into 2023. Grocery stores in Canada and the U.S. have empty shelves as they struggle to stock the necessities consumers need.

The reality is that the global supply chain has been affected from end-to-end by the COVID-19 pandemic and it is taking its toll. Fortunately, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) can help us navigate and mitigate these challenges to ease the burden on manufacturers, suppliers, businesses and consumers. But before we get into that, let’s take a closer look at the supply chain issues facing the world today.

The Complexity of the Supply Chain Issues

The world’s supply chain issues stem from many contributing factors that are interrelated, forming a complex web of cause and effect that can be felt across the globe and in every industry. At the heart of these supply chain issues is COVID-19. Prior to the emergence of the Omicron variant, COVID was already wreaking havoc on the global supply chain—Omicron made it worse. Here’s how:

Labor shortages

Labor shortages have occurred along every point of the supply chain, from the collection and creation of raw materials, to the factory floor, to shipping and distribution, and finally, to the sales floor. The Omicron variant of COVID-19 has amplified theses shortages, leaving industries without enough staff to keep goods flowing.

Ghost orders

Businesses that are concerned about getting the orders they need from their suppliers, are placing what are called “ghost orders.” Vendors will place the same order with multiple suppliers in the hopes that one of them will come through with a delivery. This creates a false level of demand for these supplies.

Panic buying

With empty shelves becoming increasingly common, consumers are keeping a sharp eye on stock levels. When an item comes in, shoppers will snap them up quickly, once again clearing the shelves and perpetuating the cycle of panic buying.

Bottlenecks

During times when goods become available and need to be transported, seaports become jammed with cargo ships and distribution centers fill up with trucks waiting to load and offload their cargo. The result is a bottleneck as shipments move slowly, causing further delays on goods that are desperately needed in stores and through online vendors.

Lack of data

Many businesses do not have the data they need to accurately predict demand and potential shortages. For example, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the automotive industry expected a decreased demand for new vehicles. They canceled orders for semiconductors, only to find that demand was far higher than they anticipated.

How RPA Can Make a Difference

RPA is perfectly poised to help ease the burden of supply chain issues on businesses. By automating tasks that would take humans hours to accomplish, speed and productivity increase, human error is eliminated, and the supply chain can move more quickly.

This cost-effective solution can also help improve the supply chain through:

  • End-to-end visibility into the supply chain
  • Real-time flow of information
  • Rapid response

RPA can help provide visibility into all parts of the supply chain and it can be integrated with relevant supply chain systems. This makes it possible for a business to view the state of each part of their supply chain, as well as their operations and inventory, the current state of the market, and market forecasts.

The ability to gather this information in real-time and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze it, makes every part of the supply chain transparent and makes it possible to accelerate supply chain operations and facilitate business continuity.

As an example, consider the manufacturing industry. RPA provides manufacturers with access to a complete and accurate inventory of raw materials required in their manufacturing, which will allow them to determine the risk associated with each component of the products they manufacture.

They can then make realistic predictions as to when certain components will become available and develop a manufacturing schedule accordingly. This information can then be passed up the supply chain, influencing distribution and delivery schedules.

COVID-19 is still with us, and it will continue to affect the supply chain for months to come. But RPA can help ease the burden and increase the efficiency and agility of the supply chain to minimize the impact of the pandemic.

Reach out to one of our team members at Tangentia and discover how we can work with you to create a customized RPA solution to meet your supply chain needs.

Get Started on Your RPA Journey Today

Book a discovery call with a member of Tangentia’s automation team today to find out more about what RPA can do for you.

Monthly Tangentia Byte August 2020


  • Monthly Tangentia Byte
    August 2020







Digital Workers in the Workplace Driving Digital Transformation
Digital workers working side by side with employees is on the rise. If your organization is looking to automate mundane tasks in Accounts Payable, Finance or HR, we can help. Utilizing the robust capabilities of our partners such as Automation Anywhere, UiPath, IBM and Blue Prism, we can build an affordable solution that helps you cut costs and save time.
To book a demo with one of our RPA solution experts to discuss the impact of
Digital Workers for your organization, click below.

How AI Can Support the New (and Old) Way of Learning
While many schools hope to see their students back in classrooms, the reality is often a hybrid model of learning, with some or all of it done remotely. Fortunately, the technology exists to make the remote learning journey a smooth one.
TIA Chatbot for
Intelligent Education
TIA offers intelligent chatbot & voice capabilities making it possible to efficiently provide students & the general public accurate & timely answers to their
questions, improving their overall communication experience.

Meet New Government of India GST Compliance Requirements
Your organization has 30 days to get compliant in India with new GST E-invoicing requirements. Get compliant within 2 weeks with Tangentia E-invoicing Gateway to ensure you meet the deadline of October 1st, 2020.
Introducing TIA Industry Accelerators
The TIA IA is built to serve the needs of various industries, offering deployment-ready software solutions built to accelerate business processes. Its capabilities can be extended, modified or customized, depending on the individual needs of the company, making it the ideal solution for process automation.
All of us at Tangentia are proud to receive The CEO Story’s Company of the Year 2020 award. We thank all our customers, partners and associates globally for helping us achieve this success.
Click the link below to read our CEO, Vijay Thomas’s take on how during these trying times, Tangentia has risen above the storm, and then some.
Higher Education Institutes across the globe are turning to chatbots and AI to improve the student experience, provide virtual learning assistance, and accelerate student support services.
If you have considered AI and virtual-assisted chatbots for your institution, attend our webinar on September 2nd @ 4:00pm IST where we will discuss our success stories and introduce TIA (Tangentia Intelligent Automation) chatbot.
Tangentia is a proud sponsor of the FADA (Federation of Automobile Dealers Association) AGM 2020 happening this weekend 5th September, 11:00am IST

AI Powered Chatbots in Higher Education | A Positive Impact for Students and Administrations


  • AI Powered Chatbots in Higher Education
    A Positive Impact for Students and Administrations

Artificial intelligence (AI) is taking the world by storm. The global intelligent virtual assistant (VA) market is set to reach more than $25 billion by 2025. In day-to-day life people interact with AI for shopping, banking, and smart home devices. In business, chatbots have made customer communications more efficient and a VA can help people organize their schedules and more quickly connect with the information they need to do their job better.

A VA is an AI technology that is also useful in the realm of higher education. In this setting, the VA can transform the university and college experience by helping students access the information they need when they need it. It can also help universities manage the inquiries and communications they receive from students and the general public.

How Students Can Use AI Powered Chatbots

AI Powered Chatbots make it possible for each student to individualize their on-campus experience and education. From asking questions regarding registration to finding out where the nearest campus coffee shop is to getting help with their work, an AI Chatbot is there to help students. There are many ways that students can enhance their college experience with an AI Chatbot such as:

  • Act like a teacher’s assistant, with 24/7 availability to answer student questions and complete tasks more quickly than a human assistant
  • Provide individualized teaching methods to help students learn better and more efficiently
  • Help international students with application and administration support using multi-language capabilities.
  • Provide students with reminders, on-campus information, help connecting with tutors, and answers to questions about facilities and life on-campus
  • Connect students with the on-campus support and processes they need to ensure their success and post-secondary education transition is as seamless as possible

AI Chatbot technology is advancing quickly, improving its capacity to provide more intuitive guidance for each student based on their individual needs.

How AI Powered Chatbots Can Help Universities

Universities have a limited staff that needs to service a very large student body. If enrollment grows, hiring more staff can be costly. With the use of a AI Chatbots, a university can easily and efficiently service a large student body by deploying an AI Chatbot to:

  • Answer standard student questions
  • Provide information to students quickly
  • Flag more complex questions or problems for staff to take care of
  • Free up staff to have more one-on-one time to help students where they need it most
  • Act as a teacher’s assistant for online and virtual learning environments
Introducing TIA – Tangentia’s Intelligent Automation Chatbot powered by IBM Watson

TIA can be built, trained, and deployed to provide individualized conversations via any application, device, or channel. It has the capability to:

  • Learn from minimal data
  • Process unstructured data
  • Handle massive amounts of data
  • Act as a decision support system for students
  • Be deployed on the public cloud and on-premises networks
  • Recommend improvements to the system
  • Rely on people or its own search engine as fallback

These capabilities provide higher education institutions with the means to offer the following services:

Language:

  • Assistant
  • Document Conversion
  • Natural Language Classifier
  • Natural Language Understanding
  • Tone Analyzer
  • Retrieve and Rank
  • Personality Insights
  • Speech:
    • Speech to Text
    • Text to Speech

Vision:

  • Visual Recognition

Data insights:

  • Discovery
  • Knowledge Studio
  • Discovery News

As an example of the use of TIA, an IBM Powered Watson Chatbot, a Canadian University was looking for a chatbot digital assistant that would allow the Office of the Registrar to improve their response time to student inquiries, particularly with online inquiries via email and direct chat services. With more than 80,000 emails, 71,000 phone calls, and 37,000 in-person inquiries, staff was frequently overwhelmed and working overtime to keep up.

Tangentia was chosen as the service provider and to demo their TIA Chatbot to the University. We trained the chatbot to help students and website visitors find the information they needed quickly and easily. In addition, we were able to provide smart integration with the University’s website and include live agent integration. Not only that, but we worked closely with the IBM Watson AI team and had a working chatbot demo built within five days!

Contact Tangentia today for more information and to schedule a POC on the IBM Watson Virtual Assistant and TIA.

Get Started Today

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 Is Perfectly Positioned to Transform the Auto Sales Industry


  • RPA Is Perfectly Positioned to Transform the Auto Sales Industry

    By Rajhans Gupta

When a customer wants to buy a car and applies for an automobile loan, they choose the vehicle they want, put in the application, and hand over all their financial documentation. Then all is quiet on their front while they wait – and wait – to find out if they have been approved.

However, behind the scenes there are a number of tasks being done to process that loan application and finalize the sale of the vehicle. Most of these tasks are tedious, repetitive, and done manually, which is why the customer is left waiting. Simply put – it takes time.

RPA to the Rescue

This is where robotic process automation (RPA) can help. RPA is an automation system that can take these tedious and repetitive tasks and do them more quickly and more accurately than any human. Whether it is checking a customer’s credit history, verifying their information and documentation, loan boarding, sending out a welcome letter, or ensuring the title transfer of the vehicle, it can all be automated.

This is incredibly important at a time when auto retailers are facing a potential increase in demand for new vehicles. While auto sales have gone down due to COVID-19, that same reason is prompting many people to purchase a vehicle to stay off public transportation. It’s a potential silver lining for the auto industry.

Of course, the automation of the automobile industry isn’t new. Automation has been used on the factory floor for years and the industry has always been at the forefront of innovation when it comes to the manufacturing side of things. It is the sales side that, until now, has been lacking. Fortunately, that will soon be a thing of the past.

RPA Success in India

One of the hottest auto-buying markets in the world right now is India. In February of 2018, the sale of passenger vehicles rose by over 7%. Seven cars were being bought every minute. Tangentia saw this as the ideal market to integrate RPA into the auto loan process.

We partnered with the largest car dealership in India, to implement an RPA solution that would help them with their auto sales process. When a vehicle is purchased in India, the purchaser has to register with 12 different agencies to finalize the sale. These are agencies such as the department of transportation, insurance, roadside assistance, and vehicle warranty.

Prior to RPA implementation, the entire purchase and loan approval process was done manually. It took two days before a customer was approved and all the paperwork was done. It was a time- and energy-intensive process for sales associates. Yet, RPA took the entire process and shortened it from a couple of hours to minutes.

This freed up associates’ time, made the process more efficient, and reduced the number of errors that occurred. It also made the customers happy because they didn’t have to wait long to get loan approval and get their new car on the road. This has significantly impacted the ROI for Indus Motors.

The Bottom Line

The more time sales associates spend on the sales floor, the more vehicles a dealership will sell. With RPA, sales associates won’t be tied to their computer and phone dealing with the tedious loan approval process and all the other number of things that must be done when selling a vehicle. Instead, RPA bots can take care of all that behind-the-scenes work and sales associates can be where they’re needed most – on the front line making sales.

Get Started Today

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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How Automation Can Help Insurance Companies Change the Way They Do Business

  • How Automation Can Help Insurance Companies Change the Way They Do Business

    By Gauri Shirur D’souza

Automation. It’s that one word that every industry is starting to become familiar with. The idea
of an autonomous system is quickly becoming the norm in many industries—the insurance industry included.

Insurance companies stand to gain a lot from implementing automation into their workflows.While this traditional industry is often cautious, procedural, and afraid of change. Having access to an innovative technology that can greatly optimize labor-intensive processes is essential for insurance companies looking to maintain market dominance.

The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the need for digitization and the implementation of new technology. Companies have been forced to think and act differently. And in the insurance industry, this has meant embracing change.

Automating Insurance Processes

There are several use cases on how RPA can transform the way an insurance business functions.
Here are just a few of the main benefits that an RPA solution can offer an insurance company.

1. Claims: Insurance companies are flooded with claims. Some companies say claims have tripled. This has led to increased pressure on the assessor, delayed processing, and decreased customer satisfaction. RPA can add value to this process. Bots can read documents, access different systems, update records, and provide claim decisions. Not ready to give that much control to a bot? You can implement a hybrid system that lets your bots do the heavy lifting and leaves the decision-making to humans.

2. Underwriting: With changing lifestyles, the approach to underwriting needs to change.Underwriting isn’t a one-size-fits-all scenario. RPA can move a majority of the underwriting to Straight-Through-Processing. This will enable underwriters to focus and underwrite critical cases, analyse trends, and more.

3. Customer On-boarding: Building a digital front with access to both the customer and the sales agent where the bot reviews the information and completes the back-end processing is vital to simplifying the on-boarding process.

4. Policy Administration and Servicing: A bot can calculate changes to premium and send reminders to customers to pay outstanding premiums. A chat-bot can also answer questions related to policy status, renewals, and provide other relevant information with 24/7 service.

5. Reconciliations: RPA can assist in quickly matching premium amounts to the policy, allowing your employees to focus on exceptions.

6. Finance: Finance automation is one of the first places most companies implement an RPA solution. There are countless use cases for automating invoices, payroll, expenses, and other finance tasks.

7. Policy Cancellations: Bots can calculate the payout amounts and update records across systems far quicker than a human can.

8. Fraud Identification: Cognitive RPA can quickly analyse transactions and provide alerts or handle suspicious claims.

RPA Advantages for Insurance Companies

1. Error free processing of transactions

2. Increase in efficiency, faster processing of transactions and accurate data entry

3. Change management is easy and quick

4. Easy implementation with storefront BOTs

5. Can integrate with legacy systems

The biggest benefit of RPA is that it allows employees to focus on their core tasks, leaving the
bot to take care of the administrative and transactional aspects of a transaction.

Why Is Now the Right Time for RPA?

Almost every business has had to transition to a digital model overnight. Employees are now
working from home and sales teams cannot meet their customers. Companies need to transform how they deliver exceptional customer experiences and improve internal operations.

Digital processing through an RPA solution is one of the easiest ways to achieve this.Implementing an RPA solution will improve your operational efficiency, customer experience,and so much more.

Get in touch with us today to learn how RPA can transform the way you approach your core workflows.

Watch our on-demand webinar to learn how financial institutions can quickly and easily implement RPA today with Tangentia and Automation Anywhere.

Get Started Today

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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5 Things to Consider when Choosing a RPA Partner


  • 5 Things to Consider when Choosing
    a RPA Partner

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is becoming increasingly popular in many industries. PwC conducted a survey of the financial industry in which 98% of the respondents said they believe RPA implementation is “important, very important, or extremely important.”

The reason for this overwhelming support for RPA is simple. The use of RPA to automate many of the repetitive tasks that use up too much in terms of human and financial resources is helping companies lower their overhead costs, increase productivity, and streamline their operations.

However, with the increasing use of RPA, it can be overwhelming when trying to choose the right RPA partner for you. Yet, choosing the right partner is critical to the success of your business. With this in mind, here are the five things to consider when choosing an RPA partner for your organization:

1. Powerful automation portfolio

The very first thing you need to do is take a close look at the RPA partner candidate’s automation portfolio that shows what they have to offer. This portfolio of offerings, including their methodology, the support they provide and the commercial model they use, is critical to your RPA success. You also want to know things such as:

  • Whether they are involved in RPA research and innovation
  • What their automation solutions cover – back office, front office, etc.
  • The size of business for which they offer RPA– small, medium, large, or enterprise
  • The platform they use for data capture and document/form processing
  • Whether there is easy integration with existing systems, ERP/WMS/carriers, and eCommerce platforms
  • Whether they offer support for multiple configurable user accounts
2. Proficient business tools

You want to be sure that the RPA partner you choose will be able to provide you with the very best tools to ensure robust automation delivery capabilities. This means that RPA partner will, in turn, rely on partnerships with RPA product companies, such as Jiffy.ai, ABBY FlexiCapture, BluePrism, Automation Anywhere, UI Path, and winautomation. These products should provide things like:

  • Intelligent automation
  • Cognitive document processing
  • Audit, tracking, and update tools
  • The ability to gather data, analyze it, and gain insights in real-time
  • The ability to manage credentials, set security restrictions, and allow role-based access at the task level
  • The ability to automate desktop applications
  • OCR capabilities
  • The ability to multitask

This should all be offered for a competitive price and come with full technical support. In addition, your RPA partner should be fully certified to deliver RPA solutions and experienced in implementing those solutions in your industry.

3. Scalability

In 2020 scalability will be a big focus area for organizations, when it comes time to choosing an RPA partner. Ensuring the RPA platform you select is fully scalable and will meet the needs of your business as they change will help maximize the benefits and long-term ROI. This means that you will be able to use the bots across multiple processes, regardless of variations in process volumes, and have a solution that works as your business grows.

4. Global compliance with robust security

Be sure your RPA partner has a level of process oversight that will meet regulatory compliance and ensure the protection of all data. This includes saving data and information related to automated workflows in an activity log that provides a clear record of all data flow and transactions, ensuring you are prepared for any internal or external audits that may be conducted.

5. Proven automation blueprint

Look at the RPA partner’s track record and clientele. It is important that you can see they have a proven automation blueprint that has successfully worked for other organizations, particularly those in your industry or sector. Take a look at who their customers are and pay attention to ratings and reviews of their products, so you can get a good feel for the success of their automation solution.

Ultimately, when you are looking for an RPA partner, you need to be sure that their expertise and capabilities meet your specific needs. Tangentia has the proven track record, the tools, and the innovative spirit to help you get your RPA off the ground.

Get Started Today

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 in Banking – The next big thing

  • RPA in Banking
    The next big thing

    By Gauri Shirur D’souza

If this pandemic has taught us all one thing, it is that the future is uncertain. And though there may be business disruptions, life and business must continue. This pandemic has also laid bare the unpreparedness of large industries and companies who have invested heavily in Information Technology, but the processes are still
largely manual.

And this has definitely affected customer experience and satisfaction . If we were to conduct a survey today, we would realize that customer experience is negatively affected. The reasons for customer dissatisfaction are mainly delay in response time, inadequate information and non-transparency. If RPA was deeply entrenched in the system, it would have enabled Banks and other financial service institutions to respond quickly and more efficiently to this new normal.

Automation of Banking Processes

There are a few use cases for RPA in Banks. But these have so far been restricted to fraud detection and customer service to name a few. Some of the areas where RPA can provide immediate benefit can be as follows:

  • Loan Life Cycle: Right from loan origination to credit assessment, RPA with a boost from Machine Learning can provide Banks with quick, efficient and scalable operations. In the current scenario, RPA can accelerate credit assessment for forbearance cases.
  • Account Opening: Cognitive BOTs can read documents, enter data and process transactions and enable Banks to open accounts quickly and with zero data entry errors
  • Finance: There are use cases across industries on how Finance is the low hanging fruit for RPA
  • Reconciliations: RPA can ensure zero errors in reconciliations leaving only exceptions to be handled by the employee. This intervention too can be eliminated on adding a Cognitive BOT.
  • Compliance: BOTs can help with not just creating forms for submission to the regulator but also scan different websites for updates to the sanctions list / block lists etc.
  • Audit: Data based analysis and checks can be done by the BOT leaving the employee to focus on key risk areas and controls
  • Fraud detection and prevention: A BOT can be programmed to flag suspicious entries in account(s) to a team for review.
  • Account Based Charges – BOTs can be programmed to run specific scans and identify and accounts for charge application or blocking as per the Bank’s policy

These are only a few areas where RPA can be integrated into the Bank’s processes.

Advantages to the Bank

a) The biggest benefit is that the employees can focus on their core competencies and leave mundane, repetitive tasks to the BOTs

b) RPA with a mix of Machine Learning can increase efficiency and accuracy in transactions and data entry

c) Implementation is quick due to availability of storefront like BOTs

d) RPA integrates with existing frameworks and systems and does not require a change in infrastructure

e) Change Management is easy and there are use cases where changes have been done in a matter of days

Mind Block to RPA

Banks are often looked at by governments as vehicles to add stability to the economy. This is also reflected in the large workforce most Banks carry. One of the biggest fears people have is that building a digital workforce will eliminate the need for a physical workforce.

That is not entirely true. The employees will instead be used for their core competencies. Employees will provide oversight, handle exceptions and take judgement calls based on experience. The goal of RPA is to improve operational
efficiency and not eliminate workforce.

So while a few Bank may have deployed chat-bots, the uptake has so far been slow. But now is the time when the banking industry must invest and build a digital workforce. It will not only improve efficiency and accuracy but also strengthen our defenses and readiness for the next disruption.

Watch our on-demand webinar to learn how financial institutions can quickly and easily implement RPA today with Tangentia and Automation Anywhere.

Get Started Today

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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Compliance and RPA: Are They the Perfect Match?

  • Compliance and RPA: Are They the Perfect Match?

    Vijay Thomas

Compliance is a big issue for many companies, especially with the coming of the GDPR, SOX compliance, HIPAA, and more. Whether a company handles sensitive data or needs to meet strict regulations, maintaining compliance is a company-wide effort.

People often ask me whether robotic process automation (RPA) is a compliance-friendly solution. Perhaps they watched too many movies where robots become sentient and overthrow their human masters.

The simple answer is that RPA is one of the most compliance-friendly automation solutions on the market.

RPA: The Compliance Dream

What makes RPA a compliance dream? Robots are programmed to perform specific tasks and nothing else.

Yes, we may one day see the rise of self-taught AI that can teach other AI, but that technology is many years away.

RPA solutions simply don’t go rogue. Their programming doesn’t support these kinds of actions. Instead, they focus on specific tasks. Bots will not share passwords—they won’t send emails in error or download potentially dangerous files. With the majority of bots the data is encrypted at rest as well as in flight so the bot never actually has access to the data they are interacting with.

The reality is that a company’s employees are far more likely to make compliance mistakes. This is why bots are far better to have in your IT infrastructure. Companies looking to build compliance systems should see bots as both a form of efficiency and security.

What Compliance Advantages Does RPA Offer?

A company’s ability to maintain compliance is important for a variety of reasons. While legal fines are unfavorable, a complete erosion of customer trust is even more dangerous for a company.

According to Deloitte, “several aspects of compliance oversight operations can be enhanced through RPA implementation.”

But what advantages does RPA provide beyond eliminating simple human error? Based on my experience, here are a few of the main ones:

  • Minimize legal mistakes. RPA solutions can reduce your legal burden by ensuring that important legal compliance is handled according to protocol. This can reduce your risk of violating regulations by eliminating human error from the equation.
  • Build efficient internal systems. Knowing how a process is executed from start to finish can simplify the compliance issue. The predictability that RPA provides can improve your overall business operations.
  • Maintain customer trust. Today’s customers care about their data more than ever. Large data breaches can damage your reputation beyond repair, losing customers in the process. Implementing RPA ensures that the systems you rely on to maintain compliance are consistent and reliable.
  • Better oversight and auditing. Audits are a normal part of business for most companies. Everything an RPA solution does is traceable through logs. That means every input and output can be assessed by humans. This enhanced level of oversight gives companies a lot of control over how they approach compliance, how to identify potential problems and solve them.
  • Develop high-level compliance systems. Humans are susceptible to variation in the work they perform. With an RPA solution, once a process is created, every iteration of that process will be the same. This allows you to create high-level compliance systems built around your automated workflow.
  • Infinitely scalable. The more humans you rely on to complete a task, the more likely you will encounter some kind of error. RPA doesn’t suffer from this problem. Automated solutions are infinitely scalable, and will produce the same quality of work regardless of how many automated solutions your company has implemented.
  • Deployable in most industries. Compliance impacts nearly every industry in the business world. Training humans to understand the nuances of an industry, the specific regulations, and the data a company is handling is time-consuming. RPA can learn that same information far quicker, making it easy for companies to deploy bots across a variety of departments.
RPA Isn’t a Compliance Problem—It’s the Solution

Competitive companies are already embracing RPA for the many advantages it has to offer. It’s clear automation will play a major role in the coming decades as companies look to improve their efficiency and build scalable systems that are aligned for growth.

While compliance is an important topic that companies should think about, RPA shouldn’t be seen as a problem. If anything, it’s the ideal solution to a problem that’s plagued companies for decades.

Where else can you find a repeatable solution that generates the same quality of results every time? From a compliance standpoint, bots are the way to go. As AI and machine learning continue to evolve, their capabilities will only grow.

Companies looking to improve their ability to maintain compliance, as well as their business operations, should see RPA as a logical solution.

Are you interested in learning more about RPA and how it can help your company stay compliant in the digital age? Get in touch with Tangentia, the leader in RPA solutions with local offices in Canada, America and India.

Get Started Today

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.
Read Now

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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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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