Case Study: Technology

Automating in the back office to support scale and reduce costs by up to 50%

IT company taps HGS’s robotic process automation (RPA) expertise to transform 25+ processes with 70+ bots

Overview

In 2017, an IT company was on the lookout for an outsourcing partner well versed in the understanding and execution of Intelligent Automation including Robotic Process Automation (RPA) as a solution. This technology company is digitally savvy and was keen on digitizing their mundane processes in order to bring in efficiency across their processes. This organization was seeking outside help to reduce shared services that had grown beyond the client’s strategy, as well as imbibe the culture of digital transformation through new age technology which helps in bringing process efficiency and at the same time help optimize the costs.

With in-house technical knowledge of their own, this technology company chose HGS as an RPA expert with a well-aligned skillset to deliver intelligent backoffice automation solutions. Only 2 years later, this unlimited partnership cites operational impact of 70 bots across approx. 25+processes automated for in some cases up to 50% cost savings and dramatic process improvements as outcomes that will continue to achieve significant return on client investment.

At a glance

Client since November 2017
Back-office solutions
Robotic process automation
Delivery from Bangalore, India

The solution

Delivering design thinking and automation

How we do it
Post the highly successful pilot implementation, the client officially tasked HGS with deploying the process. HGS began working on a number of processes in less than a year, fast-tracking multiple client processes. Today, HGS supports multiple automation phases: design, development, deployment, change management, control room monitoring and maintenance. We have innovated design thinking approaches and provided customized, tailor-made back-office automation solutions, improving the efficiency of their processes. With the success of our initial pilot, the client trusted HGS to deploy RPA across the all the other processes.

HGS and the client’s journey has continued with increasing trust and transparency. The client has set up a transformation COE after partnering with HGS, which is a major highlight in a client and solution provider partnership. The client and HGS teams are well aligned, from governance to strategy, including, continuous communication and frequent face-to-face meetings with the client. The client company’s executive members are part of the governance committee that is involved in addressing challenges in the partnership signaling deep commitment and involvement of the client.

Business result
HGS’s design thinking and automation approach and expertise have benefitted the client across numerous processes. We have automated multiple processes which has resulted in better turnaround time due to 24/7 operations, improved average handle time, and reduction in touch time—all to significantly improve efficiency.

Automated multiple processes across verticals such as F&A, HR, sales, and procurement

How we do it
HGS chose a mix of low-, medium-, and high-complex processes across different verticals to cater to different stakeholders. The complexity mix also ensured that some outcomes were delivered faster due to the nature of the complexity thereby help build stakeholder confidence. HGS delivered faster deployments and showcasing of outcomes faster than expected. In turn, this built a solid foundation for the future roadmap.

The processes were carefully chosen to ensure maximum re-usability and higher impact. The focus was to ensure that reusable components were built across processes by breaking the modules to suit replication model. This aimed to ensure faster development and deployment with lesser efforts. The added value is to help scale the automation activities sooner than expected. All the automation done was designed for a zerotouch model where the bot runs everything end to end with no manual intervention, this further gives the client to run at any given time of the day including off business hours. The bot’s capacity was carefully studied and utilized effectively so as to get the maximum of the run time. Add to this a self-sufficient fall out process was built for a careful hand off to operations team.

Business result
With HGS’s help, the client now has automation across verticals and processes—from sales to sales report generation and claims management. This partner now has stringent control for automation of price comparison of products across different retailers to provide essential actionable insights to the marketing team. This upstream-downstream impact includes intelligent automation to extract information from unstructured and semi structured data sources in order to carry out the transaction process. This more robust process now extracts information from data sources such as invoices, bank statements, payment statements, and checks.

Results

Up to 50% projected cost reduction

~ 25+ client processes automated

The way forward

HGS has set the bar high for future success of this partnership, with cognitive automation already underway where we have provided artificial intelligence (AI) to enable processing of unstructured data that cannot be read/ processed by a normal bot. We are now in the process of taking this to the next level to deploy highly complicated solutions across other areas involving NLP, analytics, etc. The sky is the limit for HGS to deliver even more sustainable business impact for this technology client partner.

Global locations

USA • UK • Canada • India • Philippines • Jamaica • Australia • Colombia

Global Headquarters: GHS, Bommanahalli, Hosur Road, Bengaluru – 560068

Registered Office: Tower C (1st floor), Plot C-21, G Block, Bandra Kurla Complex, Bandra East, Mumbai – 400 051

CIN: L92199MH1995PLC084610

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