Tag: bots

AI Powered Chatbots in Higher Education | A Positive Impact for Students and Administrations


  • AI Powered Chatbots in Higher Education
    A Positive Impact for Students and Administrations

Artificial intelligence (AI) is taking the world by storm. The global intelligent virtual assistant (VA) market is set to reach more than $25 billion by 2025. In day-to-day life people interact with AI for shopping, banking, and smart home devices. In business, chatbots have made customer communications more efficient and a VA can help people organize their schedules and more quickly connect with the information they need to do their job better.

A VA is an AI technology that is also useful in the realm of higher education. In this setting, the VA can transform the university and college experience by helping students access the information they need when they need it. It can also help universities manage the inquiries and communications they receive from students and the general public.

How Students Can Use AI Powered Chatbots

AI Powered Chatbots make it possible for each student to individualize their on-campus experience and education. From asking questions regarding registration to finding out where the nearest campus coffee shop is to getting help with their work, an AI Chatbot is there to help students. There are many ways that students can enhance their college experience with an AI Chatbot such as:

  • Act like a teacher’s assistant, with 24/7 availability to answer student questions and complete tasks more quickly than a human assistant
  • Provide individualized teaching methods to help students learn better and more efficiently
  • Help international students with application and administration support using multi-language capabilities.
  • Provide students with reminders, on-campus information, help connecting with tutors, and answers to questions about facilities and life on-campus
  • Connect students with the on-campus support and processes they need to ensure their success and post-secondary education transition is as seamless as possible

AI Chatbot technology is advancing quickly, improving its capacity to provide more intuitive guidance for each student based on their individual needs.

How AI Powered Chatbots Can Help Universities

Universities have a limited staff that needs to service a very large student body. If enrollment grows, hiring more staff can be costly. With the use of a AI Chatbots, a university can easily and efficiently service a large student body by deploying an AI Chatbot to:

  • Answer standard student questions
  • Provide information to students quickly
  • Flag more complex questions or problems for staff to take care of
  • Free up staff to have more one-on-one time to help students where they need it most
  • Act as a teacher’s assistant for online and virtual learning environments
Introducing TIA – Tangentia’s Intelligent Automation Chatbot powered by IBM Watson

TIA can be built, trained, and deployed to provide individualized conversations via any application, device, or channel. It has the capability to:

  • Learn from minimal data
  • Process unstructured data
  • Handle massive amounts of data
  • Act as a decision support system for students
  • Be deployed on the public cloud and on-premises networks
  • Recommend improvements to the system
  • Rely on people or its own search engine as fallback

These capabilities provide higher education institutions with the means to offer the following services:

Language:

  • Assistant
  • Document Conversion
  • Natural Language Classifier
  • Natural Language Understanding
  • Tone Analyzer
  • Retrieve and Rank
  • Personality Insights
  • Speech:
    • Speech to Text
    • Text to Speech

Vision:

  • Visual Recognition

Data insights:

  • Discovery
  • Knowledge Studio
  • Discovery News

As an example of the use of TIA, an IBM Powered Watson Chatbot, a Canadian University was looking for a chatbot digital assistant that would allow the Office of the Registrar to improve their response time to student inquiries, particularly with online inquiries via email and direct chat services. With more than 80,000 emails, 71,000 phone calls, and 37,000 in-person inquiries, staff was frequently overwhelmed and working overtime to keep up.

Tangentia was chosen as the service provider and to demo their TIA Chatbot to the University. We trained the chatbot to help students and website visitors find the information they needed quickly and easily. In addition, we were able to provide smart integration with the University’s website and include live agent integration. Not only that, but we worked closely with the IBM Watson AI team and had a working chatbot demo built within five days!

Contact Tangentia today for more information and to schedule a POC on the IBM Watson Virtual Assistant and TIA.

Get Started Today

Tangentia is a Platinum Partner of IBM and well as partners with Automation Anywhere, UI Path, Blue Prism, Adobe, Microsoft, Salesforce, Amazon and leading enterprise software vendors. We work with customers globally with offices in Canada and India to implement their RPA strategies using an agile methodology.
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RPA Is Perfectly Positioned to Transform the Auto Sales Industry


  • RPA Is Perfectly Positioned to Transform the Auto Sales Industry

    By Rajhans Gupta

When a customer wants to buy a car and applies for an automobile loan, they choose the vehicle they want, put in the application, and hand over all their financial documentation. Then all is quiet on their front while they wait – and wait – to find out if they have been approved.

However, behind the scenes there are a number of tasks being done to process that loan application and finalize the sale of the vehicle. Most of these tasks are tedious, repetitive, and done manually, which is why the customer is left waiting. Simply put – it takes time.

RPA to the Rescue

This is where robotic process automation (RPA) can help. RPA is an automation system that can take these tedious and repetitive tasks and do them more quickly and more accurately than any human. Whether it is checking a customer’s credit history, verifying their information and documentation, loan boarding, sending out a welcome letter, or ensuring the title transfer of the vehicle, it can all be automated.

This is incredibly important at a time when auto retailers are facing a potential increase in demand for new vehicles. While auto sales have gone down due to COVID-19, that same reason is prompting many people to purchase a vehicle to stay off public transportation. It’s a potential silver lining for the auto industry.

Of course, the automation of the automobile industry isn’t new. Automation has been used on the factory floor for years and the industry has always been at the forefront of innovation when it comes to the manufacturing side of things. It is the sales side that, until now, has been lacking. Fortunately, that will soon be a thing of the past.

RPA Success in India

One of the hottest auto-buying markets in the world right now is India. In February of 2018, the sale of passenger vehicles rose by over 7%. Seven cars were being bought every minute. Tangentia saw this as the ideal market to integrate RPA into the auto loan process.

We partnered with the largest car dealership in India, to implement an RPA solution that would help them with their auto sales process. When a vehicle is purchased in India, the purchaser has to register with 12 different agencies to finalize the sale. These are agencies such as the department of transportation, insurance, roadside assistance, and vehicle warranty.

Prior to RPA implementation, the entire purchase and loan approval process was done manually. It took two days before a customer was approved and all the paperwork was done. It was a time- and energy-intensive process for sales associates. Yet, RPA took the entire process and shortened it from a couple of hours to minutes.

This freed up associates’ time, made the process more efficient, and reduced the number of errors that occurred. It also made the customers happy because they didn’t have to wait long to get loan approval and get their new car on the road. This has significantly impacted the ROI for Indus Motors.

The Bottom Line

The more time sales associates spend on the sales floor, the more vehicles a dealership will sell. With RPA, sales associates won’t be tied to their computer and phone dealing with the tedious loan approval process and all the other number of things that must be done when selling a vehicle. Instead, RPA bots can take care of all that behind-the-scenes work and sales associates can be where they’re needed most – on the front line making sales.

Get Started Today

Tangentia is a Platinum Partner of IBM and well as partners with Automation Anywhere, UI Path, Blue Prism, Adobe, Microsoft, Salesforce, Amazon and leading enterprise software vendors. We work with customers globally with offices in Canada and India to implement their RPA strategies using an agile methodology.
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How Automation Can Help Insurance Companies Change the Way They Do Business

  • How Automation Can Help Insurance Companies Change the Way They Do Business

    By Gauri Shirur D’souza

Automation. It’s that one word that every industry is starting to become familiar with. The idea
of an autonomous system is quickly becoming the norm in many industries—the insurance industry included.

Insurance companies stand to gain a lot from implementing automation into their workflows.While this traditional industry is often cautious, procedural, and afraid of change. Having access to an innovative technology that can greatly optimize labor-intensive processes is essential for insurance companies looking to maintain market dominance.

The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the need for digitization and the implementation of new technology. Companies have been forced to think and act differently. And in the insurance industry, this has meant embracing change.

Automating Insurance Processes

There are several use cases on how RPA can transform the way an insurance business functions.
Here are just a few of the main benefits that an RPA solution can offer an insurance company.

1. Claims: Insurance companies are flooded with claims. Some companies say claims have tripled. This has led to increased pressure on the assessor, delayed processing, and decreased customer satisfaction. RPA can add value to this process. Bots can read documents, access different systems, update records, and provide claim decisions. Not ready to give that much control to a bot? You can implement a hybrid system that lets your bots do the heavy lifting and leaves the decision-making to humans.

2. Underwriting: With changing lifestyles, the approach to underwriting needs to change.Underwriting isn’t a one-size-fits-all scenario. RPA can move a majority of the underwriting to Straight-Through-Processing. This will enable underwriters to focus and underwrite critical cases, analyse trends, and more.

3. Customer On-boarding: Building a digital front with access to both the customer and the sales agent where the bot reviews the information and completes the back-end processing is vital to simplifying the on-boarding process.

4. Policy Administration and Servicing: A bot can calculate changes to premium and send reminders to customers to pay outstanding premiums. A chat-bot can also answer questions related to policy status, renewals, and provide other relevant information with 24/7 service.

5. Reconciliations: RPA can assist in quickly matching premium amounts to the policy, allowing your employees to focus on exceptions.

6. Finance: Finance automation is one of the first places most companies implement an RPA solution. There are countless use cases for automating invoices, payroll, expenses, and other finance tasks.

7. Policy Cancellations: Bots can calculate the payout amounts and update records across systems far quicker than a human can.

8. Fraud Identification: Cognitive RPA can quickly analyse transactions and provide alerts or handle suspicious claims.

RPA Advantages for Insurance Companies

1. Error free processing of transactions

2. Increase in efficiency, faster processing of transactions and accurate data entry

3. Change management is easy and quick

4. Easy implementation with storefront BOTs

5. Can integrate with legacy systems

The biggest benefit of RPA is that it allows employees to focus on their core tasks, leaving the
bot to take care of the administrative and transactional aspects of a transaction.

Why Is Now the Right Time for RPA?

Almost every business has had to transition to a digital model overnight. Employees are now
working from home and sales teams cannot meet their customers. Companies need to transform how they deliver exceptional customer experiences and improve internal operations.

Digital processing through an RPA solution is one of the easiest ways to achieve this.Implementing an RPA solution will improve your operational efficiency, customer experience,and so much more.

Get in touch with us today to learn how RPA can transform the way you approach your core workflows.

Watch our on-demand webinar to learn how financial institutions can quickly and easily implement RPA today with Tangentia and Automation Anywhere.

Get Started Today

Tangentia is a Platinum Partner of IBM and well as partners with Automation Anywhere, UI Path, Blue Prism, Adobe, Microsoft, Salesforce, Amazon and leading enterprise software vendors. We work with customers globally with offices in Canada and India to implement their RPA strategies using an agile methodology.
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How Just-In-Time Inventory, EDI, and RPA Keep Your Business at Its Most Efficient

  • Automating Your Inventory : How Just-In-Time Inventory, EDI, and RPA Keep Your Business at Its Most Efficient

When it comes to your company’s supply chain, one of the most common weak links is inventory management. There are very few businesses that handle their inventory management well. Typically, retail businesses face problems scaling up their inventory management systems as they grow.

As your business grows, efficient inventory practices become more and more worth investing in. Retail companies with poor inventory management can suffer from stock issues, slowed turnover times, and needing to order excess inventory to prevent running out of stock. Slow delivery and stock issues are a sure way to reduce customer satisfaction, so keeping these issues at a minimum is important.

How can retail companies improve their stock management and inventory processes? For most businesses, the answer is automation. Most inventory management issues stem from human error, inefficient practices, and incomplete item information. Automation resolves all these issues. It is intrinsically efficient and requires complete item information, and eliminates human error.

So, how can your business get started with inventory automation? The process isn’t as difficult as you might think. Just-in-Time Inventory (JIT), Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) are a few strategies that you can utilize onto your supply chain to be well on the way to an optimized system.

What Is Just-in-Time (JIT) Inventory?

JIT inventory is a way to decrease waste and increase the efficiency of your supply chain. With JIT, your supply chain only receives goods as they become needed.

Pros of JIT?

JIT keeps your business at maximum efficiency. By having goods on hand only when they’re needed, you can keep your supply chain operating smoothly without needing to worry about long-term storage of stock.

Maintaining JIT inventory reduces the amount of waste your supply chain produces from leftover, unused goods. It also keeps the investment into your supply low, as you don’t need to stock more goods than you need.

Cons of JIT

While JIT keeps your business on top of its efficiency when supply is readily available, it can cause your business to suffer greatly from issues farther down the line of the supply chain.

Since you don’t keep a stockpile of the goods your supply chain uses, if they suddenly become scarce or expensive, your business might unexpectedly run out of stock. You might also end up needing to buy overpriced stock.

What Is Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)?

In general, Electronic Data Interchange is simply the technical term for two computers communicating with each other. In the context of the supply chain, EDI is a way to get a full digital picture of your electronic transaction exchanges with your customers, as well as your inventory.

Pros of EDI

Many supply chain issues, such as inventory shortages and surpluses, happen because of a lack of inventory visibility. EDI allows you to keep track of all your inventory in one centralized location, making it easy to track and prevent inventory errors.

With EDI, it’s also much easier to manage more complex inventory processes, such as multichannel sales. The more complicated the process, the more likely it is for human error to occur.

Having a guarantee that all of the information about your inventory is accurate allows you to make supply decisions with the big picture in mind. Overall, EDI improves almost all aspects of the inventory management process.

Cons of EDI

EDI can be hard to adjust for your supply chain to work around, especially if it is a legacy EDI system that is in place. This is especially the case for rapidly growing businesses, which don’t usually have particularly well-optimized supply chains.

If your inventory isn’t well-suited to EDI, it can take some work to get full value out of the EDI system. You may need to overhaul some of your inventory processes altogether.

What Is Robotic Process Automation (RPA)?

RPA is a way to increase the efficiency of your inventory management by replacing human operators with various digital systems. With an RPA system, the computer essentially uses itself by means of a virtual operator, called an RPA robot.

RPA robots have a wide array of functionalities and are able to completely replace human users for many applications. They can perform tasks such as moving and collecting data from various sources, as well as process data by performing calculations.

Pros of RPA

RPA can allow for quite a lot of inventory management automation, sometimes up to 90%. In general, processes that can be automated should be, as humans are almost always slower than an RPA robot. RPA robots can drastically increase the efficiency of your inventory management processes.

Like EDI, RPA removes the human element from many processes. In particular, RPA robots can handle data entry, data processing, and other repetitive tasks easily, with a 0% rate of error. This gives them a sizable advantage over humans, who are unable to focus on these tasks for as long.

RPA systems can also keep running overnight, giving them yet another advantage over human operators. Overall, RPA is almost guaranteed to provide a large boost to your business’s supply chain efficiency.

Cons of RPA

Like EDI, a proper RPA system is not trivial to implement. Rolling out an RPA project into your business’s inventory management or production environments actually has a good chance of failing at first. After some troubleshooting, you will likely start getting full value out of the RPA system.

Tying It All Together

Automation is a great way to increase efficiency and eliminate errors within your inventory management process. It can’t do the job on its own, though: if you want to optimize your inventory management, you should use a combination of JIT, EDI, and RPA.

How JIT, EDI, and RPA Complement Each Other

On their own, these three methods of optimizing your inventory are sure to increase your efficiency significantly. When put together, though, they are more than the sum of their parts.

The biggest weakness of JIT is that it’s prone to human error. Improper data entry can result in an unexpected stock outage of your product. EDI and RPA prevent this by removing the capacity for human error in the majority of the inventory management operation.

On the other hand, EDI and RPA can suffer from bottlenecks. It doesn’t matter how efficient your data processing is if your business is bogged down by extra costs relating to storage or other inefficiencies. JIT helps alleviate this bottleneck by increasing the efficiency of your business outside of data processing.

Can I Have JIT or EDI Without RPA?

While JIT, EDI, and RPA are tools that are best used together, they can be used individually to great effect. You should make sure you’re on the lookout for the potential issues with using these tools.

So as long as you build your inventory management process around the tools you’re using—you should be able to work around JIT, EDI, and RPA’s various weaknesses. Overall though, we recommend trying to implement all three inventory management tools, as they work best in tandem.

An Investment in JIT Is an Investment in Efficiency

If your business has been growing and you’re having trouble handling demand for your products, the solution may not be to expand and spend more. Oftentimes, it’s much more budget-friendly and effective to invest in ways to improve your efficiency than expand your flawed, existing system.

When it comes to improving the efficiency of your supply chain, the best way is with automation. JIT, EDI, and RPA are all easy-to-implement forms of automation that are designed to provide you with a quick return on investment. Once you have these systems in place, you’ll find that your inventory management model is much more scalable.

If you’re interested in learning more about JIT, EDI, or RPA, feel free to contact us today to find out how these tools can help your business be the best it can be.

Get Started Today

Tangentia is a Platinum Partner of IBM and well as partners with Automation Anywhere, UI Path, Blue Prism, Adobe, Microsoft, Salesforce, Amazon and leading enterprise software vendors. We work with customers globally with offices in Canada and India to implement their RPA strategies using an agile methodology.
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5 Things to Consider when Choosing a RPA Partner


  • 5 Things to Consider when Choosing
    a RPA Partner

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is becoming increasingly popular in many industries. PwC conducted a survey of the financial industry in which 98% of the respondents said they believe RPA implementation is “important, very important, or extremely important.”

The reason for this overwhelming support for RPA is simple. The use of RPA to automate many of the repetitive tasks that use up too much in terms of human and financial resources is helping companies lower their overhead costs, increase productivity, and streamline their operations.

However, with the increasing use of RPA, it can be overwhelming when trying to choose the right RPA partner for you. Yet, choosing the right partner is critical to the success of your business. With this in mind, here are the five things to consider when choosing an RPA partner for your organization:

1. Powerful automation portfolio

The very first thing you need to do is take a close look at the RPA partner candidate’s automation portfolio that shows what they have to offer. This portfolio of offerings, including their methodology, the support they provide and the commercial model they use, is critical to your RPA success. You also want to know things such as:

  • Whether they are involved in RPA research and innovation
  • What their automation solutions cover – back office, front office, etc.
  • The size of business for which they offer RPA– small, medium, large, or enterprise
  • The platform they use for data capture and document/form processing
  • Whether there is easy integration with existing systems, ERP/WMS/carriers, and eCommerce platforms
  • Whether they offer support for multiple configurable user accounts
2. Proficient business tools

You want to be sure that the RPA partner you choose will be able to provide you with the very best tools to ensure robust automation delivery capabilities. This means that RPA partner will, in turn, rely on partnerships with RPA product companies, such as Jiffy.ai, ABBY FlexiCapture, BluePrism, Automation Anywhere, UI Path, and winautomation. These products should provide things like:

  • Intelligent automation
  • Cognitive document processing
  • Audit, tracking, and update tools
  • The ability to gather data, analyze it, and gain insights in real-time
  • The ability to manage credentials, set security restrictions, and allow role-based access at the task level
  • The ability to automate desktop applications
  • OCR capabilities
  • The ability to multitask

This should all be offered for a competitive price and come with full technical support. In addition, your RPA partner should be fully certified to deliver RPA solutions and experienced in implementing those solutions in your industry.

3. Scalability

In 2020 scalability will be a big focus area for organizations, when it comes time to choosing an RPA partner. Ensuring the RPA platform you select is fully scalable and will meet the needs of your business as they change will help maximize the benefits and long-term ROI. This means that you will be able to use the bots across multiple processes, regardless of variations in process volumes, and have a solution that works as your business grows.

4. Global compliance with robust security

Be sure your RPA partner has a level of process oversight that will meet regulatory compliance and ensure the protection of all data. This includes saving data and information related to automated workflows in an activity log that provides a clear record of all data flow and transactions, ensuring you are prepared for any internal or external audits that may be conducted.

5. Proven automation blueprint

Look at the RPA partner’s track record and clientele. It is important that you can see they have a proven automation blueprint that has successfully worked for other organizations, particularly those in your industry or sector. Take a look at who their customers are and pay attention to ratings and reviews of their products, so you can get a good feel for the success of their automation solution.

Ultimately, when you are looking for an RPA partner, you need to be sure that their expertise and capabilities meet your specific needs. Tangentia has the proven track record, the tools, and the innovative spirit to help you get your RPA off the ground.

Get Started Today

Tangentia is a Platinum Partner of IBM and well as partners with Automation Anywhere, UI Path, Blue Prism, Adobe, Microsoft, Salesforce, Amazon and leading enterprise software vendors. We work with customers globally with offices in Canada and India to implement their RPA strategies using an agile methodology.
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RPA in Banking – The next big thing

  • RPA in Banking
    The next big thing

    By Gauri Shirur D’souza

If this pandemic has taught us all one thing, it is that the future is uncertain. And though there may be business disruptions, life and business must continue. This pandemic has also laid bare the unpreparedness of large industries and companies who have invested heavily in Information Technology, but the processes are still
largely manual.

And this has definitely affected customer experience and satisfaction . If we were to conduct a survey today, we would realize that customer experience is negatively affected. The reasons for customer dissatisfaction are mainly delay in response time, inadequate information and non-transparency. If RPA was deeply entrenched in the system, it would have enabled Banks and other financial service institutions to respond quickly and more efficiently to this new normal.

Automation of Banking Processes

There are a few use cases for RPA in Banks. But these have so far been restricted to fraud detection and customer service to name a few. Some of the areas where RPA can provide immediate benefit can be as follows:

  • Loan Life Cycle: Right from loan origination to credit assessment, RPA with a boost from Machine Learning can provide Banks with quick, efficient and scalable operations. In the current scenario, RPA can accelerate credit assessment for forbearance cases.
  • Account Opening: Cognitive BOTs can read documents, enter data and process transactions and enable Banks to open accounts quickly and with zero data entry errors
  • Finance: There are use cases across industries on how Finance is the low hanging fruit for RPA
  • Reconciliations: RPA can ensure zero errors in reconciliations leaving only exceptions to be handled by the employee. This intervention too can be eliminated on adding a Cognitive BOT.
  • Compliance: BOTs can help with not just creating forms for submission to the regulator but also scan different websites for updates to the sanctions list / block lists etc.
  • Audit: Data based analysis and checks can be done by the BOT leaving the employee to focus on key risk areas and controls
  • Fraud detection and prevention: A BOT can be programmed to flag suspicious entries in account(s) to a team for review.
  • Account Based Charges – BOTs can be programmed to run specific scans and identify and accounts for charge application or blocking as per the Bank’s policy

These are only a few areas where RPA can be integrated into the Bank’s processes.

Advantages to the Bank

a) The biggest benefit is that the employees can focus on their core competencies and leave mundane, repetitive tasks to the BOTs

b) RPA with a mix of Machine Learning can increase efficiency and accuracy in transactions and data entry

c) Implementation is quick due to availability of storefront like BOTs

d) RPA integrates with existing frameworks and systems and does not require a change in infrastructure

e) Change Management is easy and there are use cases where changes have been done in a matter of days

Mind Block to RPA

Banks are often looked at by governments as vehicles to add stability to the economy. This is also reflected in the large workforce most Banks carry. One of the biggest fears people have is that building a digital workforce will eliminate the need for a physical workforce.

That is not entirely true. The employees will instead be used for their core competencies. Employees will provide oversight, handle exceptions and take judgement calls based on experience. The goal of RPA is to improve operational
efficiency and not eliminate workforce.

So while a few Bank may have deployed chat-bots, the uptake has so far been slow. But now is the time when the banking industry must invest and build a digital workforce. It will not only improve efficiency and accuracy but also strengthen our defenses and readiness for the next disruption.

Watch our on-demand webinar to learn how financial institutions can quickly and easily implement RPA today with Tangentia and Automation Anywhere.

Get Started Today

Tangentia is a Platinum Partner of IBM and well as partners with Automation Anywhere, UI Path, Blue Prism, Adobe, Microsoft, Salesforce, Amazon and leading enterprise software vendors. We work with customers globally with offices in Canada and India to implement their RPA strategies using an agile methodology.
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Compliance and RPA: Are They the Perfect Match?

  • Compliance and RPA: Are They the Perfect Match?

    Vijay Thomas

Compliance is a big issue for many companies, especially with the coming of the GDPR, SOX compliance, HIPAA, and more. Whether a company handles sensitive data or needs to meet strict regulations, maintaining compliance is a company-wide effort.

People often ask me whether robotic process automation (RPA) is a compliance-friendly solution. Perhaps they watched too many movies where robots become sentient and overthrow their human masters.

The simple answer is that RPA is one of the most compliance-friendly automation solutions on the market.

RPA: The Compliance Dream

What makes RPA a compliance dream? Robots are programmed to perform specific tasks and nothing else.

Yes, we may one day see the rise of self-taught AI that can teach other AI, but that technology is many years away.

RPA solutions simply don’t go rogue. Their programming doesn’t support these kinds of actions. Instead, they focus on specific tasks. Bots will not share passwords—they won’t send emails in error or download potentially dangerous files. With the majority of bots the data is encrypted at rest as well as in flight so the bot never actually has access to the data they are interacting with.

The reality is that a company’s employees are far more likely to make compliance mistakes. This is why bots are far better to have in your IT infrastructure. Companies looking to build compliance systems should see bots as both a form of efficiency and security.

What Compliance Advantages Does RPA Offer?

A company’s ability to maintain compliance is important for a variety of reasons. While legal fines are unfavorable, a complete erosion of customer trust is even more dangerous for a company.

According to Deloitte, “several aspects of compliance oversight operations can be enhanced through RPA implementation.”

But what advantages does RPA provide beyond eliminating simple human error? Based on my experience, here are a few of the main ones:

  • Minimize legal mistakes. RPA solutions can reduce your legal burden by ensuring that important legal compliance is handled according to protocol. This can reduce your risk of violating regulations by eliminating human error from the equation.
  • Build efficient internal systems. Knowing how a process is executed from start to finish can simplify the compliance issue. The predictability that RPA provides can improve your overall business operations.
  • Maintain customer trust. Today’s customers care about their data more than ever. Large data breaches can damage your reputation beyond repair, losing customers in the process. Implementing RPA ensures that the systems you rely on to maintain compliance are consistent and reliable.
  • Better oversight and auditing. Audits are a normal part of business for most companies. Everything an RPA solution does is traceable through logs. That means every input and output can be assessed by humans. This enhanced level of oversight gives companies a lot of control over how they approach compliance, how to identify potential problems and solve them.
  • Develop high-level compliance systems. Humans are susceptible to variation in the work they perform. With an RPA solution, once a process is created, every iteration of that process will be the same. This allows you to create high-level compliance systems built around your automated workflow.
  • Infinitely scalable. The more humans you rely on to complete a task, the more likely you will encounter some kind of error. RPA doesn’t suffer from this problem. Automated solutions are infinitely scalable, and will produce the same quality of work regardless of how many automated solutions your company has implemented.
  • Deployable in most industries. Compliance impacts nearly every industry in the business world. Training humans to understand the nuances of an industry, the specific regulations, and the data a company is handling is time-consuming. RPA can learn that same information far quicker, making it easy for companies to deploy bots across a variety of departments.
RPA Isn’t a Compliance Problem—It’s the Solution

Competitive companies are already embracing RPA for the many advantages it has to offer. It’s clear automation will play a major role in the coming decades as companies look to improve their efficiency and build scalable systems that are aligned for growth.

While compliance is an important topic that companies should think about, RPA shouldn’t be seen as a problem. If anything, it’s the ideal solution to a problem that’s plagued companies for decades.

Where else can you find a repeatable solution that generates the same quality of results every time? From a compliance standpoint, bots are the way to go. As AI and machine learning continue to evolve, their capabilities will only grow.

Companies looking to improve their ability to maintain compliance, as well as their business operations, should see RPA as a logical solution.

Are you interested in learning more about RPA and how it can help your company stay compliant in the digital age? Get in touch with Tangentia, the leader in RPA solutions with local offices in Canada, America and India.

Get Started Today

Tangentia is a Platinum Partner of IBM and well as partners with Automation Anywhere, UI Path, Blue Prism, Adobe, Microsoft, Salesforce, Amazon and leading enterprise software vendors. We work with customers globally with offices in Canada and India to implement their RPA strategies using an agile methodology.
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Is Finance the Low Hanging Fruit for RPA?

  • Is Finance the Low Hanging Fruit for RPA?

    By Vijay Thomas

Companies all over the globe are looking for new strategies to improve the everyday processes that they rely on to stay competitive. And while robotic process automation (RPA) is growing in popularity, finance departments may be the best fit for this innovative technology.

But why is that the case? What makes RPA such a good fit for finance departments?

The answer is simple.

Every company receives bills, pays bills, has to pay employees, track orders, and more. And in every case, these processes are essential if a company wants to maintain healthy cash flows and ensure stable operations.

RPA has the potential to improve all of these processes because it enhances the productivity and efficiency of your finance teams.

The Right Way to View RPA

Here’s the truth. RPA is often viewed as a tool for eliminating manual tasks. And while true, RPA offers so much more than that.

Did you know that the average RPA solution provides 10 to 20 times the efficiency over a human?

Bots can multitask far more efficiently than a human ever could. This makes them well suited to handle time-consuming tasks that are best left to automation.

But there’s another hidden advantage that isn’t as well known. Bots are capable of doing a bit of everything. Once trained and adapted, they can serve in a variety of roles with maximum efficiency. The same cannot be said for humans, who often specialize in a certain area. Bots are continuously learning and improving with every iteration of a task. This makes them well suited to handle both accounting and HR tasks.

Now, you may be thinking that an RPA solution is expensive.

RPA solutions are cheaper than paying a full-time employee. The average RPA solution costs around $10,000 per year to run, making it a cheaper solution than paying an employee minimum wage. RPA bots can also work 24 hours a day, which equates to three full days from a traditional employee.

There’s no arguing about the cost savings when it comes to implementing RPA.

How Can RPA Solve Key Challenges Finance Departments Are Facing?

Any solution will sound good when it’s being sold to you. But RPA really does have the potential to improve the functionality of finance departments. And no matter how efficient you think your departments are—let’s face it—every department has its weaknesses.

Here are just a few of the tasks RPA can help with:

  • Free up your key personnel. Your best workers are often wasting time on tedious tasks that could be automated. By implementing an RPA solution, you can free them up to focus on more important tasks.
  • Make objective decisions. It’s not uncommon for companies to distrust RPA and the benefits it offers. Companies are often unwilling to believe that a bot can do the job better. However, finance teams rarely experience this because they are objective and numbers-driven.
  • Improve the functionality of your ERP systems. Manually entering orders and tasks is time-consuming. Companies have spent large amounts of money developing and supporting their ERP systems. RPA is well suited to handle these tedious tasks and can provide cost savings in the process.

These are only a few of the key problems that RPA can solve. The truth is—RPA is the ideal choice for finance departments because it’s output is easily measured in a segment that is defined by its KPIs.

How Has Tangentia Deployed RPA?

Tangentia has been working with the overall BFSI(Banking, Financial Services and Insurance) sector but of late we have started working with more companies outside of BFSI. The finance department however is the low hanging fruit at most organizations, with Accounts Payable(AP) and Accounts Receivable(AR) the processes that are easiest to find the best business case for Automation.

We helped India’s largest car retailer automate a series of manual tasks that were taxing the company’s finance department. These tasks included order entry, car registration, and other government-mandated tasks. Now, their finance teams are able to focus on more important tasks.

Another client of ours, a large potash company in Saskatoon, received hundreds of invoices from multiple transportation companies for each leg of a shipment. All of these invoices greatly increased the workload of their accounts payable department. When they reached out to us, the average order took the company 30 minutes to process.

Can you guess how long it took after implementing our bots?

1 minute.

RPA is more than just an automation tool. The value it creates can impact multiple departments with the cost-savings and efficiency increases it offers.

What’s the Right Approach to Implementing RPA?

Some providers will suggest that you take part in a six-month process study to evaluate whether RPA is a good fit for your company.

But in our opinion? This approach is too slow. Business is competitive, and what works today may not work tomorrow. You need an agile solution if you want to remain competitive.

Tangentia’s approach to RPA uses an agile, iterative approach. We believe it’s more important to get started and make small changes on the fly. This will expedite the process of implementing automation and highlight what processes can be further optimized going forward.

Innovative technologies require a degree of willingness if you want to realize significant improvements in the processes your finance departments rely on. The agile, iterative approach is a more robust form of RPA that evolves based on your needs.

And for companies that are battling for every inch, the value it provides can help you maintain your competitive edge in the digital age.

Get Started Today

Tangentia is a Platinum Partner of IBM and well as partners with Automation Anywhere, UI Path, Blue Prism, Adobe, Microsoft, Salesforce, Amazon and leading enterprise software vendors. We work with customers globally with offices in Canada and India to implement their RPA strategies using an agile methodology.
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How RPA Can Help Companies Weather Uncertain Times


  • How RPA Can Help Companies Weather Uncertain Times

    Vijay Thomas

One fact we can’t ignore is that we never know what is waiting for us in the future. If the current COVID-19 pandemic has taught us anything, it has taught us that. Whether it is a pandemic, natural disaster, war or another potential unknown, there is always the possible repercussion of economic uncertainty and a disruption in work routines and productivity within a company.

Fortunately, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a technology that can help companies in any industry maintain operational efficiency during difficult times, at the same time improving employee health and safety in the workplace. And with 2020 well under way and turning out far different than anyone expected, it is time for a serious shift in how we use automated technology.

What RPA Can Do

RPA has the capacity to automate many of the repetitive tasks humans typically do using a computer, keyboard and mouse. The driver behind RPA is not to replace humans, but to augment human capabilities to improve efficiency and accuracy. Examples of the types of tasks that can be automated include:

  • Filling in forms and updating databases
  • Automate the billing process
  • Customer account management
  • Automate the verification and auditing process
  • Detect fraudulent invoices and transactions

The key here is that companies identify end-to-end business processes that can be automated in part or in full and determine how RPA can be implemented to improve these processes. This includes determining how RPA can help pick up the slack in situations where employees are unable to work.

This is critical even when a company has taken measures to allow people to work from home, because no matter where they do their work, employees can still get sick. In contrast, RPA bots never get sick and are on the job 24/7.

Proper RPA Implementation

It is important to understand that while RPA is highly effective in helping a business automate processes and tasks that would otherwise be tedious for humans, it is not the answer to everything. Not every task can or should be automated, and companies must take a close look at their processes to determine what can be fully automated and what requires a mixture of automation and human interaction.

In addition, it can be easy to view only the short-term results of RPA implementation, without taking the time to understand how it can impact the company over the long-term. For this reason, it is important for a company to launch RPA implementation with the use of a comprehensive strategy that includes the following:

  • A full assessment of processes within the company that are good candidates for automation. This includes both back office and front office processes that relate to core competencies and that are relevant to customers, as well as employees.
  • The creation of a specialized team to manage the complex nature of RPA implementation. This means monitoring RPA performance and gaining new information that will help them continuously improve RPA initiatives.
Timing Is Everything

The bottom line is simple. The world of business is increasingly full of uncertainty, yet companies are required to maintain high profits while keeping costs down. This will require the innovative use of technology to automate as many processes as possible, thus cutting costs. RPA is one of the best resources we have to maintain productivity and lower costs during both normal and challenging times.

However, it is critical that companies be proactive. It takes time to adopt and implement an RPA solution, to integrate it with existing systems and processes. Instead of waiting for tough times to rear their ugly head, it is important to capture the true value of RPA now. That way you can go about the implementation the right way, without the pressure of staff shortages and economic instability hanging over you.

Get Started Today

Tangentia is a Platinum Partner of IBM and well as partners with Automation Anywhere, UI Path, Blue Prism, Adobe, Microsoft, Salesforce, Amazon and leading enterprise software vendors. We work with customers globally with offices in Canada and India to implement their RPA strategies using an agile methodology.
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RPA and Bots Helping Organizations Maintain Operations and Protect Employees

  • RPA & Bots Helping Organizations Maintain Operations & Protect Employees

With the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic that is spreading rapidly throughout an increasing number of countries, the impact to the economy is already being felt. The stock markets are in turmoil and the OECD reports that the global economy is at risk of dropping 2.4% in 2020. Yet, we are also seeing an unprecedented response from governments, companies and other organizations around the world.

As companies strive to protect employees, technology is playing an increasingly important role in the workplace. In particular, we are seeing the benefits of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and bots in helping to protect employees and the general public in innovative ways.

The Role of RPA in Protecting Company Employees

Employee health is a major concern for companies during the COVID-19 pandemic. With weeks, possibly even months, of disruptions to normal work routines and many employees now working from home, many governments are requiring companies to track the health of their employees.

This requires taking each employee’s temperature, checking their travel history and having them fill out a short health survey each morning when they arrive at work.

This is a lot of data to go through on a daily basis, particularly for medium- and large-sized companies. To take current employees away from their regular work or hire new employees to go through this data is a massive drain on resources.

Fortunately, RPA is invaluable when it comes to the collection, organization and analysis of this data. The way RPA works is simple and can benefit localized companies and companies that have offices and teams spread around the globe.

RPA can automate the delivery and collection of the daily health questionnaire for each employee, track which employees have filled out the survey, send reminders to those who haven’t and analyze this information along with the daily temperature readings for each employee.

RPA can quickly and easily collect and analyze the data and organize it into daily reports that are delivered to all levels of management. This saves companies a lot of human hours that would be wasted on the tedious nature of sifting through employee health data and eliminate potential human error during data analysis.

The Role of RPA and Bots in Healthcare

With COVID-19 putting an increasing amount of stress on an already stressed healthcare system, human resources are going to be stretched thinner than ever. Fortunately, there is plenty of room for the automation of routine tasks in healthcare, which can help take the burden off staff during the COVID-19 outbreak and beyond.
Here are some important tasks that can be fully automated to ensure healthcare staff can focus on what really matters – the patients:

  • Electronic bots will make it possible to streamline online scheduling by taking all the relevant information, compiling it into a report and forwarding it to the person responsible for making the appointment.
  • RPA will improve the care cycle of all patients by organizing and analyzing all the relevant patient data to increase the chances of an accurate diagnosis. In all situations, including a COVID-19 scenario, this gives doctors more time to provide human care to their patients.
  • RPA can streamline healthcare workflows, which means better management and coordination of individual cases and the overall care provided to patients. It also means an improved ability to provide remote monitoring of a patient, something that is of critical importance with so many COVID-19 patients in self-quarantine.
  • RPA makes claims management easier for the healthcare provider by making is easier to input, process and evaluate the data and deal with any appeals that are made.

All of this automation reduces the occurrence of human error, while providing a personalized user experience for patients and increasing employee satisfaction in the workplace.

The Reality

The COVID-19 situation is changing daily and the long-term effects on how we live and work are uncertain in these early days. However, technology has been developed to the point at which it can provide tools to front line workers that will vastly improve our response to this novel infectious disease. This will ultimately help keep employees, as well as customers and the general public, safe in a variety of workplace settings.

Get Started Today

Tangentia is a Platinum Partner of IBM and well as partners with Automation Anywhere, UI Path, Blue Prism, Adobe, Microsoft, Salesforce, Amazon and leading enterprise software vendors. We work with customers globally with offices in Canada and India to implement their RPA strategies using an agile methodology.
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