Just Add Imagination
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Since its introduction in 2012, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has rapidly become a strategic enterprise capability, with leading companies combining RPA and Intelligent Automation to accelerate value realization, master scale challenges, and conquer complexity in ways never before possible. This series of reports highlights how they’re using combinatory innovation to become more competitive and create new value. JUST ADD IMAGINATION EMPOWERING CREATIVITY MAY 2020 Dr. John Hindle & Dr. Leslie Willcocks Knowledge Capital Partners JUST ADD IMAGINATION PART FIVE “We can pilot and test any thoughts, information, and experiences creatively, taking different pieces and molding them into something new.” Chieng Moua 02 JUST ADD IMAGINATION PART FIVE In this series, we have highlighted how leaders across regions and industries are using imagination and applying combinatory innovation to address key enterprise challenges. We’ve seen how they’re integrating an ever-growing suite of Intelligent Automation capabilities via connected-RPA platforms to accelerate value, master scale, and manage complexity in their organizations. These achievements are both impressive and diverse. But where is all this innovation heading? And, who is leading the way? Let’s explore some advanced examples that may offer clues. Using imagination and combinatory innovation, a specialist financial services BPO provider developed an inexpensive, fast and attractive “Rent-a-Robot” service based on a connected-RPA platform. The Digital Workers service enables multi-skilled Digital Workers to be delivered in the arrive on their same way staffing agencies deliver temporary human work – with no upfront cost, full maintenance and retraining. The provider built worksites pre-trained an internal “robot factory,” using highly automated development in key processes. and maintenance tools and processes to build and deliver Digital Workers to clients, enabling them to take on additional work and cost-effectively meet demand peaks. The Digital Workers arrive on their worksites pre-trained on a wide variety of key financial processes, including fund transfers, cost settlements, insurance handling, collection support, deposits contracts, and even complex loan data calculations, application verifications and closings – all on multiple platforms and applications, The service is including SAP, SalesForce.com, Temenos, Uniflow, and others. enabling clients to take on additional Since the cost of the Digital Worker is a fraction of the cost of a human work and cost- employee and the Rent-a-Robot pricing model contains no up-front effectively meet cost, clients capture financial benefits within a month of deployment, demand peaks. in addition to rapid availability of fully trained Digital Workers. COPYRIGHT © HINDLE AND WILLCOCKS 2020 03 JUST ADD IMAGINATION PART FIVE As the pace of technology-driven change accelerates, a global education services provider is using imagination and combinatory innovation in its quest to become the world’s learning company, Investing in a with significant investments in new artificial intelligence (AI)-guided strategy of AI guided education tooling. Its operational goal is to create an intelligent Digital tools to become Workforce, capable of self-learning and continuous improvement across a range of internal and external services, supporting and “the world’s working alongside its human professionals. learning company”. The company has established a cloud-based connected-RPA platform in order to exploit AI and cognitive capabilities. It currently uses the platform to manage rights and royalties acquisition from a complex network of suppliers for image, audio, text and video content. Integrating connected-RPA and intelligent optical character recognition (OCR) is also simplifying and expediting qualification and credential checks, and the company is using API calls with RPA and Python coding for an applicant onboarding validation process. Learning by doing, the company is moving rapidly into its vision of becoming the global learning company. The goal is to create a Digital Workforce capable of self-learning and continuous improvement, supporting and working alongside human professionals. COPYRIGHT © HINDLE AND WILLCOCKS 2020 04 JUST ADD IMAGINATION PART FIVE Combinatory innovation isn’t limited to for-profit environments, either, as a major regional public health care provider has shown. The provider is using cloud-based Digital Workers to automate The provider is patient care along assigned clinical treatment pathways, with fewer than 1% exceptions requiring manual intervention. Where the automating patient manual process involved gathering and printing up to 15 pieces of care along assigned data for each patient, including scans, clinical tests, visit histories, etc., clinical treatment then scanning them into a single pdf file, Digital Workers now read pathways. the content, extract the reason for the referral, and retrieve, merge and upload all the required data using secure smartcard technology, and alert consultants the file is ready for review. The Digital Workers actively monitor a caseload that includes an average of 2,000 referrals per week on a 24/7 basis, reducing the time required for processing from 25 to 5 minutes. 2000 REFERRALS Based on this success, the provider has also automated maternity PER WEEK IN patient self-referrals using connected-RPA and cognitive e-form technology to receive and verify data, register the patient, assign ONE FIFTH appointments, and confirm details to the patient. Letters from clinics OF THE TIME. to patients, moreover, are automatically translated into their primary language and published on the provider’s patient portal. Finally, the provider is building a new combinatory automation for clinical coding for ophthalmology and endoscopy patients that uses connected-RPA and cognitive tools to analyze unstructured data, identify common themes, categorize the data, and recommend the likely coding output for treatment records. COPYRIGHT © HINDLE AND WILLCOCKS 2020 05 JUST ADD IMAGINATION PART FIVE The above three cases are just illustrative, as the possibilities are in fact limitless. We have seen a major insurance company use machine learning and visual processing with connected-RPA 56 to reduce the time required to assess an accident claim from MINUTES 56 minutes to five seconds. The early pilot alone was saving five million dollars a year and freeing up 39,000 hours of work time. Another insurance company combined cognitive automation with connected-RPA to 5 automate product and sales intelligence, optimize management SECONDS intelligence, and carry out rapid claims analytics, transforming the customer experience. A major US city government is experimenting with using license plates as the entry point for analyzing traffic delays and flows. In this case, connected-RPA is combined with Google Vision and Microsoft cognitive tools to arrive at dynamic pattern recognition and traffic solutions. Sam Stone, senior process analyst & developer at Blue Prism’s Center of Excellence summarized it in this way: The scope is becoming almost infinite. I keep thinking there are things we can’t do then realize a bit later that we can. COPYRIGHT © HINDLE AND WILLCOCKS 2020 06 JUST ADD IMAGINATION PART FIVE WHERE ARE ALL THESE INNOVATIONS TAKING US? We’ll enjoy the capability to Blue Prism’s Vice President of Innovation Chieng Moua sees a revolutionary future, one in which we’ll enjoy the capability to download knowledge download knowledge-as-a-service to any Digital Worker for as a service to any any requirement. In Moua’s vision, Blue Prism’s goal is to extend digital worker for its customers’ ability to apply imagination and combinatory any requirement. innovation, built around connected-RPA. “Maybe customers don’t know what these new enhancements should be,” he says, “because they’ve been running a bunch of old processes. But, in the future, as companies like Blue Prism and others have gone out there and scoured the planet and identified the best business practices in retail, for example, customers who want to be a part of that can just pay an incremental fee to download that knowledge-as-a-service. And, as the Digital Workers continuously learn, they’ll actually enhance the knowledge base.” “What I’m quickly discovering,” Moua says, “is that companies are still applying mundane work processes to support highly intensive, highly focused critical decision-making events, because they don’t want to make a bad decision. You can give a CEO the best PowerPoint dashboard with all the data correlated with it and it tells a great story, but this CEO still makes a gut decision. Companies are still applying mundane work processes to support highly intensive, highly focused critical decision-making events. COPYRIGHT © HINDLE AND WILLCOCKS 2020 07 JUST ADD IMAGINATION PART FIVE Why is that? Why can’t we say, ‘Mr. CEO, you may not be making the best decision. Here’s three or four or five scenarios. We can run it through our predictive analysis tools. We can use our digital talents to do a ‘what if’ scenario to see if it’s actually applicable to reaching our goals — financial goals, quality of service goals, whatever the relevant metrics are.’” “That analysis capability in itself will be the new PowerPoint,” Moua We can pilot and explains. “I call it ‘creative intelligence.’ We can pilot and test any test any thoughts, thoughts, information, and experiences creatively, taking all these different pieces and molding them into something