The company's strategy to enhance efficiency already included automating business processes via RPA platforms. This was intended to make repetitive data input and processing tasks faster while minimizing human error in the following areas:
● Purchase order creation
● Invoice generation
● Warehouse stock tracking
● Material supply request creation
● Inventory reporting
● Uploading and publishing price lists
● Issuing production orders
The client already had a different RPA vendor and the platform required ongoing support and potential scaling in the future. However, during the process, the client was not satisfied with the service model, quality, and cost of RPA services provided. They came to ICL Services due to our transparent and attractive pricing policy, as well as a positive track record in IT collaboration.Key Challenges
- Enhance the effectiveness of automations, provided by the previous RPA vendor.
- Ensure all RPA instances are operational and supported 24/7.
- Regularly update the platform to boost and expand the economic effect.
- Lower the platform maintenance expenses.
- Minimize delays in deploying automations to the production environment.
- Attain a minimum SLA of 90%.
Implemented our solution
The efforts started in 2020. ICL Services brought in six developers, three support staff, two analysts, and a project manager.
The initial task was for ICL Services to take over the maintenance of the RPA platform provided by another vendor. A smart approach was necessary due to the platform's extensive infrastructure. Here is where a well-defined plan helped.
- Stage 1: Training and Work Acceptance.
The first two months of onboarding and training involved the previous RPA vendor. Over that period, 6 orchestrators and over 100 robots were accepted to be maintained and supported. The ICL Services support team also established regular automated reporting and ensured platform reliability through clustering. Clustering enabled switching tasks between orchestrators in case one of them fails, ensuring platform management remains accessible even during breakdowns or unexpected incidents.
Stage 2: Automation Development.
Each automation resembles a separate mini-project. They require a thorough analysis of business processes that need improvement, as well as describing these processes to the robot, testing, and integrating them into the product environment. Over two years, ICL Services employees have launched at least 5 new automations per quarter.
Stage 3: Taking Over the Support for Existing Automations.
The main challenge was to take over the support functions for automations provided by third-party vendors. Frequently, these automations came with outdated documentation or error-ridden code. A special approach was used to solve the problem: ICL Services specialists negotiated with the client and agreed not to take over some of the automation and instead to rebuild incorrectly operating processes from scratch. One of our team's solutions was to manage all robot systems through a cloud service. Launching a cloud-based service is faster and more convenient than using on-premise RPA.
There was also a demand for optimizing robot license utilization. Each robot requires a license costing up to 400,000 ₽, and the client had over 100 licenses with plans to acquire more. Experts analyzed robot workloads by automation throughout the day/week/month and identified robots and time slots that could be used to execute new automated business processes.
- Now, after two years of work, ICL Services employees can showcase a project that provides a comprehensive range of RPA platform support services, from identifying business processes for automation to supporting robots.
Products and technologies
● UiPath Orchestrator, Robot, Studio, Automation Hub, Insights
● Elasticsearch
● SAP
● MS Azure
● PowerShell
● ERP
Results
- Perfected a full-cycle RPA service, including support for 6 orchestrators, over 100 robots on the UiPath platform, and the development of 50+ automations from scratch. The platform is supported and updated 24/7 without the client's involvement.
- The RPA platform was clustered to ensure fault tolerance of the whole RPA system and its running automations.
- Automated reporting was reconfigured to use the RPA platform.
- Offered the client a transparent T-shirt model for RPA automation development with a fixed price and project plan.
- Increased the transaction speed of production orders by a factor of 150.
- Shortened the timeframe for price list uploading and publishing from 2 working days to 40 minutes.
- Sped up inventory reporting and warehouse audit processes by a factor of 5, and material supply request creation by a factor of 6.
- Cut costs for business processes equivalent to over 50 employees and minimized the risk of human errors.