Month: May 2019

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 .

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Tangentia + Dynamics 365 Business Central – Cloud ERP made easy

  • Tangentia + Dynamics 365 Business Central
    Cloud ERP made easy

Tangentia + Dynamics 365 Business Central – Cloud ERP made easy

The latest trends in the marketplace have shown that companies have begun to be more and more open to keep their data on the cloud. This is fast becoming true with their ERP systems. For Microsoft, it is not just a strategic decision to therefore re-brand their ‘on premise systems’ but a means of keeping up with the competition. Customers these days are not just looking for an ERP system that handles the finance and operations of the company but also embeds ecommerce solutions. This allows for a one stop shop cloud based solution that companies can exponentially benefit from.

Keeping the above in mind Microsoft has introduced ‘Dynamics 365 Business Central’ (formerly known as Microsoft Dynamics Navision) which is available on both “Premise” and on “Cloud.” Business Central offers organizations a single, end to end solution for managing finances, operations, sales and customer service and a solid opportunity to easily upgrade from entry-level accounting software and legacy systems.

Business Central is customizable and brings the full power of Dynamics NAV to the cloud. One of its most telling features – it provides businesses with tools that they can use to analyze their cash flow by analyzing historic data to make predictions for future periods. The cash flow forecast feature is made all the more dynamic as it can utilize the Azure Machine Learning to model various scenarios and provide groundbreaking insights into what to expect for the future. Azure Machine Learning allows the business to extend the time horizon for cash flow forecasts. It has the following models to calculate forecasts:

  • ARIMA (Auto Regressive Integrated Moving Average)
  • ETS (Exponential Smoothing State Space)
  • STL (Seasonal Decomposition of Time Series by Loess)
  • TBATS (Exponential Smoothing State Space with Box-Cox transformation, ARMA errors, Trend and Seasonal components)

What it does differently is that it applies advanced statistical methods to the historical data to generate data in the future and include that data when calculating the forecast. When we predict receivables or payables, we use the due date as a date field and not the document date or posting date, so we don’t need to define and apply a payment term to the predicted results.

Azure ML is free in Business Central; you just need to turn it on. If you have two years of data, you can expect to forecast values accurately for up to four months. Business Central has introduced a ‘threshold’ factor that can be adjusted in the Cash Flow Forecast setup. The field is called “Variance %” and allow you to specify range of deviation, plus or minus, that you’ll accept in forecast.

The Tangentia Advantage

Tangentia EDI Engine

Tangentia has been at the forefront developing custom integration solutions that has previously connected the client’s Microsoft Navision ERP system to their Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), ecommerce and Warehouse Management Systems. (WMS)
The Tangentia Navision Engine (TNE) has supported MS NAV version 4.0 all the way to MS Dynamics NAV 2018. As of May 2019, Tangentia Navision Engine also seamlessly integrates and connects your EDI trading partners with the Business Central Cloud ERP. TNE has the following features:

  • Single user interface for all your EDI, WMS and ecommerce needs
  • Guaranteed EDI connectivity to 2000+ retailers worldwide
  • Supports ANSI X12, EDIFACT, RosettaNet, cXML, Tradacoms, ebXML etc.
  • Lifetime EDI Compliance – no additional cost for trading partner mapping changes or label modification
  • One-time flat EDI integration fee utilized across all trading partners
  • Highly customizable to meet business processes that might vary from company to company

Tangentia RPA and AI

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.
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, Blue Prism 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.
Gartner predicts that by 2022 worldwide RPA spending will total $2.4B with an expected CAGR upwards of 30% in the next five years.
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 Omni channel: 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.

Tangentia provides end to end implementation services around the three main automation solutions – Automation Anywhere, UiPath and Blue Prism. Some of the benefits of choosing Tangentia are:

  • A strong commitment to client success over our own.
  • 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, Insurance 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.

Tangentia Procure-to-Pay

  With Tangentia’s EDI, Automation, and Ecommerce services, we can provide a complete streamlined Procure-to-Pay process for the Global enterprise. The Procure-to-Pay (P2P) is an end-to-end process starting with requisitioning goods and services and ending with making payments for them.

The 7 Steps Procure-to-Pay process involves:

  • Raising the Purchase Order
  • Vendor confirmation of Purchase Order
  • Advanced Shipment Notice
  • Receipt of Goods
  • Submitting Documents to Finance
  • Vendor sending Invoice to Customer
  • Final Payment to Supplier

This apparently simple process can be complex due to legacy systems, and errors from manual entries, leading to unnecessary costs. Implementing an Procure-to-Pay cycle can provide an opportunity to bring efficiency to the process and save costs.

Tangentia Order-to-Cash

With Tangentia’s EDI, Automation, and Ecommerce services, we can provide a complete streamlined Order-to-Cash process for the Global enterprise. Order-to-Cash (OTC or O2C) is the top-level business process for receiving and processing customer orders.

The order to cash process is simple and can be illustrated with the following steps:

  • Customer sends a purchase order
  • Vendor creates a sales order
  • Vendor ships and delivers goods
  • Vendor sends invoice to customer
  • Customer pays the vendor

Order-to-Cash systems affect all areas of a business and are critical to operational success.

In a standard system, orders are received via different sales channels, such as phone, emails, fax, online channels or through sales persons. This input complexity added with other manual entries, makes the process error-prone and the system inefficient. Implementing an Order-to-Cash cycle can provide an opportunity to bring efficiency to the process and save costs.

With Tangentia’s EDI, Automation, and Ecommerce services, we can provide a complete streamlined Order-to-Cash process for the Global enterprise.

About the Author

The author, Akash Singh is the Head of Project Management Operations(PMO) at Tangentia. He oversees projects around EDI/ Ecommerce/ RPA and AI from a delivery standpoint ensuring client satisfaction and success.

Tangentia is an expert in implementing Digital Transformation solutions leveraging technologies like RPA, Artificial Intelligence, EDI and Ecommerce.

Tangentia implements solutions around Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central and you can learn more here.

To learn more about Tangentia EDI solutions Click Here

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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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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