The small AR and AP teams were easily spending 90-95 percent of their time on transactions that were no sooner done when they cycled again.A similar frustration was felt by the Canteen team. Two staff managed 2 canteens taking online lunch orders that closed at 8:30am each morning, recess volumes peaked at 10:30am, while collating orders for 12.30pm meal fulfilment.Data captured by one system was extracted, converted by the team input into other systems. The avalanche of excel files produced to stitch together disparate data sources was overwhelming.The team felt that there had to be a more efficient way to manage these repetitive, high-volume transactions to make time for high value activities.
In Search of a Solution
Recognizing that there could be a more efficient way to do transactional, repeatable work, the team started to investigate the potential to build an in-house solution, basically, ‘excel on steroids’. The discovery journey took 9 – 12 months with significant financial and human investments. In investigating options, team Valenta surfaced as a strong partner who could help Redlands Finance Department rethink small tasks, enhancing speed and efficiency through automation of repeatable rules-based processes. As a managed service provider Valenta offered technology, capability and support infrastructure that was reliable, cost effective and provided a better return on investment
The Approach
Finding Value Opportunities: Valenta’s on and off shore teams set out to better understand the pain points, opportunities and objectives. Processes across the organization were reviewed to understand what people did, how much data they were interacting with and how much time they spent on these activities Process documentation were reviewed and pain points discussed to find those candidates that were rules-based and repeatable. High impact and efficient outcomes were identified. Focusing first on small processes within the Finance Department, Valenta developed a Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Bot that would mimic a series of human interactions (key strokes) across multiple applications to enter data, deliver reports and produce curated content.
Consulting