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Logistics

Optimizing Driver Retention Through Technology

Looking for truck drivers?Sorry, our truck drivers are not available.These are some common statements that most Trucking USA companies face. Ever wondered why???Trucking companies play a key role in the development of trade across borders. However, the success of any trucking company depends on two factors, i.e. Man and Machine.Driver RetentionDigital LogisticsA recent survey by the American Trucking Association reveals that the US market is facing a nearly 60,000 driver shortage, and the numbers will soon reach 1,00,000 by the end of 2022. Further analysis shows that the number of drivers who quit within the first three months of their joining is more than 30%; the ones who leave within the first six months is more than 50%, and the requirement for new drivers is always increasing at alarming rates.Drivers quitting at the very beginning of their careers seem to have dented the company's reputation in the market with dropped profit margins and turnover. Onboarding a new driver can cost a company more than 8,000$. Adding to this is the time spent training the driver on the company's vehicle specs, delivery routes, and understanding of the company's working style. After all, when the driver leaves within 6 months of joining, it proves to be a complete loss. These numbers are alarming for trucking companies as they know the importance of retaining drivers. Before we understand how to address the problem, it is important to understand why it exists.Here is a simple "Why-Why Analysis to drivers quitting jobs."3 aspects define Driver Retention:PayEfficiency of workDignity at workLack of digitalizationPoor Pay: The drivers feel that the salary they get and the effort they put in are underpaid. Therefore, most of the drivers quit. On the other hand, the drivers hired as replacements quit in a short span because the trucking companies pay less to new drivers than the drivers they replace.The efficiency of work: Driving trucks calls for a lifestyle change. The long travel hours and the risks involved in the traditional routing process can be taxing for drivers.Dignity at work: It's necessary that trucking agencies look at their drivers as their representatives and not as mere drivers.Lack of Digitalization: The drivers feel stressed handling all the paperwork, customer management, and payment process manually.The above is the holistic view of the problem; In this article, you will understand how technology in different formats can impact drivers' efficiency and the company's paying capacity.Here are some technological insights into what is needed for logistics and transportation companies to retain drivers:The first and the most effective tool is establishing a good Routing App. What is a routing app? A good routing app is an interface created based on the driver's inputs of all the details in terms of driving time, type of terrain, the kind of fines and traffic delays and more the drivers face in all the routes they travel. Creating this app will ensure that the trucking agency, the customer, and the driver are on the same page regarding delivery deadlines. In other words, the drivers are relieved from the stress of meeting unrealistic delivery timelines, which causes working overtime and accidents.With technology growing leaps and bounds, it's time to move from the manual process and plug-in RPA into logistics. RPA in logistics management helps increase efficiency and productivity, saves time, reduces errors, and increases company profits. For a 3PL provider based out of the US, Cognine helped implement the RPA platform that automated order creation, rate lookups, and payment status updation without any manual intervention, which 8FTE earlier performed.Automation of operations has become the need of the hour. Cognine built a natural language processing(NLP) engine that made a fleet manager's day easier in data extraction and management. The model developed processes 99% of the rate requests, with the AHT being reduced from 500 sec to less than 50 sec. Pay the driver his worth. Wondering how to measure his performance??? That's where embracing Driver Management App helps you track and measure driver performance. We help trucking agencies develop an effective DMA to look at the drivers' productivity, track settlements, plan their routes, upload dispatch expenses, e-sign BOLs, and send automatic load status notifications to customers.ConclusionYes, Automation and Digitization are the keys to improving the process and retaining drivers. But, choosing the apt options that suit your organization is the key to making the best of the automation. With a thorough understanding of the logistics and transportation industry, Cognine constantly strives to create customized business solutions.We consider the drivers' and organizations' perspectives to ensure that the technology makes their lives easy.With Cognine's intervention, it is always a win-win solution.

Digital Transformation in the Utilities Sector

While trends in the power and utilities business models have been exempt from massive overhauls for a while, the influence of technological innovations is slowly starting to change this factor. Due to this, digitization’s visionary approach to technology lays the groundwork for new capabilities that are expected to accelerate exponential growth in pressure-pumping market value for decades to come.What is digital transformation in the power sector?Rapid transition to clean power is helping businesses reduce their carbon footprints and many are also racing to catch up with the rising sophistication of digital technologies. Companies must ensure that they have the right technology in place to support a digital transformation strategy and leverage it across their entire operations. The power industry is leading the way in this direction, with renewable power at the center of many providers’ strategies.This translates into a newer, more diverse set of assets to manage and integrate with the rapidly ageing set of existing assets worth about $1.2 trillion. In addition to online tools that automate business processes, programmable automation (PA) and cognitive computing are quickly entering the mainstream as firms realise these technologies can help them reduce costs and improve performance. But moving from traditional asset management strategies to develop comprehensive digital strategies with robust data governance and cybersecurity at its core will mean going beyond software alone:The need of the moment: Companies need more robust analytics capabilities that can support key business processes such as fuel planning, risk management, maintenance scheduling, and asset monitoring as well as infrastructure planning for new projectsDigital paradigm shifts in power transformation: The power and utilities industry today faces a host of challenges that are making the business more difficult to succeed in. On the one hand, high oil prices, a growing population, and widespread use of electricity are making it imperative that businesses adapt to reflect market demands. Meanwhile, industry professionals lack the agility and resilience to effectively deal with these new demands.At this point in time, what's more important is how your business will be better able to adapt to changing conditions and capitalise on opportunities as they emerge.Let us look at some digital paradigm shifts that are game changers in the vertical: Industry 4.0:Industry 4.0 has revolutionised the way manufacturing operations are run. Industry 4.0 is the transition from a manufacturing operation to an intelligent operation. Data-driven, automated, and ever-improving technology will make factories leaner, more efficient, and profitable.Today, there is more opportunity than ever before in this industry as digital twins and IoT devices bring us ever closer to fully autonomous systems fuelled by massive amounts of data. This gives more power to utility companies when it comes to gaining a competitive advantage over their peers. However, cyber security becomes even more important through such innovations.2. Compliance:The industry is facing an uphill battle in order to meet new emission regulations and sustainability targets. Oil and gas companies are being tasked with implementing smarter, more efficient operations. With the heat on for future-ready leaders, getting creative with available technology solutions will be key in our efforts to meet air quality goals. Changing industry needs:The shift toward alternative power sources has not only affected the business but has also opened new opportunities for companies in the industry. It has shown the customers what is needed and how their lives will be improved. The shift towards clean power has created new revenue opportunities for utility companies. Customer accessibility and sustainability have driven the development of IoT devices, which allow power companies to connect with customers and influence behavior. In addition, IoT devices are helping reduce the environmental impact that extraction creates. Digital asset management:Digital innovation is playing a key role in the transformation of asset management in the generation segment. As the industry moves toward digitization in the sector, digital asset management can play a key role in the transformation of asset management, helping reduce O&M costs, boost reliability and profitability, and lowering greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Data management:We are now entering the era of smart grids. Companies are facing the challenge of collecting, analysing, and acting on all their valuable data. Connected devices help them to collect and analyse data from multiple sources and make it accessible to other departments of an enterprise. Infrastructure set in place that communicates with data centres provides information on electricity consumption; sensors enable real-time monitoring of facilities and assets on the premises; IoT-based solutions offer comprehensive insight into the performance of plants, equipment, and networks as well as usage patterns at every stage of the supply chain.Wrapping up…The power industry is open to a great number of digital transformations, the most important of which is the fact that it allows companies to open new horizons of digital opportunities and reach a new level of global economic growth, and effective operation.With the transition to digitization underway, IT architecture is playing an increasingly important role in ensuring that generation and consumption interact smoothly. Not only does the utility sector need to find new ways to manage their business, but they also have a duty to inform their consumers about new technologies and service offerings so they can make informed choices.

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

White Paper | 2024

AI in Business

Navigating the influence of AI on business landscapes

Logistics

Optimizing Driver Retention Through Technology

Blogs

Digital Transformation in the Utilities Sector

Blogs

Intelligent Automation – Future Of RPA

Logistics

RPA Solutions for 3PL provider

Healthcare

RPA Solutions for Revenue Cycle Management

Healthcare

Healthcare Product Engineering

Blogs

E-Learning Platform Development

Retail

Data Led Digital Transformation

Retail

E-commerce Platform Development

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