An inconic global fashion brand has saved backoffice staff time and effort by deploying Robotic Process Automation at several points in their business processes
THE CHALLENGE
A successful fashion designer discovered that a number of tedious, manual processes were driving down efficiencies and contributing to employee frustration in their retail
and e-commerce business. Every day, employees had to retrieve and enter exchange rates, pay bills, aggregate and interpret data and create reports manually. Furthermore, these monotonous, low-value administrative tasks tied up needed work resources.
Further analysis revealed that manual processes dotted the company, from administration to accounting, risk management, financial planning and reporting. To help alleviate the problem, the company turned to Hyland for help.
THE SOLUTION
The Hyland RPA solution provided the company with robotic process automation (RPA) software tools that fit seamlessly into the organization’s IT landscape. RPA is an ideal solution for business processes that require human intervention because it replicates many of the activities done by human workers. For example, data entry, data validation and ticket routing can all be completed by software robots.
When RPA is combined with a product that intelligently captures paper-based data and converts it to structured data, the entire data intake process can be automated.
Fortunately, the company did not have to adjust any of their internal processes to implement RPA, since Hyland built the technology to both learn from and imitate human action. The company automated the following processes:
- Directly operated stores
- Daily sales and cash receipt checks, cash reconciliation, checking of store prices and inventory, e-commerce sales analysis
- Administration
- Entry of current exchange rates, commissioning, wholesale invoicing, draft financial statement preparation, monthly and weekly calculation of profits and losses, processing of custom documents
- Accounts payable
- Order entry, order approval, invoice registration, payment
- Treasury
- Bank account registration, bank reconciliation, financial expenses and treasury planning, temporary accounts reconciliation
- Planning and control
- Group reporting package creation, daily sales
- reports, weekly DOS reports, forecasting, benchmarking with competitors
Automating each business process took anywhere from three to fifteen days, depending on its complexity. Now, many of them (such as querying exchange rates and invoice registration) begin automatically at fixed times. Employees trigger others by directing an email to the Hyland RPA solution. Each step in the process is logged and stored, allowing the company to identify and correct any problems, such as missing or incomplete data. A documentation tool allows employees to document all process runs.
BENEFITS
Since the start of its automation journey with Hyland RPA, the company has realized the following benefits:
- Saved more than 8 hours per day in manual labour
- Automated 1.5 FTEs
- More than 80 percent of the bots deployed work
- autonomously, without human intervention
- Increased accuracy in calculations, statements, reports, forecasts and order processing
The company plans to continue its automation journey by identifying additional processes across functional areas that would benefit from the help of robotic assistants. With a flexible and easily scalable solution, Hyland RPA stands ready to extend its current implementation to deliver even greater ROI over time.
News From
Hyland Category: Software and Business Solutions Profile: Hyland is a leader in providing software solutions for managing content, processes and cases for organisations across the globe. For 25 years, Hyland has enabled more than 15,500 organisations to digitalise their workplaces and fundamentally transform their operations. Named one of Fortune’s Best Companies to Work For® since 2014, Hyland is widely known as both a great company to work for and a great company to do business with. For more information, please visit Hyland.com
