Automation is in our DNA, and we are future-ready!
Any repetitive time-consuming task becomes mundane and uninteresting over the course of time and is prone to human errors. How can someone even work 24*7 and on holidays without fatigue and making errors? In the growing technology world, we need a solution to reduce operational inefficiencies and to accelerate digital transformation along with compliance. Voila! We stumble across Robotic Process Automation aka RPA.
Robotic process automation (RPA) is a software technology that makes it easy to build, deploy, and manage software robots that imitate mundane human actions interacting with digital systems and software. Automation refers to a workflow that operates independently or without constant human oversight. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is the process of automating business operations with the help of robots to reduce human intervention, just like a human being is doing them across applications and systems.
Automation team was setup in Anko 3 years back. We play a significant role in improving operational efficiencies and reducing cost of doing business by automating and repetitive tasks. Our Vision is to establish an Automation CoE to act as an Automation Flywheel, where skilled automation developers enable Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) in all departments of Kmart and Target, Australia to build their own productivity bots.
Freeing time on SME’s hands to do more proactive work to improve customer experience, increase the lifetime value of customers and brand loyalty, optimize internal resource allocation, capitalize on opportunity costs, and enabling to scale while ensuring consistency in customer experience.
At Anko, we aim to accelerate digital transformation through automation of key business processes using Robotic Process Automation. Automation is everyone’s job at Kmart and Target, and everyone that automates is part of our growing Automation Community.
Our journey so far
Over the last 2.5 years, we have established strong business presence while collaborating with sixteen businesses and tech teams. Over 150+ automations that are live today improves business process compliance and data quality. Benefits of these live automations are not just manual effort savings but also cost avoidance.
One of the key projects for the supply chain solved the problem of the team having to search 22,000 odd files in a directory to categorize it, highlight key fields and comments. Our robot completes all these in the stipulated time saving around 67% of the team’s effort along with reduction in manual errors & faster processing time.
Another successful automation reduced the refunds processing time from 3-4 days to few hours, all by tying together customer support channels to order management systems using RPA. This enhanced the customer experience with timely refunds and critical support during peak volumes such as Christmas, Black Friday etc. In addition to customer experience improvements, this automation saved efforts of support team in handling damages and refunds manually.
Finance is another domain with plenty of opportunities to automate. We digitized finance processes of reading vendor emails for different streams to data entry in finance systems and automated workflows. RPA deals with email channels, data extraction, excel templates, data entry in finance systems and notifications in a more efficient way with the ability to track and report status. RPA is a boon when it comes to automating processes on legacy systems. One such use case we worked on automated data entry to legacy merchandise system reducing team efforts by 57%.
RPA is not just for business process automation. It can also help technology automate technology with smart reporting, automated workflows and enabling self-service channels.
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Why should we automate a business process?
a) Increase Operational Efficiencies
b) Accelerate Digital Transformation
c) Improve Team Member Satisfaction
d) Improve Compliance
In conclusion, Automation is in the DNA of our digital journey as an enterprise. In a business environment that is constantly evolving, we have embraced Automation and that makes us future-ready and digital-first.
Happy Automating!
Author: Mayank Sharan , Tech Lead - Automation, Enterprise Technology at Anko