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Intelligent Automation – Future Of RPA

Adoption of emerging technologies across industries is rising at a break neck speed. Besides digital transformation, organizations are pushing into digital optimization initiatives like Machine Learning, AI and automation to become more competitive, resilient and efficient.Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has been one of the most successful and widely adopted automation tools. According to the latest forecast from Gartner, Global RPA software revenue is projected to reach $1.89 billion in 2021, an increase of 19.5% from 2020.Over the rest of the article, we will focus on how we help enterprises with:Facilitating RPA implementationChallenges and strategic navigationFuture of RPA1. Facilitating RPA implementationOver time, having worked with various clients across the industries, one of the most important imperatives for successful RPA implementations has been management buy in.Getting started with RPAIn this step, you will lay the foundation needed for successful RPA implementation. At the end of this phase, you would have a completed a pilot to show the benefits of implementation.Opportunity discoveryWe work closely with your teams to identify gaps, savings potential and ROI as compared to the peers and industry benchmarks. This includes data collation, workshops with your team and value stream mapping. Study data collated to confirm on the opportunities identified.Platform selectionOnce you have identified the opportunities for automation, the next step is to pilot the process. Having worked with leading automation software providers across the ecosystem, we help you identify the right tool for automating the identified opportunities. This includes considerations ranging from no code/low code platforms to cutting edge automation using computer vision, NLP and AI.POC executionBuild automations, technical flows quickly for the identified automation opportunities. Collect the results, evaluate the feedback and build score cards to measure long term success and focus on creating an opportunity pipeline.Scaling across the enterpriseTo scale off on the back of successful pilots, organisations need a team responsible for opportunity pipeline creation, automation governance, process assessment and enterprise-wide support. This team ensures efficient usage of RPA resources, increased integration/access to new technologies with in the enterprise and increase in the throughput capacity.We work with you to build teams/capabilities to support continuous improvement, identify cross enterprise opportunities, help you reengineer the processes and track the results after deployment, to ensure you realize the full potential of your automation effort.2. Challenges and strategic navigationWhile RPA adoption has been gaining significant attention in some industries, there have been a plenty of failure stories too, exceeding the implementation time, cost and overall ROI. According to Gartner, “By 2021, 50% of RPA implementations will fail to deliver a sustainable ROI.”Below are some of the most common challenges you will likely face if you and your company choose to implement RPA.Process IssuesIt is recommended that you map your automation journey, identify gaps across various departments and saving potential before you set out on your automation journey. While most enterprise’s successfully implement pilots, they lack a clear opportunity pipeline to scale the efforts.Tasks that are repetitive, rules-based, high volume, and that do not require human judgement are the ideal candidates for automation using RPA. This can include activities involving moving files/folders, copy & paste data, scrape data from web, connect to the API’s, extract and process structured and semi-structured content from documents, PDFs, emails and forms. RPA implementation might be difficult with the process that are non-standardized and require significant human intervention.Redefining business process for efficient use of bot’s time or modifying the business process itself might speed up implementation. For example, it might prove to be efficient, if you could get all the data first, feed it into the application and then call the next flow instead of calling the next flow after every single data entry point.It is easier to reach automation levels off 70-80% for most applications and the remaining 20% might require significant investment of time and cost due to the complexity, throwing out the whole purpose of automation. Hence it is crucial to make a cutoff between desirable level of automation versus efficient level.2. Organizational pitfallsFrom getting the management buy-in, it is important to rally support from IT department to successfully execute RPA projects. IT department plays a crucial role in speeding the RPA implementations with resource allocation, exposing API’s or even building certain custom scripts over components. Some of the other IT support functions that play a key role include RDP access, network stability, bot run context and issue resolution time.3. Technical IssuesIt is advisable to choose low code/no code RPA solution over some the outdated solutions available in the market. It is easier for your internal teams to adopt or transition later, should you work with an outsourced service provider to develop the initial components. It also helps you keep the development costs under control.Some of the other best practices include:Initialising certain applications before handImplementing best practices like modularity, re-usability and efficient looping into the codeSecuring credentials using orchestrator 4. Post implementation adoptionScalability, Maintenance and de-commissioning the process are the three most important post implementation challenges. We have covered scalability in the earlier part of the article (RPA centre of excellence is most important to address scalability). Changes in business processes or applications require the components to be modified. Since most the bots are programmed using best practices it is relatively easier to re-configure and change as per changing business needs. As the process evolves over a period of time with the changing business needs, we should also be able to analyse when to de-commission a certain process based on the complexity and effort it takes to maintain and bot’s run time.3. Future of RPARPA market is expected to grow at double digit rates through 2024 as per predictions from Gartner. Here are the trends that are expected to shape up the RPA market in the short term.Non-IT Buyers/Low Code and No code PlatformsThe RPA adoption is over 90% in certain industries and most of these revenues has been coming from the IT buyers. Over the course of the time, business buyers are expected to drive the revenue growth for RPA players given the complex business landscapes and for simple reason there aren’t enough programmers around the world to meet these demands. By 2024, half the new RPA revenue is expected from non-IT buyers.While the existing pure play RPA leaders like Ui Path, Blue Prism & Automation Anywhere are working on simplifying their platforms, some of the tech giants like SAP, Salesforce, Oracle, ServiceNow, Google and AWS are focusing on low code RPA platforms. There also has been some of the innovative starts ups that are already making some big success stories in the no code RPA space.Cognitive AutomationLeveraging NLP, AI and ML with RPA enables enterprises to expand the scope of process it can automate. While some the tools provide these features by default, some of them may require custom coding or installing certain plugins from the RPA market place.Process Modelling AutomationOne of the top priorities for RPA research is auto-extraction of process knowledge from logs and videos. The workflow creation and process definition acts as a bottleneck in the creation of opportunity pipeline and is manually intensive. Automating the process modelling can speed up RPA implementation and deliver substantial ROI.

RPA Solutions for 3PL provider

Client focus Client is a leading North American provider of logistics technology and transportation management services for manufacturers, retailers, chemical and consumer packaged goods companies. Challenges The client had been experiencing steady growth over the last 5 years. However a key concern going forward was, how to grab new market opportunities fast enough and press the accelerator on future growth. Manual processes across rate lookups, route optimization, audit logs, order management and several other areas served as biggest roadblocks in its pursuit for process excellence and future expansion plans. The client’s management team has realized that technology intervention was needed to automate some of these repetitive mundane tasks across the above areas to increase customer satisfaction. Solutions Cognine has started RPA implementation with 2 bots across order management, freight forwarding and rate look ups. The bulky, repetitive, rule based processes across these areas served to be an ideal candidates for automation. Ui Path tool was chosen for its resilience and ability to perform in various environments and proven NLP capabilities. The bots were responsible for handling the process of order creation (orders received by email –> involves NLP based text extraction) in the ERP system, getting rates from various freight forwarding companies and inserting in to the portal, and getting the latest status of the client’s customer shipments all with out manual intervention. Key Benefits The RPA platform has increased the accuracy levels and cut the time needed to perform certain tasks by up to 90%. The resources that were performing these manual tasks earlier are able to focus on other value adds to customers.

RPA Solutions for Revenue Cycle Management

Client focus Client provides practice management services to independent physician-owned practices and small-mid size hospital groups. It offers end-to-end RCM services to manage its revenue cycle operations including patient registration, insurance verification, billing, and medical documentation. Challenges The client wanted to automate certain processes across pre-authorization and patient medical record submission. The pre-authorization process is highly repetitive and lot of manual effort was needed to get the patient details and check for status of authorization whether it is pending for approval, approved or declined. Patient medical record submission was another painful task that involves a complicated process of getting the patient data from billing system, medical records from providers EHR system and then sending it to the Payer for claim settlement. This is cumbersome process involving multiple interactions with virtual and Citrix environments. Solutions Cognine has implemented process automation using Blue Prism. The bot automatically logs into the payer portal, feeds in the the patient data to get the latest information of claim status. The bot also extracts the information from hand written documents and feeds in the key information. For the claim submission, the bot interacts with billing system eCinicalWorks, EHR system Cerner over virtual environments and extracts all the necessary information for filing a claim to the payer. From getting the data to updating the status in the billing system and interaction with EHR and printing the documents, the bots works un-interrupted with manual intervention. intervention. Key Benefits Increased task completion rate, reduced error rate and highly efficient operations that cut down manual intervention to near zero which was earlier performed by 2 FTE. Expansion of operations to multiple states and on-boarding more providers became much simpler.

Healthcare Product Engineering

Client focus Client is a healthcare service provider with a focus on bringing technology into small and midsize providers for digitizing patient visits and health records. Challenges Client had a product idea (web and mobile) to manage patient visits, medications and medical records for clinics and hospitals with a unique feature of smart data entry using proprietary state machine in prescriptions. Client wanted to use a single workflow for prescribing all medications Needed an intuitive interface requiring minimal training Client needed additional layers of security to protect the sensitive patient data and medication management programs Solutions Cognine was involved in every phase of the product development starting from requirements discovery phase to deployment on cloud as the client did not have any technical team. A cloud agnostic, fully scalable microservices based SAAS approach with containerized deployments was proposed and implemented. UI was developed using single page approach A proprietary state machine was designed to cater to the contextual intelligence required for auto suggesting and completing words as per the usage of doctors. Message queues were used to manage notifications and communication between patients and doctors along with external caching services. Features like Two-factor authentication and validation were implemented to enable additional layers of security. Key Benefits Rapid prototyping and feedback mechanisms from light house customers helped in incorporating some of the good to have features that were not part of initial planning process Web application developed with features to include offline availability of the state machine and the required data to enable a seamless user experience even during the event of internet unavailability.

E-Learning Platform Development

Client focusClient is an education provider and wanted to enable online test taking for all students to better analyse results and enhance performance.ChallengesClient wanted an application (web and mobile) that would allow their students from multiple campuses to take tests online and the ability for faculty/parents/administration to review results and create a plan of action to improve individual performance of students.Application needed to be built as per the industry standards of the countryNeeded an easy way to streamline publishing new question papers with complex patternsInformation architectures that provide insights into Key Performance Indicators needed to be incorporatedSolutionsCognine spent a considerable amount of time with college administration to identify key requirementsA cloud agnostic, fully scalable microservices based SaaS approach with containerized deployments was proposed and implemented. UI was developed based on standardized tests inline with the education standards in the respective countryApplication was built in a responsive manner, allowing students to take tests on tablet devices as well.Dashboards were developed for students, parents, faculty and administration to view self performance and relative performanceCommunication channels were designed within the application for parents to interact with faculty and discuss improvementsKey BenefitsCollaboration between students, parents, administration personnel, and school staff improves learning outcomesStandardized workflows and automation tools accelerated easy on-boarding of new campuses as well as

Data Led Digital Transformation

Client focusThe client is a leading retailer that operates over 1500 stores across Europe under multiple brands.ChallengesThe client faced challenges with disparate on-premise data systems and did not have a consolidated view of their products performance.The data warehouse currently runs reports in batch mode and takes up to 20 hours for report generation.Needed a technology partner who can enable near real time reporting over a cloud based data lake.Implement a phased data migration approach without impacting the existing data warehouse model.SolutionsCognine worked with the client team to migrate the legacy data warehouse to Azure cloud to ensure agility and scalability of reporting architectures.Data handling: Designed the cloud migration strategy by performing data profiling of all the major on-premise data sources and data warehouse systems.A comprehensive data architecture was defined to enable accelerated ingestion and reduce latencies across the value chainTechnologies: Snowflake was chosen for hosting the data warehouse and data mart. Attunity, a cloud based replication tool was leveraged to accelerate the migration of the on-premise data to Snowflake. Power BI was chosen for visualization, dash-boarding and self service analytics.Key BenefitsThe new data architectures reduced the processing times from 12 hours to minutes. Usage of Attunity brought down the batch load times considerably.Data science teams were provided with flexibility to access data from the analytics work-spaces

E-commerce Platform Development

Client focusClient wanted to develop a new e-commerce platform to sell agricultural goods to farmers and purchase the farm produce.ChallengesHelp client enable e-commerce with the farming community to sell and maintain an online catalog of products.Enable fulfillment of customer orders and an end to end solution with API enablement to integrate with others partners in the supply chainBuild data analytics and visualization for reports on inventory, sales and financial management.SolutionsWorked with the client to define the functional solution and technical architecture of the e-commerce platformA web front end and native mobile builds were generated for an omni channel experienceDeveloped secure payment gateways and seamless integration with fulfillment partners for hassle free experienceKey BenefitsRapid development and deployment of platform enabled faster time to market with a unified experienceA fully scalable micro-services platform that fulfilled over 4 million order in the initial year of operations

Acclimatization

I was trekking in the Himalayas recently and one word stood out clear and loud:AcclimatizationInitially, it seemed like an overused word that sounds good in high altitudes. Science says that air gets thinner as we gain altitude and hence the body needs to work harder with limited supply of oxygen. I ran into lot of people who were on their way back from the summit and kept saying to drink lots of fluids (water) and acclimatize with every step (whatever that meant).Every day, we would gain altitude of few hundred feet and rest for the night. This was supposed to help the body get used to lower oxygen levels, fewer oxygen percent points each day. Some bodies adapt faster and some slower. The slowest ones needed to be evacuated in a helicopter to lower altitudes as soon as possible. I saw a lot of helicopters making rounds and it usually wasn’t good news.Every time one starts working on a new job, there is an in-built acclimatization process. I broadly classify new job acclimatizing into three categories: Technical, Cultural, and Political.“Technical” is the skillset that’s needed to complete tasks effectively. These are the skills that got you inside the door. Demonstrate the skills; keep improving; share; grow.“Cultural” is more about the “fit”. Every company’s culture is different and unique. People come to me and say “We used to do it like this at my previous company. It is so different here (I’m not liking this)”. While corporate culture is a broad term, ask yourself if your values and company’s values align well. Are your Values Aligned? Does the company culture giving you the flexibility and room for creativity that you yearn for? It is very hierarchical or it is more flat structured (and which one suits your working style better)? Would a Netflix culture fit you better or do you like a more traditional by-the-book culture?“Political” is not necessary bad politics. While no company takes pride in admitting that internal politics prevail within the company, it does exist to varying extent in all companies. Understanding the company’s powerhouses and long term goals is key to ensure you’re getting acclimatized. Who are the key decision makers, their thought processes, getting buy-in from key people on various initiatives are some of the areas that needs attention during the acclimatization process.Is there a preset duration for acclimatization? No, there isn’t. Some adapt faster and some slower. The slowest ones end up hating the job and eventually will leave (helicopter evacuation).While every company expects a new hire to bring in new energy and ideas, it is important that the new hire acclimatizes well before proposing and implementing drastically new ideas. It is very important to understand the current processes and situation before proposing a radical idea that might have worked well at a different company in the past. Latest Posts The Future of Business is Here: How AI-Driven Intelligent Process Automation is Changing the Game Ready for Smarter Automation? In...Read More The Evolution of AI Agents and What’s Next for Compound AI Systems As we move deeper into...Read More Why 2024 is the Year of AI Agents and Compound AI Systems? In the rapidly evolving landscape...Read More From Passionate Engineers to a Thriving Workplace: Cognine Technologies Earns Great Place to Work® Certification Press Release: Hyderabad, India –...Read More Enhancing Developer Experience (DevEx) – How Cognine is Empowering Its Clients for Success What if enhancing your development...Read More

Are Your Values Aligned?

One of my professors, during my days at Northwestern, asked if my personal values match with my company’s values. The point was that if there is a mismatch in values, maybe it is best to part ways with the company.I have since started looking at values of different companies and almost all of them seem like good values. Why would a company choose “Bad Customer Service” or “Employees Last” or “Dishonesty to the Core” or “Less Quality” as their value?more, what percent of employees know their company’s values? Probably a small number (I’d like to know if there’s a precise number from a reliable study). Assuming a vast majority of employees don’t know their company’s values, why even bother defining values? Are setting values on minds of founders of start-ups.On a more practical note, I think vision, mission, and values should be at the fingertips of leadership team. Their every action should reflect company’s values and should encourage all employees to align to the same. What if employees don’t align to the same? What if employees’ personal values aren’t aligned with your company’s values? How do you identify them? How do you deal with them?

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AI in Business

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Intelligent Automation – Future Of RPA

Logistics

RPA Solutions for 3PL provider

Healthcare

RPA Solutions for Revenue Cycle Management

Healthcare

Healthcare Product Engineering

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E-Learning Platform Development

Retail

Data Led Digital Transformation

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Acclimatization

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Are Your Values Aligned?

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