It’s becoming all too common that organizations are seeing the costs of doing business rise. Adding to the pinch, teams are being asked to do more with less as workloads and tasks quickly pile up. While it may seem backwards to invest in new software while on a tight budget, investing in a robotic process automation (RPA) solution can be the key to filling coverage gaps, maximizing resources, and above all cutting costs.
Here are three real-world examples of how teams from different industries and sizes are using RPA solutions to reduce costs—with eye-popping results!
Telecom Company Saves $1 Million per Month with RPA
The North American team of a large global telecommunications company found their to-do list growing, but not their headcount. As part of the process of setting up new cell towers, the team manually moved data back and forth between more than 50 different applications. These complicated processes involved relaying information from techs in the field, coordinating the ordering and shipping of materials, and more. Not only were these tasks prone to errors, but they slowed the team down and kept them from handling new projects on scale with the organization’s requirements.
They turned to an RPA solution to integrate their systems—from SAP to web clients to SQL environments and even homegrown applications—in one central console. Automating the cell tower processes meant handing over these repetitive tasks to a digital workforce that could complete them faster and with less errors than doing it manually. Leaving the 100 team members free to focus on more complex, human-required tasks.
Because the team didn’t have much coding experience, they chose a low to no-code automation solution that got them up and running in no time. This helped them see ROI fast—with savings going over $1 million per month. The North American team’s success has inspired other geographies and departments to embrace RPA, further saving time, eliminating errors, and seeing huge cost savings across their organization.
“We utilize it wherever we can to take the work out of someone’s hands to free them up so they can focus on new tasks.” – Systems Capability Architect
Portmade NV Uses RPA to Save Over 7,400 Yearly Labor Hours
Portmade NV helps companies throughout Europe import and export products by navigating logistics and customs processes. Customs declarations require a number of forms that need the correct information put in the correct box. And it all changes depending on what’s being shipped, to where, and if it’s an import or an export, among other variables. If incorrect information or the wrong form is filled out, the errors can be costly in both delays and money. And manually importing data and filling out the forms was just plain inefficient.
They chose an RPA solution with intelligent document processing capabilities to process the structured and unstructured data necessary to digitally create customs declarations. Using their RPA tool’s optical character recognition (OCR) features, Portmade was able to read, extract, and convert files of many types—from JPEG to PDF—into text for electronic automation and importation.
All of this was done without template building, using easily configurable setups that allowed everyone, no matter their coding experience, to create intelligent automated workflows. As Brexit led to an increase in workload volume, Portmade’s employees were ready to meet the high demand efficiently and without adding to headcount—saving 7,400 yearly labor hours, the time equivalent of more than 3.5 fulltime workers.
“Internally, people always need to adapt to change, but at a certain point, we came over the top of the hill and now we are rolling. Employees from different departments are requesting automation from us. The company culture has changed.” – Peter Raeymaekers, Business Analytics & IT Manager of Portmade NV
Carter Bank & Trust Achieves 3,800% ROI with an RPA Solution
From customer account maintenance to payroll and HR processes, the employees at Carter Bank & Trust were bogged down by essential yet inefficient tasks. The manual work was taking too much time, causing too many errors, and losing too much money. CIO Matt Speare had used RPA software at a previous job and knew it could make a difference at the bank.
Speare’s team first started by automating the employee onboarding and payroll processes. RPA bots streamlined tasks like establishing user access in Active Directory, managing training in their learning management system, and provisioning HR’s payroll application. From there, RPA scaled up to IT automation for server reboots, system migrations, and even data validation. Their RPA solution was especially helpful for converting the bank’s customer accounts into a new system, updating customer information, and ensuring everything is correct and matched across their many systems and applications.
In just five months, Carter Bank & Trust saw the ROI of RPA reach 3,800%, reallocated five full-time employees to more strategic work, and netted more than $50,000 in SLA claw-back. All while reducing errors and optimizing processes across many departments for peak efficiency.
“It allows you to crunch through a lot of the data and routine testing you’re doing over and over. It never gets tired.” – Matt Speare, CIO of Carter Bank & Trust
How Much Could You Save with an RPA Solution?
Use our RPA ROI calculator to discover how much you could save by automating your most tedious manual tasks.