Tag: rpa

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 .

Get Started today

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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Robotic Process Automation – The Next Big thing to look out for!

  • Robotic Process Automation
    The Next Big thing to look out for!

Robotic Process Automation – The Next Big thing to look out for!

Let me introduce you to the new kid on the block- Robotic Process Automation or in short RPA. RPA is a technology based on “bots” or software programs that can be easily programmed to perform tedious, mundane or repetitive tasks. Some examples of this are to collect data, feed data to applications, manipulate data, control various desktop applications etc. It can perform repetitive tasks much more accurately, quickly and tirelessly than a human, giving them time to do tasks that require  human qualities like reasoning, interaction with customers, emotional intelligence etc. Basically, RPA takes the robot out of the human.

In a birds-eye view, RPA software is being distributed by many vendors like Blue Prism, Automation Anywhere, UIPath, Kofax (Previously known as Kapow), ProcessRobot , OpenSpan (Acquired by Pegasystems) and adding to this list of organizations, there are various upcoming organizations and start ups who are trying to make a mark in the RPA space.

There are a huge number of real life examples of successful implementation of RPA at Tangentia itself. One of the many examples would be that Tangentia deployed a bot at one of the oldest companies in the Insurance sector in Canada. The objective was to automate their back office claim closing process on the web interface and the mainframe terminal (Claim management System. Using UIPath, Tangentia was
able to automatically collate, integrate and distribute these details in their systems which would allow them to close claims efficiently. The company was able to close a greater number of claims in a day as the time required to close a claim reduced by 50% and resulted in more satisfied customers.

Another case was when Tangentia automated the claim experience report i.e. reduce time taken to consolidate and generate reports, for a Financial Consulting Company. The objective was to integrate 300+ reports of 15+ carriers with more than 100+ clients for each carrier. Each carrier has multiple clients along with a unique set of clients. Automatically collating, consolidating and distributing these details into relevant reports allowed them to release claims efficiently and in a timely fashion.
Information about each claim gathered from various sources and analysis also had to be distributed and archived for compliance purposes. Using Automation Anywhere, Company was able to distribute details efficiently. The company was able to reduce the time taken to complete the task by 90% reduction in the efforts.

Tangentia also applied RPA in the Human resource department to automate a part of the recruitment process- sourcing. Traditionally, sourcing was considered to be a manual process where in recruiters had to type the keywords, use appropriate filters and find the right candidate fit for the role on various Job Portals. Using Automation Anywhere, this process was automated wherein, recruiters now had to enter the keywords on LinkedIn along with the specific criteria and this bot would gather the data and export it in an excel sheet. This significantly reduced the time spent on sourcing and finding the right candidate has become easier and less stressful.

Another example is of a Bank which used RPA to reduce their loan processing time by eliminating the repetitive copy-paste function of customer details from one banking system to another. The loan processing time reduced from 30 minutes to a mere 10 minutes, which led to higher customer satisfaction.

Mostly, Companies in the Banking and Insurance sector are finding that automation is a fast and cheap way of applying superior capability to the problem of compliance. The customer service also improves as there is more power in the process. For example, if the organization receives a lot of inquiries, you can free the employees to solve more important problems Based on the above examples, we can conclude that RPA improves the efficiency and productivity, eliminates human error, results in cost savings and most importantly impacts the ROI in a significant manner

A study conducted at the Everest Group showed that Top performers earned nearly four times on their RPA investments, while most of the other enterprise earned nearly double. In another study, NASSCOM reports extensive cost savings of up to 65% for onshore operations, 30% in offshore delivery, and investment recovery in as short as 6 months.
Here are some interesting facts I stumbled upon while doing my research on the buzzword- RPA

  • According to Forrester, the RPA industry will grow from $250 million in 2016 to $2.9 billion in 2021
  • According to Grand View Research, the RPA industry will grow from $358 million in 2017 to $3.11 billion in 2025
  • As per Deloitte`s Third Annual RPA Survey, a wealth of information on RPA, 53% of survey respondents are beginning their “RPA journey”
  • Deloitte stated that if this trend continues then RPA will achieve “universal adoption” in the next five years
  • Deloitte has reported that contrary to popular belief employee resistance has been low among adopting institutions- only 17% have reported resistance from employees
  • According to a PwC Global Operations Survey, RPA not only delivers benefits(reduces costs,increases efficiency, provides a superior customer experience, and dramatically reduces errors) quickly, but ROIs of between 300 – 800% are common

To understand the rise of this sector, we can also look at the funding received by the vendors of this technology

  • UIPath has raised $568 million in funding as on April 2019
  • Automation Anywhere has raised $550 million as on December 2018
  • Blue Prism will issue new stock to raise $130 million in funds as on January 2019
  • Workfusion has received more than $121 million in total funding as on January 2019

For years, we have been performing these boring and deskilled tasks but RPA has changed the game. It has become a disruptive force which has changed the relationship between technology and people, which is essential for a better future.
The future of RPA is intelligent automation coupled with machine learning and cognitive algorithms.

There are really good RPA software’s available in the market today, which has the ability to independently correct errors and adapt to certain situations. The intelligent automation of the future will be to apply judgment and learning.

About the Author

The author, Mamatha Manu, is a Recruitment Manager with Tangentia's Consulting group based out of its Goa, India office.

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 .

Get Started today

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 .

Get Started today

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.
Contact Us

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 .

Get Started today

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.
Contact Us

Tangentia Global Innovation Lab Launch Event

  • Introducing the Tangentia Global Innovation Lab

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

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

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

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

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