Proven
  • Home
  • Our Partners
  • Services
    • IT TRANSFORMATION
      • Enterprise Business Agility
      • Enterprise Architecture
      • Application Integration
      • API Management
      • DevOps
      • Microservices
    • DATA TRANSFORMATION
      • Big Data Management
      • Analytics & Visualization
      • Big Data Analytics
      • Data Monetization
      • Data as a Service
      • IoT
    • BUSINESS PROCESS TRANSFORMATION
      • Business Process Management
      • Robotic Process Automation
      • Intelligent Automation
    • AI TRANSFORMATION
      • Machine Learning
      • Natural Language Processing
      • Computer Vision
      • Speech
      • Robotics
      • ChatBot
  • Industries
    • AUTOMOTIVE
    • BANKING AND INSURANCE
    • GOVERNMENT
    • HEALTH
    • RETAIL
    • TELECOM
    • ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES
  • Case Studies
  • Insights
  • Contact Us

Why Intelligent Automation is essential in the retail industry?

For years, tedious and monotonous manual tasks were the traditional way of doing things. Record entries in a multinational corporation would take several human hours. Salary dispersal for employees in several organizations would never be on time. Furthermore, due to the tedious nature of these tasks, errors would be galore. How did humans overcome these challenges, then? The answer – technology. Humankind joined hands with technology to bring forth intelligent automation to daily life and official activities, defeating the challenges that were long pulling their efficiency and productivity down.

Timely product availability in the market and managing the minimal workforce in a human-dependent industry have been put to the test during the recent pandemic. Retailers need to effectively manage erratic market demand, as manual orders and invoice processes are time-consuming. Furthermore, the need to achieve optimal customer satisfaction across different regions is more pressing than ever as it can help retain old customers and acquire new ones. Retailers must also analyze and adapt to upcoming market trends for sustained growth.

Recognizing its benefits beyond cost reduction and increased productivity, enterprises are harnessing Intelligent Process Automation (IPA) to take on various mundane and repetitive administrative tasks to perform complex analyses with speed, accuracy, and consistency.

This article will showcase exciting insights about intelligent automation and use cases that are the best examples of intelligent automation in the retail industry.

Introduction of Intelligent Automation into Retail

Intelligent automation started influencing industries a little more than a decade ago, paving the way for broader technology implementation. While intelligent automation’s technological prowess was only used to automate redundant tasks initially, its reach and impact transformed over the years. In the present day, Intelligent Process Automation can make repetitive tasks outdated and redefine the shopping experience for customers of the retail industry. 

A report* in 2019 suggested that, by 2022, about 80% of retail companies would be leveraging IPA to automate their processes. Automation will help retail customers have a seamless and error-less experience and improve the efficiency of the daily tasks. Furthermore, the inclusion of IPA in this industry will broaden value chains, reduce organizational layers, and create data-driven solutions. 

Let’s look at a few use cases that can better establish IPA’s impact in the retail sector. 

Intelligent Automation Use Cases in Retail

While Intelligent Automation can be applied to a flurry of operations in the retail sector, some common instances are recorded in this section. This section delves deeper into the application of IPA in the industry and how it influences potential growth.

  • Inventory Management

    Have you ever wondered how stores decide which pieces and how many of them they should store to appease customers’ demands and preferences? Human intervention does play a role in this, wherein store managers analyze the sales pattern and data to decide what the inventory should hold. However, a significant fraction of the analyzable data is not within the purview of human intelligence. This is where automation takes the cake. The correct amount of inventory is crucial to determine the customer demands, inventory cost, warehouse space, and ordering timelines. Intelligent automation solutions coupled with RPA and analytics can analyze the sales forecast, actual sales for previous years, and deviations in demand due to seasonal reasons. Smart-tech can help stores manage inventory in a way that fits customers’ expectations, buying patterns, and expenditure. The solution can predict and recommend the right amount of quantity for each SKU. This approach helps retailers keep the inventory in check while streamlining their operations and meeting customer demands.

  • Bank Reconciliation Process

    Finance operations, a critical cog in the machinery of any industry, are often laden with innumerable challenges due to the nature of the function. The bank reconciliation process, especially in the retail sector, is a time-sensitive and expensive manual function. At the close of business hours each day, it is imperative to check for any credit or debit and the charge against the POS transactions happening at each store. Integration of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) with the traditional reconciliation process helps automate the end-to-end process with little to no human intervention.

  • Sales Analytics

    The sales analytics vertical is often associated with large volumes of data, and rightly so. Due to the hefty amount of data available for analysis and action every day, the process demands swift and intensive efforts by employees. Intelligent Automation provides full audits with real-time insights helping retailers and suppliers implement more effective analysis to maximize sales opportunities.

How can automation assist the retail industry?

The retail industry is one of the largest and most complex sectors globally, with additional costs at every stage of the processes’ lifecycle. In this event, automation assists business-owners in this sector to streamline the operations while saving cost, time, and human power. The above-mentioned use cases are only a few straws in the haystack. Smart automation technologies can be used for several purposes in this sector, including but not limited to product categorization, supply chain management, staff onboarding, ERP management, logistics, business and sales analytics, and marketing planning.

Conclusion

Intelligent automation allows businesses to eliminate manual, laborious, and repetitive tasks, not just in retail but also in many other industries. As automation technologies get more innovative and advanced, the opportunity and potential to implement them will grow too. Tasks that seem impossible to automate now might become less dependent on manual intervention in the future, saving costs across various industries and sub-sectors. Proven Consult is enabling the integration of IPA into several daily activities, bringing forth a seamless technological experience for clients and customers. 

References

*Page 2, The coming AI Revolution in retail and consumer products, a report by IBM

A Fintech World

There was a time when the word ‘fintech’ may have been a clever play on words in a futuristic Sci-Fi film, but today the term is a real, elaborate concept that has blown the gates wide open for a new world of finance technology. Fintech has become a star in investment, and it continues to broaden the opportunities for banking and finances, regularly transforming these sectors and presenting new information for individuals and businesses. Fintech is a field; it can range from a single product to a series of companies. It simply applies technology to the existing field of finance. The former has known rapid growth over the past two decades; technology runs the world today. It is an ever-evolving aspect of humanity today, and alongside it, human activity evolves. Financial tech takes part in the credit of transforming our world from the Industrial Age to the Information Age. A flower just in bloom, the field is now starting to unleash its powers. 

Fintech presents the argument that there is a ‘better way.’ Not only does it open opportunity windows in investment for those companies that work in finance, but also for customers, entrepreneurs and investors as well. As it continues to grow exponentially, companies in fintech have great potential, regardless of their current size. This is due to the fact that finance is a part of human practices–it is present in every business. As a result, it can be practiced broadly, even in fields like agriculture and medicine, providing necessary data and driving profit. According to Innovate Finance, global venture capital investment in fintech reached US $36.6 billion, a 148 percent increase from 2017, and 329 percent over five years. In similar fashion, fintech fundings saw a 40% increase between 2018 and 2019. This steady ascent translates into strength for the sector, as it implements the complexity of financial services to its advantage. It therefore allows investors to monitor trends and user behaviors, making way for better-informed decisions to be made, and as a result driving success in cash flows, risk mitigation and financial transactions. 

SIGN UP FOR ALERTS

  

Protecting Supply Chains

Learn more.

The use of fintech stretches across various sectors including payments, retail banking and asset management. However, the previously-mentioned growth and the ever-changing trends in markets continue to contribute new sub-sectors in fintech. The real-life magic, technology, enters any domain to amp up the speed, accuracy and efficiency of its processes. The same was done for finance, bringing out sub-sectors of fintech in insurance and risk management, among others. Fintech’s existence in retail banking and customer finance has spawned Neobanks, financial technology firms that offer exclusively internet-backed financial services, and exist virtually for the most part. 

  • More

For corporate banking, innovation was welcomed incrementally. It is obvious that the sector was slower in adopting fintech than retail banking and customer finance. Many organizations did not have a clear digital roadmap, or a digitization strategy. This is good news for digital providers, as they are set to capture at least 30 percent of corporate banking revenues. The other end of the stick sees startups providing small businesses with financial tools that manage spending and offer high level transparency. The continuing takeover of fintech is foreseeing a staggering US $2 trillion-worth amount of contactless in-store payments in 2020. This is thanks to the new peaks fintech keeps on reaching since services like PayPal became a thing. We are experiencing a third wave of innovation, and payments have gotten exponentially safer and faster, with more transparency for consumers and tighter links between banks and retailers. 

The bottom line of embroidering business with technology is that the latter lowers cost. Technology helps harness information and share it, helping identify the truth. Global demand is continually growing for better financial infrastructure, real-time payments and access to data. Additionally, 82 percent of financial institutions are expected to increase their fintech partnerships in the next three to five years. This is because fintech finetunes the intricacies of financial operations; it cuts cost and increases speed. 

OTHER INSIGHTS

Why Intelligent Automation is essential in the retail industry?

01 Apr

A Fintech World

08 Jul

Double 3 Robotic and The Future of Work

14 Jun
  

NEWSLETTER

Stay up to date with our insights, news and events

Double 3 Robotic and The Future of Work

Telepresence is finally here

Double is the most innovative tool for bringing your remote workers into the office. It enables a revolutionary new level of interaction with your remote team.

Traditional videoconferencing is arguably the most important tool used by telecommuters in the workplace today. However, remote workers know how difficult it can be to schedule a call or ask someone to set up a laptop for video chat.

Having your own Double in the office means you can be free to roam around anywhere without having to schedule a meeting. Double takes everything you love about video calls on an iPad and puts that on a mobile base that puts the remote worker in control. Your Double is always on, ready to ta ke you anywhere you need to go.

SIGN UP FOR ALERTS

  

A new disinfection solution:

Learn more.

Remote workers are now first-class citizens.

Most offices have quite a bit of ad-hoc verbal communication throughout the day. How many of those little conversations do the remote workers miss? Typically, the remote worker is only contacted for higher priority items. This makes them second-class citizens, since they’re not in the loop on many day-to-day activities. Double gives each remote worker a physical presence in the office all day, every day. They’re there for the hallway conversations. You no longer need to say “can someone call Mary and let her know what we talked about?”

“This is a game changer.”

Many customers, like Jonathan at LinkedIn, say “Double is a game changer for remote work.” Companies are now expanding their telecommuting policies because Double impoves the experience so much. This method of telecommuting is vastly different and creates a strong collaborative environment for both the remote worker and their whole team.

  • More

Hire the experts, no matter where they happen to live.

Any growing business needs to hire the best knowledge workers. What are the chances that the best expert lives within driving distance of your office? Light Chaser Animation in Shanghai, China aims to rival Hollywood studios with their animated films, so they hired a director in Los Angeles to work via Double.

Retain your best employees, even when they move.

Hiring is very difficult. It’s even more difficult when you lose a valued team member and need to replace them. Next time an employee needs to move away, they can continue their job via Double. It’s a win-win for everyone.

If you are interested in finding out more about Double 3 Robotic, please send an email to sales@provenconsult.com.

OTHER INSIGHTS

Why Intelligent Automation is essential in the retail industry?

01 Apr

A Fintech World

08 Jul

Double 3 Robotic and The Future of Work

14 Jun
  

NEWSLETTER

Stay up to date with our insights, news and events

Proven Consult Brings World’s Escalator Handrail Disinfection Solution To Saudi Arabia

As malls and businesses get back to work and the authorities increase capacity, maintaining disinfection on the escalators would become a bit difficult. Proven Consult now offers the first of its kind, “Escalator Handrail Disinfection & Sterilization Solution”, from WeClean, a leading Korean manufacturer that developed this technology since 2014, to its Middle East customers. These solutions have been patented and endorsed by all the major escalator suppliers around the world. They are easy to deploy and can disinfect and sterilize the handrails up to 99.99%.

SIGN UP FOR ALERTS

  

DOUBLE 3 ROBOTIC

Learn more.

With thousands of escalators in Saudi Arabia, it is impossible to practically ensure they are cleaned each time a person rides on an escalator and keeping in mind the health and safety aspects, you can’t completely avoid holding an escalator handrail. This is why the introduction of this automated prod uct to Saudi Arabia at this time of Covid-19 makes sense as it gives confidence to visitors in high traffic areas that there are steps being taken to maintain higher hygiene standards without compromising on escalator safety.

  • More

Based on a survey in Korea, the team at WeClean developed many prototypes, tested them extensively and have now developed a product that can automatically clean, disinfect and sterilize any escalator. These Escalator handrail disinfection solutions have been successfully deployed for over 20,000 installations worldwide and they are highly recommended.

If you are interested in finding out more about these solutions for escalators in your building, please send an email to sales@provenconsult.com.

OTHER INSIGHTS

Why Intelligent Automation is essential in the retail industry?

01 Apr

A Fintech World

08 Jul

Double 3 Robotic and The Future of Work

14 Jun
  

NEWSLETTER

Stay up to date with our insights, news and events

PROTECTING SUPPLY CHAINS DURING COVID-19

As the world is battling against COVID-19, the pandemic has an uneven effect on the supply chain industry. Industries such as auto, travel, consumer goods, electronics, and retail have been profoundly impacted. The supply chain economy has a large and distinct impact on economies of the world that is driven by industrial activities and innovation.

 

With many governments enforcing the lockdowns, manufacturers are finding it challenging to procure components for their manufacturing activities. In the time of crisis, the demand among consumers for non-essential goods has also declined. These two different spectra of the supply chain challenges are creating a crisis from both: demand and supply end of the chain.

 

Based on changes and constraints in demand, businesses are building new models to sustain and protect the supply chain during the current crisis. Ensuring necessary service levels across the chain, these new models are setting precedent for protecting the supply chain against any future crisis as well.

SIGN UP FOR ALERTS

  

DEPLOYING AI

Learn more.

Data Leading the Way 

Having a data-centric approach towards supply chain management is making suppliers more agile in their operations. Using predictive modeling and data simulations, businesses can predict the impact of a sudden decline in demand in one country that can impact the entire supply chain. Live tracking the sales, shipments, and orders with minimum latency will help businesses to identify surge or decline in demand and these data can guide the decisions regarding the production levels.

 

To help organizations understand where and when to source the components, advanced machine learning algorithms can be used to determine ideal source based on past purchases, commodity pricing, agro and industrial trends, among others.

 

The current supply chains involve several bottlenecks where the data visibility is limited between facilities located in different locations and are in-efficient. Having a uniform data and analytics platform and sharing between different locations is crucial to managing dynamic demands. However, companies can only leverage data when the process across the supply chain is end-to-end digitized. Any gaps between the processes will increase latencies and can slow down the supply chain’s response to the changes in demand.

 

End-to-End Digitising

 

Having a cloud-based or web-based ordering system, allows businesses to act on shifts in demand proactively. Creating an end-to-end digital IT ecosystem is key to drive and minimize the latencies. However, to track actual production, inventory levels, and shipments, businesses must leverage various Internet of Things technologies together to bridge data between various processes.

 

IoTs are the sensors and devices interacting with each other’s data through cloud systems. This helps businesses monitor the machine’s performance and can indicate or predict failures to assist faster action. Starting from placing the order or query to the actual production and distribution, these various processes in the value chain funnel need to be digitized to enable faster decision making. 

 

While manufacturers are struggling to meet quality standards due to low labor-force and demand burden, IoT devices can be used to monitor quality performances. IoT devices such as cameras and sensors can evaluate the product quality, reducing the reliability and time taken by manual quality checks. This helps suppliers to standardize the quality across different locations without slowing down production and can ensure the increasing demands are met. By enabling automation and accelerating the process, IoTs are helping suppliers to solve key supply chain problems.

Automation for Agile Supply Chain

 

The travel restrictions and health impact from the coronavirus have pushed organizations to operate with a limited workforce. While the manufacturers are looking for alternate vendors for their critical components, the reduced labor force and increased demand have led to increased lead time. Accelerating production and reducing manual interventions in the business processes are critical to solving these problems. 

 

These challenges are inspiring businesses to implement Robotic Process Automation (RPA). Suppliers must develop greater automation capabilities to accelerate production and minimize manual interventions in the business process. Using IoT and robotics, businesses can fast track assembly lines, inventory management, and data analytics. 

 

As supply chains are evolving, so does the assembly lines. As the new-age manufacturers are using 3d printing to produce their components inhouse, this reduces the dependency on suppliers. While 3d printing equipment is becoming a low cost, companies can 3d print key components that are expensive to source.

 

However, at the end of the supply chain funnel lies a greater challenge. Logistics of the delivery system or distribution systems have been dependent on laborers who are responsible for shipment and delivery of the end component. 

 

Businesses like Amazon have been one of the few enterprises to experiment in using autonomous docking systems, robotics and IoT enabled drones to meet these challenges. While these automation systems may not be feasible for smaller-scale businesses, these trends are promising to close the end of the supply chain funnel in the future.

 

While the enterprises are adapting automation swiftly, the application of RPA has been limited to repeated and mundane processes. Suppliers across various scales and industries have been balancing between automation and digital workforce to sustain the cost of automation.

 

 

Embracing the Digital Workforce:

 

For manufacturers, labor shortage and replenishment serve as focal points for operations to manage ramp-up in production after temporary shutdowns. Therefore, businesses are embracing the digital work environment and communication channels to continue their operations remotely. Working from the safety of their homes helps in reducing the health risk from the workforce that the coronavirus is currently posing. Departments such as marketing, finance, and HR has moved to virtual desks. 

 

Implementing such digital transformation requires strong training, change management, standardization of daily work, and job aids. While focusing on digital infrastructure is essential, businesses can develop a remote working culture to create a digital-ready workforce during the crisis. Processes that can be operated in a virtual environment should switch to digital, which will further help businesses to save costs. Therefore, a virtual workforce culture along with IT infrastructure is crucial to building an agile supply chain.

 

While these techniques act as a solution to cope with the supply chain crisis, it is the principles that are leading the decision making.

 

New Principles for Sustainable Supply Chain

Investing in an agile and collaborative supply planning is one of the key principles that businesses must follow. As the markets are dynamic and the spread of the virus is fast, the market situation can become extremely volatile. To deal with such an unstable business environment business must focus on investing in strategies that are agile and tools that are designed to handle such dynamics.

 

As the major manufacturing players are migrating their production facilities, it is easy to fall into the same habit of all fruits in one basket strategy. Diversifying the supply chain and spreading it throughout the world will not only make supply chain reliable also help businesses to optimize cost. Businesses can source components for new products from low-cost sources and can launch new products at a lower price to boost their sales.

 

As the supply chain has a cascading impact, it is essential to protect this crucial building block to sustain it during this global pandemic. Businesses must build resilience for the short-term impacts and the long-term impacts to rise above the COVID-19 threat. This crisis has key lessons for businesses about reliable and efficient supply chain management.

 

In the immediate term, organizations need to take steps to stabilize supply chain operations by conducting risk assessments and implementing business continuity plans using crisis-management teams.

  • More

Crisis Management for Short Term Impact:

To address the volatile nature of current supply chain operations, organizations should mobilize a crisis-management team or a war-room setup that has the power to make quick, analysis-based supply chain decisions.

Analysts should examine supplier delivery performance, deviations from production plans, canceled orders, customer-fulfillment rates, and other business outcomes more frequently to identify any potential supply chain issues. Besides, the crisis-management team can conduct root-cause analysis and help supply chain leadership teams to prioritize issues for resolution.

 

The crisis management teams will be involved in updating demand forecasts and supply plans and the focus on re-allocation of constrained supply to critical customers and orders. Data being at the center of this forecast, the teams must equip themselves with updated data and data tools. Therefore, companies with end-to-end digital processes will have the ability to live track orders, inventory, and in-production items. Based on these trackers, suppliers can take decisive measures to proactively increase production, relocate resources on key customers and orders.

 

 

Optimizing HR Strategies

 

While protecting supply chain businesses is paramount for economies; at the heart of this crisis, people are most affected. Protecting the people working in the supply chain ecosystem must be a priority for businesses amidst the pandemic. Drafting policies and measures that protect people against the risks of COVID-19, creates a safe working environment is critical to ensure continuous operations.

At an unprecedented time of pandemic threats, businesses must make quick decisions led by talented executives to implement new policies and standards to the ground level. Such circumstances demand organizations to focus on hiring executive talent who is efficient and can implement the changes faster and to the ground level with their team. As businesses shift towards automation and digitalization, the focus has to be on finding new executive talent for implementing strategical and analytical functions of supply chain management.

 

The current COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted all sectors with various degrees of impact. It is time for companies to rapidly assess, recover, and respond quickly through numerous obstacles and challenges that still stand in the way. Through the chaos of recovery, it will be very easy to overlook the root cause and gaps within a supply chain that may have paralyzed businesses during this unpredictable major event in the first place. Building towards a resilient supply chain will be at the epicenter of future discussions for years to come.

The industries constitute 37% of all jobs globally and have been a driving force for economic growth around the globe, having a cascade effect on the manufacturing industry, economy, and people. In these challenging times, a technological solution is paving the way for industries to move forward. However, these innovations must be the ones that will continue to create immense value even in the post-pandemic future. Therefore, businesses must understand the current impact of COVID-19 and its long-term cascading socio-economic effect before they rethink their supply chain.

OTHER INSIGHTS

Why Intelligent Automation is essential in the retail industry?

01 Apr

A Fintech World

08 Jul

Double 3 Robotic and The Future of Work

14 Jun
  

NEWSLETTER

Stay up to date with our insights, news and events

AI CANNOT BE DEPLOYED IN ISOLATION

Artificial Intelligence is simulation of human intelligence in machines and is primed to reinvent the future and how we live. Researches across the globe see lots of positives of AI and how it can transform the world, still AI cannot be deployed in isolation. Artificial Intelligence in isolation is not useful unless it is customized to figure how it suits your business. This requires broader and holistic understanding of one’s organization and business along with deep understanding of AI.

Let us take an instance of enhancing customer experience using AI in the Insurance industry.

Suzan who is a longstanding customer of “First Care Insurance Co.” and has enrolled herself for life insurance and auto insurance. Suzan was driving as usual every day to her office, suddenly a pedestrian came in front of her car and to avoid hitting her she swerved her car and crashed into a sideway lamppost.

SIGN UP FOR ALERTS

  

Suzan uses First Care mobile app in her phone and the app suddenly detected a abrupt stop or shift in the speed of the vehicle using smart phone accelerometer and the GPS. The insurance company tries to reach Suzan on her mobile to check if she is safe, in case of no response they call 911 and share the GPS coordinates to send emergency services to the site. If she did respond to the call, they would provide her instructions on the next steps.

The accident was automatically detected by machine learning that uses various attributes like change in speed of car, GPS location, local weather conditions, traffic conditions and so on, you can imagine an app like WAZE that can do this.

To confirm that Suzan’s mobile was not stolen the AI based system will check the stolen records and processed Suzan voice using natural language processing and matched against her audio recordings. Knowing she has gone through an accident; Suzan’s voice must be distressed and hence an added authentication is added using combination of voice and text. Suzan is then instructed to walk around the car and take photos for the damage and send to First Care for accident estimates. The images are scanned using computer vision to classify the type of damage and estimates are done using algorithms based on machine learning. The system guides the first care representative to the nearby tow truck facilities which can be sent to the site and Frist Care also checks with Suzan if she requires a rental car.

  • More

This automated response that sense the dispatches is driven by an expert system that has learned the rules over time may be guided by human operators. The truck comes by and takes the car to the body shop.

The rental car company picks up Suzan once the car is in the repair shop. The repair shop initiates the repair job and communicates the status periodically with First Care. First Care runs an agent-based software business process management system, to notify Suzan of the relevant updates which she receives on her mobile and email. Suzan can track the progress of the repair and status updates from the notifications received.

The success of this case is very much dependent on data coming from multiple sources like – repair shop, tow trucking company, Suzan’s agent and from First Care itself. The data is fetched from different sources, consolidated, and massaged to be presented to Suzan. This would require integration with multiple systems which can be on a secure cloud and can be accessed using distributed API’s or RPA.

This customer experience case is surely a very important one and may look simple but it requires the business to account for all the what-if scenarios. Building this type of customer experience requires a solid architecture and the following must be considered: –

  • Actors involved in the complete process and their roles.
  • Clear and concise business process definition.
  • What technology components to be used and where to use them.
  • Data coming from different sources like – sensors, mobile accelerometers etc.
  • Data storage and management.
  • Interaction with different business partners like – Rental car, Tow trucking company, insurance agents etc.
  • Easy, simple, and robust architecture which is capable to handle numerous variations of a scenario that can happen.

To conclude, businesses must be on top of their game to provide the best of the customer experience by including the high-end technologies available today. Artificial Intelligence is a broad subject and cannot be just applied without thoughts and in isolation. For AI to work at its peak, there are lots of dependence on the data, business partners involved and the leadership vision to take their businesses to the next level.

In conclusion, AI cannot simply be deployed in isolation, it needs architecture.

OTHER INSIGHTS

Why Intelligent Automation is essential in the retail industry?

01 Apr

A Fintech World

08 Jul

Double 3 Robotic and The Future of Work

14 Jun
  

NEWSLETTER

Stay up to date with our insights, news and events

BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION FROM COVID-19

As all facets of life and business are affected by COVID-19, some of these impacts are going to be longterm. The current pandemic has affected hospitality, airlines, manufacturing, supply chains, and many other industries which will have a cascading effect on people and the business. While the world looks for a better way to sustain during this pandemic, businesses around the world are transforming themselves to continue their operations amid lockdowns and workforce limitations. With expanding the supply and demand gap, businesses must make changes the way they do business to mitigate the crisis.

Amidst these transformative times, companies across industries are moving towards the digital workforce faster than ever before. However, in the labor-intensive industries are largely suffering from a reduced workforce leading to low production levels. Combined with spiking demand and labor limitations, quality control will suffer. The potential economic fallout of COVID-19 could include recessions in the US, Euro-area, and Japan, the slowest growth on record in China, and a total of USD 2.7 trillion in lost output. As the major markets across the globe are falling to imminent recessions, this complicates the problem as manufacturers need to attain a lower cost to be able to achieve sales.

Navigating through these challenges, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is emerging as a solution to achieve sustainability for businesses at times like this. Its successful implementation across various sectors during COVID-19 has embarked on the upsurge in its future demands undeniably.

SIGN UP FOR ALERTS

  

More on fending off COVID-19

Right here.

The impact of RPA is far-reaching in multiple sectors, especially in industries that are playing a critical role in fighting the current pandemic.

Health Sector:

RPA has immense impact across the value chain of the health care industry, be it: testing, diagnosis, monitoring or treatment. RPA programs can take the patient’s test records and document them in the hospital’s electronic medical records while sharing the record with the health department. Such processes without any manual interventions accelerate the testing and monitoring capabilities of the hospital but also the government to monitor the crisis. Hospitals can automate their order fulfillment during the surge in demand and health screening with bots measuring the temperature to attain operational efficiency.

As the healthcare sector is at the forefront of the fight against COVID-19, operational efficiency is crucial for hospitals. The healthcare staff are exposed to the patients and facing the highest risks of contamination, automating some of the repetitive processes will reduce the exposure and the risk.

Retail Sector:

With the major markets are currently under lockdown, the retail sales have been all-time low. As several countries have limited retail to essential goods, there has been a sudden surge in demand for these goods. While the retailers are struggling to manage their inventory, delivery services have also been affected by a reduced number of workers. These challenges are inspiring retailers to automate order handling and inventory management.

The brick and motor retail players are betting on self-checkout terminals, shelf-scanning robots while e-retailers are experimenting in using drones and robots for deliveries. These disruptive innovations in RPA may change the way the world sells goods, outlasting the current pandemic.

Financial Services:

RPA automates the intake and processing of documents submitted by customers, which are then automatically verified, along with KYC norms and approved/rejected automatically. Such document processing and verification functions in financial services are helping businesses to accelerate service delivery. In fact, the automation in financial services reduces the risk for the companies further, as these programs perform functions based on consumer’s historical data.

  • More

Travel and Hospitality:

COVID-19 has led to wide-scale flight cancellations, rescheduling, etc. Flight operators are leveraging RPA to help customers self-manage the same – including rebooking, refund, cancellation, personalized alternatives, etc. Airlines are using RPA to automatically assign flying crew for the restricted flights which are plying especially for domestic travel. While the threat of COVID-19 continues to affect demand, in order to create a safe flight in the future, Airports can deploy RPA programs. These programs can scan the travel history of travelers, find if they visited any infected places, and augment that by tracking individuals with fever. These programs can act as one of the security tools for safeguard passengers, creating confidence among travelers to fly in a post-pandemic future.

Manufacturing:

Among various sectors, the manufacturing sector has been proactively adopting RPA. With 85% of the RPA market still untapped, the current challenges are encouraged all businesses to dive into automation. From supply chain to assembly lines, the major manufacturing sector has been embracing this transformation for the past few years, while small and medium scale manufacturers are slowly shifting their key processes to RPA, starting from hiring and managing laborforce.

These are exceptional times, unprecedented times and the promise that RPA/Automation holds for companies across industries is undeniable. Today, several new use cases have emerged and as the situation unfolds, where it is expected to worsen before it gets better, RPA/Automation adoption will further intensify and more such disruptive use cases will come to the fore.

OTHER INSIGHTS

Why Intelligent Automation is essential in the retail industry?

01 Apr

A Fintech World

08 Jul

Double 3 Robotic and The Future of Work

14 Jun
  

NEWSLETTER

Stay up to date with our insights, news and events

How IPA is Contributing to COVID-19 Response

Intelligent Process Automation – Helping Companies to Respond to COVID-19

With this current pandemic and global lockdown, we believe that we have started a new journey for survey and sustainability. First, we needed to react quickly, build resilience and move slowly into recovery until we return to our normal life. Despite that most of the business operations have been distributed and there is a lot of concerns in the supply chain, restaurants, malls, flights, hotels…  It is still early to know exactly which industries will survive and which will be heavily affected from the aftermath of this pandemic or which ones will flourish.

World Economic Forum in its recent article “Who will be the winners in a post-pandemic economy? Has identified the below criteria for success in the coming period.

  • Businesses that use cloud computing will not buckle under the pressure of the coronavirus pandemic.
  • Further automation and artificial intelligence will enhance the resilience of supply chains.
  • Successful businesses will have a combination of resilience and agility.

Technologies like: Intelligent Process Automation, Predictive Analytics, Chatbot, Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality, are essential tools that companies will need in this new journey.

In this article we will focus on Intelligent Process Automation and discuss how companies can utilize it to help them deal with the new reality and prepare for similar unprecedented scenarios.

IPA (Intelligent Process Automation)

Technology is changing the way we do business and we are entering a new era where workforce optimization and reduction of operational cost are key factors in today’s companies’ success.

Intelligent process automation is a set of emerging technologies that enables companies automate intelligently the manual repetitive tasks in almost all functional areas like procurement, finance, supply chain and logistics, HR, IT services. Intelligent process automation combines fundamental process redesign with robotic process automation and machine learning.

RPA (Robotics process automation), which is one of the key tools of intelligent process automation, is a software that mimics human actions associated with a variety of business processes and defined rules.

SIGN UP FOR ALERTS

  

Intelligent Automation in Insurance:

Learn more.

Business Challenges that Intelligent Process Automation can tackle

Based on our engagements with C level executives, we have identified the bellow challenges:

General Challenges

  • High cost of operations
  • Low processing time for completing certain tasks or generating reports
  • A very high volume of transactions or paperwork such as invoices, requests, POs, contacts
  • high error rate
  • In ability to meet KPIS and regulations put by regulators such as Insurance, banking, health and telecom

Covid 19 Challenges

  • Rapid need for recruitment in peak periods and after the lockdown is over
  • Handling unexpected volume of work such as in:

Healthcare sector:  rapid increase in testing diagnosis and tracking cases

Airlines: ticket cancellation and refunding

  • Business continuity for back office and front office tasks during lockdowns
  • Supply chain disruption causing shortage in warehouses and Point of Sales

Benefits of Intelligent Process Automation

  • Reduce process cycle times between 80% to 90%, enabling quicker time to market for new products and services, improved customer satisfaction…
  • Around 4x increase in process capacity allowing firms to scale critical processes without increasing expenses like headcount.
  • Allow Employees to focus on critical and valuable work by removing 80% of the non-valuable work.
  • Achieve more with less resources
  • Providing 24/7 service to reach more customers
  • Reduce the error rates to almost 0 %
  • Deliver between 25% to 50% in savings
  • ROI is between 6- 9 months

Areas where Intelligent Process Automation can be applied

  • Automated data Extraction and Validation including Arabic Language documents
  • Automating IT operations and Legacy system integration
  • Recruitment process, CV classification and screening
  • Employee/customer/vendor on boarding
  • Procure to pay
  • Finance and accounting: bank reconciliation, invoice processing, order to cash, record to report
  • Supply chain: inventory management, demand and supply, shipment tracking
  • Insurance claim processing
  • Banking services, fraud detection, account processing
  • Automating airline booking cancelations and refunding
  • Healthcare COVID-19 use cases: automating test results reporting, accelerating appointments and testing process
  • More

I will end this article with the following findings from a survey done by PWC with 871 CFOs from 24 countries or territories during the week of 20 April.

  • As workplaces reopen, 46% of CFOs will accelerate automation and 21% are eyeing contact tracing
  • Placing investments on hold, but not digital transformation

It is a new Journey which we are excited to take with our business partners and clients thought utilizing the technological innovations in the most efficient way to ensure survivability, business continuity and growth.

OTHER INSIGHTS

Why Intelligent Automation is essential in the retail industry?

01 Apr

A Fintech World

08 Jul

Double 3 Robotic and The Future of Work

14 Jun
  

NEWSLETTER

Stay up to date with our insights, news and events

INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION IN INSURANCE: CUTTING THROUGH THE NOISE

Key Takeaways

Insurance CXO’s constantly hear about digital technologies such as automation and machine learning but it is harder for them to recognize the bigger picture. The insurance industry is one of the oldest and most resilient financial businesses in the world and the dynamic of how the insurance business works makes it slow paced, less prone to risks and resistant to change. Lately with the incursion of insurtech, adoption of upcoming technologies and changing of customer buying patterns, insurance industry is being forced to change.

How Digital is Transforming the Insurance Industry

Stringent regulations, product complexities and large balance sheets have kept the digitization at bay in the insurance business, but it is changing rapidly. The companies who can adopt these changes intime will survive and others who do not will likely perish. The technology is changing how the products and services are delivered and soon it will change the nature of those products and services along with the business model.

SIGN UP FOR ALERTS

  

VR: What’s next?

Find out.

Technology has brought in significant game changers in the insurance industry that requires executives to implement intelligent automation in their businesses: –

  • Customer satisfaction – For any business, the customer is the king, and the insurance industry is no separate from this fact. The sole revenue source of the insurance industry is the premiums being paid by the customers. Technology has changed how customers operate and transformed their expectations. The customer demands unique customer experience, 24-hour access, faster and hassle-free service, relevant product and pricing information tailored to their needs. Insurers need to innovate to buy customer loyalty. High customer satisfaction driven by the improved service and faster processing times that automation delivers is a driver of profit through increased customer retention.
  • Insurtech – What fintech has done to the finance business, insurtech intends to do the same in the Insurance business. Stringent regulations, large balance sheets of the incumbents coupled with customers tendency to not switch the service providers made it hard for the new entrants. But, the flexibility in business model and inclusion of automation and machine learning has forced the venture capitalists to induce money in Insurtech. The exhibit 1 shows the investment and confidence put in by the venture capitalists in these new startups which surely is a risk on the market share for the traditional insurance service providers.
  • Risk Prevention – Digital technologies that give rise ever-increasing amounts of data and ever penetrating insights make for more accurate pricing of risk, but they also help mitigate the risk and hence reduce the premiums. For Instance – self driving cars and newest safety measures in the automobiles reduces the number of accidents and hence the value of the insurance policies. Similarly, for home insurance, the fire sensors can provide early warning and hence reduce the damage and overall insurance policy value. This logically would mean that insurers would pay more for the devices that help risk prevention and less for the insurance policies, hence decreasing the revenue of the insurance company.
  • More

Use Cases for Intelligent Automation in the Insurance Industry

Underwriting

Underwriting is the most critical element in the insurance business. The assessment of risk and align it against a fee requires access to loads of data, data analysis coupled with human decisioning, for instance:

  • Health risks – Mortality charges and hence premiums will be increase for the smokers especially when weighed against the applicant age
  • Financial limits – If the net worth of the applicant is $X, their insurance coverage cannot exceed $10X
  • Creditworthiness – What is the credit rating of the applicant as per the credit bureau agencies and then formulating the decision
  • Duplicate policies – Is the applicant holding another policy in their name

Intelligent automation coupled with robotics process automation and machine learning can be of value in automating the underwriting process. The implementation of intelligent automation to automate underwriting can significantly reduce the processing time and assist in making the accurate decisions: –

  • Data collection from external and internal sites
  • Pre-population of data fields in internal systems
  • Intelligent OCR to extract data from the scanned documents
  • Assessment of loss runs
  • Reviewing the customer history and claims and producing recommendations
  • Policy Management

Another common use case for intelligent automation is the whole cycle of policy management operations, including policy issuance and updates.

Upon the underwriting decision, the policy must be issued, and the information needs to be updated in the internal systems and communicated to the customer. This activity is highly manual and prone to error as the dependency on the legacy systems is very high and nature of job is highly data entry. Intelligent automation can be used to automate the insurance policy issuance thus significantly reducing the amount of time and manual work required.

Existing policy holders can submit service requests for updates of the communication address or update of the bank mandate. Robotics process automation and machine learning can be utilized to extract policy updates either from voice transcripts, emails or other sources to make the relevant changes in the internal systems.

  • Claims Processing

Fast and efficient claims processing is paramount to success for insurance companies — yet it is often a time-consuming, highly manual process that’s frustrating for both insurers and customers. Typically, claim processing takes several days as insurance agents must gather and check data from multiple sources, such as:

  • medical certificates and reports (in case of life insurance or health insurance claims)
  • photos of damaged baggage and flight boarding passes (in case of a travel loss claim)
  • police reports, driver’s licenses and vehicle damage photographs (in case of an auto claim)

It may take even more time due to human errors, like mismatched financial data or customer details. Such delays may result in the loss of customers and other financial and reputational damage to the company.

Implementing an automated claims processing workflow, including claims intake, assessment, and finally, claims settlement, eliminates friction and cost by combining robotics process automation, machine learning, and human expertise to streamline and speed up claims-related operations.

Benefits of Intelligent Automation in the Insurance Industry

RPA coupled with machine learning can bring massive benefits to any insurance company. The major benefits being the return on investments, enriched customer experience and much happier employees (as they do not have to go through the ordeal of repetitive work)

Unstructured Data Processing

Every day, insurers must deal with massive volumes of data in various paper and electronic formats. To process a claim, an agent must gather data from multiple sources and enter it into a database. The process is manual and time-consuming. Repetition of the same routine tasks repeatedly hinders human concentration, resulting in errors and creating serious inconsistencies in company records. Robots, on the other hand, excel in this aspect.

Machine learning with robotics process automation can process a wider variety of documents more precisely, and can automate insurance processes end-to-end:

  • Download, classify, compile data from external sources
  • Read, sort, analyze and route emails
  • Extract and analyze similar data from different sources (email attachments, transcripts, scanned agreements, etc.)
  • Integration with Legacy Applications

Insurance companies still rely heavily on legacy apps and various programs and systems for managing business operations. Implementation of new software, such as BPM or ERP systems, often requires replacement of the existing hardware and employee retraining — which are significant investments of time and money. Due to these difficulties, many insurance companies are forced to stick to the old systems, although they no longer provide the support required for company development.

Automating operations in legacy applications are great robotics process automation use cases in insurance. Robotics process automation bots can use existing user interfaces, which means there is minimal or no need to change current legacy systems. Robotics process automation bots can imitate human clicks and keystrokes, which makes them easy to implement in addition to the existing software and hardware. Robotics process automation bots create links between legacy and new systems without coding. They switch between various systems and applications and conduct claims processing, underwriting, customer service, onboarding, and other operations — all at the same time.

  • Additional benefits

Successful implementation of an intelligent automation program can be incredibly beneficial for an insurance company, potentially allowing an enterprise to:

  • Reduce the operational costs and increasing the efficiencies
  • Improvisation in the accuracy
  • Faster execution of transactions
  • Increasing overall business productivity and profitability
  • Increase the regulatory compliance to 100%

Conclusion

The true power of machine learning and automation to change the insurance industry is just starting to be felt. The global analysis forecasts that down the road, these technologies will empower insurers to identify, assess, and underwrite emerging risks and identify new revenue sources automatically, with little human interference required, making insurance a potentially semi-automated industry.

However, the journey begins with a pilot model: develop a proof of concept, test the derived benefits, and extend deployments once successful

OTHER INSIGHTS

Why Intelligent Automation is essential in the retail industry?

01 Apr

A Fintech World

08 Jul

Double 3 Robotic and The Future of Work

14 Jun
  

NEWSLETTER

Stay up to date with our insights, news and events

USING RPA TO MAINTAIN BUSINESS DURING COVID-19

As COVID-19 affects businesses across the world, companies are forced to make decisions about their operational processes. In most countries, non-essential industries are working from home, processes have been forced to change as teams try to stay connected. We are facing changes to the way we work in ways that we could never have predicted and as much as we can, we need to maintain normality to business in order for economies and individuals to recover as smoothly as possible once we are able to.

Customer facing businesses are facing an increasing number of enquires, putting huge strain on their service centres as they try and handle the volume, many had already seen the value in implementing robotics automation to support human team and there will be an increasing number of rapid implementations. Noncustomer facing businesses are also trying to keep a sense of normality, with teams no longer able to share information in the same ways, they are increasingly turning to technology to maintain the same level of business or at least a percentage of that.

Robotics process automation can support teams in staying connected and maintaining business operations as usual, helping to provide customer support and an element of stability during this time. Although businesses are in uncertain times, implementing a digital workforce can improve the situation for operations.

SIGN UP FOR ALERTS

  

New tech meets financing:

Learn more.

RPA has the ability to increase process speed and capacity, a useful addition to businesses at a time when productivity is taking a hit. By utilizing RPA platforms, automation can support teams in process management across multiple locations. Companies are able to develop and deploy a new robotics workforce that ensures processes are handled without delay. The automation supports departments, monitors and keeps operations in the backend running smoothly maintaining business critical processes long after we are out of this exceptional situation.

  • More

Automation of departments can include: human resources, finance and accounting, procurement, supply chain, call centres or customer experience, reporting and payroll, all essential parts of how a business is able to stay profitable and even more so during this time.

OTHER INSIGHTS

Why Intelligent Automation is essential in the retail industry?

01 Apr

A Fintech World

08 Jul

Double 3 Robotic and The Future of Work

14 Jun
  

NEWSLETTER

Stay up to date with our insights, news and events

1 2 … 8

ABOUT US

  • Privacy Policy

CONTACT US

  • Contact Us

LOCATION

Saudi Arabia
Moon Tower 3rd Floor
7586 King Fahd Branch Road, Riyadh
Tel. +966 11 411 1127

India
No 118 Gayathri Lakefront, 4th Floor
Towards Manyata Techpark, Outer Ring Road, near Hebbal Flyover
Bangalore – 560024

United Arab Emirates
Office 3601. JBC1, Cluster G, JLT, Dubai
Tel. +971 4 450 8208

United Kingdom
4th Floor Holden House
57 Rathbone Place, W1T 1JU, London
Tel. +44 203 603 6516

© Copyright 2020 PROVEN All rights reserved.
Create a Menu