Monthly Tangentia Byte
July 2020
Digital Worker Solutions for Your Organization
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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.
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:
AI Chatbot technology is advancing quickly, improving its capacity to provide more intuitive guidance for each student based on their individual needs.
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:
TIA can be built, trained, and deployed to provide individualized conversations via any application, device, or channel. It has the capability to:
These capabilities provide higher education institutions with the means to offer the following services:
Language:
Vision:
Data insights:
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.
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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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.
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.
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.
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.
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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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:
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:
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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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.
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:
These are only a few areas where RPA can be integrated into the Bank’s processes.
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
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.
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 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.
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.
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:
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.
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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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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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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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.
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:
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.
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:
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.
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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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.
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.
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:
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 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.
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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Tangentia is extremely proud to announce that their India team is the recipient of the 2019 Top 20 Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Service Providers award. This award is presented to companies that have a proven track record when it comes to the deployment and maintenance of RPA systems, making them a trusted service provider for companies that want to implement RPA in their business.
The CIO Review India editorial team, along with a panel of leading industry analysts, CEO’s and CIO’s took great care in researching all qualified candidates to determine which of them had enough industry experience and technical skill to warrant a spot in the top 20. The award comes at a critical time, as Ernst & Young reports that just 30% to 50% of RPA implementations succeed at improving the efficiency of a business’s overall processes.
“The entire global #TangentiaTeam is proud of what our colleagues in India have done and slowly but surely customers worldwide will know of Tangentia’s agile digital transformation solutions around Automation, B2B and Digital” says Vijay Thomas, Founder and CEO of Tangentia.
Tangentia would like to thank all our customers, partners and associates in India for helping us achieve this honor.
RPA has been embraced by many sectors, such as medicine, hospitality, retail, & manufacturing. Now, the financial sector is gearing up for a shift in financial management that will see companies digitize and streamline financial processes. Read our latest blog on how financial companies and internal finance teams are looking to RPA to become more efficient in day to day operations.
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