UNIVERSITY OF MISKOLC FACULTY OF ECONOMICS
THESIS ANNOUNCEMENT
FULL NAME: OSAMA MOUSA RASMI MEQBEL NEPTUN CODE: DQNU4A TYPE OF PROGRAMME: MSc NAME OF PROGRAMME: Master of Business Administration (English)
NAME OF SPECIALISATION: None RESPONSIBLE DEPARTMENT OR INSTITUTE: Institute of Management Science
TITLE OF THESIS: ROBOT PROCESS AUTOMATION (RPA) EFFECT ON FOOD & NON-FOOD RETAIL INDUSTRY
ASSIGNMENT: - Introduction - Prepare a literature review connecting to the topic (RPA) . - Detail the methodological elements of the empirical research - Case Studies (Carrefour, Cora etc.) - Summary, suggestion
BASE ORGANISATION (name; address): UNIVERSITY OF MISKOLC, 3515 MISKOLC, EGYETEMVAROS INTERNAL CONSULTANT: PROFESSOR TAMAS SIKOS T., EXTERNAL CONS ULTANT:
DATE OF THESIS ANNOUNCEMENT: 19. 02. 2021
Date: 03. 05. 2021. 2 | P a g e Declaration of originality
FULL NAME: OSAMA MOUSA RASMI MEQBEL
NEPTUN CODE: DQNU4A TITLE OF THESIS: ROBOT PROCESS AUTOMATION (RPA) EFFECT ON FOOD & NON-FOOD RETAIL INDUSTRY
I, the undersigned, hereby declare under penalty and perjury that each part of my thesis (text, figures, tables, etc.) – except the cited ones − is my own work and does not rely on other documents including my previous theses.
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Date: 16/4/2021
……………………………….. Signature of Student
3 | P a g e Robot Process automation (RPA) effect on Food & Non-food retail industry
Institute of Management Science Name: Osama Mousa Meqbel Year: 2021
4 | P a g e Abstract: Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a relatively new technology that automates processes involving manual and repetitive tasks, freeing up resources and saving time, and cutting costs. The purpose of this research is to study the effect of robot process automation (RPA) on the food & non-food retail industry. And which retail process to start with the RPA automation journey. RPA has many applications in the retail industry due to the fact that it contains a lot of repetitive, high-volume, manual processes and tasks.
The Retail industry is facing challenges due to changing customer demands, increase labor cost, therefore, increase margin pressure, my research indicates that there are enormous benefits can be acquired from RPA adoption, which can help the retailers to increase productivity, cutting their cost leading to decrease the margin pressure that retailers faces. Making it one of the top potential industries to adopt RPA in the near future.
This research was done by analyzing primary and secondary data from previous survey and case studies, and a questionnaire designed by the researcher which targeted RPA and retail specialists.
Keywords: Robot process automation, RPA, Retail industry, Retail processes.
5 | P a g e Contents Abstract:...... 5 1. Introduction: ...... 7 1.1 Retail industry: ...... 10 1.2 Objective & Research questions:...... 13 1.3 Methodology: ...... 15 2. Literature Review:...... 16 2.1. Characteristics & benefits of RPA:...... 16 2.2 RPA implementation: ...... 20 2.2.1: Picking the process:...... 20 2.2.2 RPA Life Cycle: ...... 21 2.2.3 RPA Team & Center of Excellence (CoE): ...... 24 2.3 RPA project evaluation:...... 26 2.4 Change management in RPA:...... 28 2.5 RPA applications in retail industry:...... 30 3. Previous surveys & case studies ...... 33 3.1 Taking RPA to the next level – By Protiviti ...... 33 3.1.1 Insight of RPA adoption in retail industry...... 34 3.2.2. RPA adopting top obstacles across industries:...... 37 3.2 Carrefour Case study- Doc-process ...... 39 3.3 Cora case study – Doc-process ...... 40 3.4 Auxis Consulting & Outsourcing- Case study...... 41 3.5 Infosys – Case study ...... 42 3.6 Summary: ...... 43 4. Questionnaire Analysis & Results:...... 44 5. Discussion:...... 51 5. Conclusion:...... 54 Bibliography: ...... 55 Appendix:...... 58
6 | P a g e 1. Introduction:
Humanity's technical horizon is expanding more and more. Researchers are constantly pursuing innovations in all aspects of our society in order to improve efficiency and make human life easier. Automation has been a significant source of such innovations for over a hundred years.
Robot process automation, in another world digital transformation, artificial intelligence (AI) and Industry 4.0 are current connected trendy terms in the business world. In this thesis I will focus on the role of RPA will take in this enormous transformation and its impact on food & non-food retail industry. RPA is considered to be one of the key elements driving companies from Industry 3.0 to 4.0. In order to help companies to gain competitive advantage, they should consider managing, developing, designing and implementing a successful automation strategy plan to their business processes. But it’s not that easy simple change to do.
When you hear bout Robot Process Automation, the first thing that will come on your mind might be a physical robots doing tasks and taking over human jobs, but the truth is RPA is an office automation software (bot) that mimic human interactions with the computer, RPA makes the most significant impact on manual work processes, that are repetitive and recurring, and often have high human error rates. Some examples of the activities that RPA can do are: entering/pulling data, reading emails, opening attachments, making reports and others. But RPA do it with a higher speed, better accuracy with no errors.
In 2019, investment in RPA was the number one focus for SMBs (Small and medium-sized enterprises). A survey conducted by HFS Research suggests that more investment is being made in RPA than any other area, including the cloud, Internet of Things, and analytics. ... If current trends continue, RPA will achieve near-global adoption in the next five years and according to studies, by 2025, the global market for RPA is expected to reach $3.97 billion. Between now and then, it will expand at a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 31.1% and due to this high growing value, I choose RPA as my thesis topic.(Record Investment In RPA: Why It Matters, 2020)
Moving on about the hype that RPA will take human jobs, which is similar to what happened in the Industrial Revolution. Preceding to the late 1700s, people were manufacturing products by hand. The Industrial Revolution brought a wave of mass production factories that used special
7 | P a g e machines to make products. The changes that came from the first wave of the Industrial Revolution (1790–1850) caused a bifurcation in society and social class. Automation and AI technologies will be replacing jobs. Just like the industrial revolution, the first ones to go are unskilled labor that are easily automated due to their repetitive nature. In contrast Gartner predicts that AI will create more jobs than they will replace by 2020. Just like the Industrial Revolution, people will have to learn new skills and new laws will need to dictate how society can curb some of the negative side effects as AI becomes more prevalent in everyday life.
Automation provides tremendous value to businesses, as well as tangible business benefits. Automating repetitive, rule-based tasks frees up employees' time to focus on higher-value activities that require advanced skills, boosts employee engagement, and results in happier customers. Forrester’s research shows that more engaged employee means higher growth: A 5% improvement in employee engagement leads to a 3% increase in revenue.(Foerster-Metz et al., 2018)
Furthermore, RPA will lead to cost efficiency, cutting down the operational cost, reducing man hours (FTE) and redeploy the workers to a higher value strategic jobs, in addition to that it will lead to significant process improvement by finishing more work in less time, it will also improve productivity, quality and compliance by minimizing human manual processes that produce errors.
According to KPMG, 68% of companies deploy RPA to drive cost savings, but also to achieve improvements in the following areas:
Enable employees to focus on higher value, strategic work by reducing manual, repetitive labor (40.5%) Reduce human error and improving internal controls and compliance (23.5%) Improve visibility into future risks and opportunities by testing wider data sets and helping employees use their uniquely human capabilities to analyze trends and anomalies (16.9%)(Ken Mertzel | Automation Anywhere, 2019)
One the another hand, there is several challenges you may counter when you think about starting the automation journey, from change management, managing employees’ resistance, to picking the most appropriate process to start automating. Those challenges can be overcome by massive
8 | P a g e support and management from the leadership and the working team together to implement RPA project successfully. So it requires an approval starting from the top of the company, by another meaning it should run through all your company major departments and all the departments should be considered in the RPA implementation plan.
9 | P a g e 1.1 Retail industry: Retail is the type of trade where firms offer goods and services directly to customers, usually through multiple channels of distribution.
As Wikipedia explains, the term "retail" applies to a transaction in which a seller fulfills orders from a large number of buyers. In retail, the consumers are typically the end-users as well. In terms of prosperity, the retail industry has a major impact on economic well-being and is often an early indicator of where we are headed.(Vega, n.d.)
In this thesis, what I mean by the term food & non-food retail industry are those industries that sell goods, such as grocery stores & supermarkets, clothing stores, and general merchandise stores...etc. And not the kind of retailers that sell services.
There is a strong correlation between retail industry and economy in general, and the reason of that is retail sales predict consumer spending trends. And consumer spending trends can, in turn, predict economic growth. Consumers spending more means companies are earning more. This, in turn, means they can hire more people and pay them better. Or in other words – we’re doing well economically.
In 2017, the volume of retail spending worldwide was at 23$ trillion and expected to reach around 30$ trillion in 2023 (• Statista), which implies the industry will keep growing. People will always need to buy new things. Still, retail has such an important role because it manages to successfully adapt to consumers’ needs.
Digitalization, in particular, will change the face of the retail trade industry in the years to come.
Online (E-Tailing) VS in store shopping:
Electronic Retailing (E-tailing) is s the sale of goods and services through the Internet. E-tailing requires companies to tailor their business models to capture Internet sales, which can include building out distribution channels such as warehouses, Internet webpages, and product shipping centers. (Electronic Retailing (E-Tailing) Definition, n.d.)
E-commerce has been an essential part of the global retail system over the last couple of years. Like many other industries, the retail landscape has undergone a major transformation following the advent of the internet, and thanks to the ongoing digitalization of modern life. The number of
10 | P a g e digital buyers worldwide continues to grow as internet connectivity and adoption are increasingly growing across the globe. In 2019, an estimated 1.92 billion people purchased goods or services online. During the same year, e-retail sales surpassed 3.5 trillion U.S. dollars worldwide and in 2020, its forecast that the revenue will cross $4 trillion. By 2021, it’s expected to reach $4.88 trillion, according to the latest calculations, e-commerce growth will be increasing in the future. (Statista Research Department, 2020)
Even though online shopping keeps breaking records, physical stores remain an important part of shopping. And retail statistics further confirm that.
Moving on to retail giants around the globe, Walmart leads the retail industry with an impressive $500.34 billion in global revenue for 2018. Amazon follows with a revenue of $164.1 billion. And while it’s ranked second in total global revenue, Amazon remains the largest online retailer in 2019. The third-largest is Schwarz Group with $101.94 billion in revenue for 2018. These companies have been able to successfully react to retails trends and supply customers’ needs and demands.(Vega, n.d.)
Clearly, it’s all about customer satisfaction and provide customer what they needs to make their shopping experience convince as possible. The retailers will feel the push to optimize their strategies and look for opportunities to invest in technology to fulfill customers’ demands, RPA is the key. Efficiency is often seen as the primary motivator for the implementation of automation technology, but innovation is the ultimate way to thrive among retailers. As they implement automation technology, they set up a large bank of hours with a trained and trusted workforce.(McKinsey, 2019)
Another thing that needs to be mentioned, currently we are in 2021, the world faces the COVID- 19 pandemic, a lot of new trends have been emerged with this new situation, especially regarding the shopping experience and customer behaviors. And in order to adapt to the pandemic-era business, retailers made many changes and some of those changes are here to stay, one of those trends is that retailers now are moving toward a low-touch solution. Also, there was an evolution of omnichannel and the increasing adaption for the delivery model. More and more integration is being seen to use store personnel to give pickups or communicate with customers virtually from the comfort of their homes. Concerns about health and human safety have changed the way people think about their daily lives, and food is a big part of that. More people are interested in
11 | P a g e automating food production and improving the entire process from seed to fork. A report made by McKinsey says that within a matter of months, digital retail evolved 10 years when the pandemic hit.(INSIDER, 2021)
12 | P a g e 1.2 Objective & Research questions: The traditional method of retail is now not appropriate in the market. With the rising complexity of each business, retail is faced with a challenge due to changing customer demands and growing demands for high user satisfaction. This impressive growth, corroborated by a much slower market growth, increasing production and labor costs, or inadequate supply, will certainly generate significant challenges to the organization’s business processes in the industry. Furthermore, retail must also adapt to the industrial model change towards a consumer-centered approach. Robotic process optimization or RPA enables organizations to automate mundane activities, accelerate workflows, and optimize overall costs. This is the true heaven of the retail industry, which can help retailers stay relevant, effective, and optimized. Relating to that, there are plenty of processes involved in the retail industry that consume a significant amount of time, and where human error can negatively affect the business. Retailors are looking to use RPA to automate processes such as logistics, customer engagement, returns processing, inventory management, and much more.
From data collection to decision making, retailers had to count on data being collected manually from a wide array of many different systems and this process takes a lot of time on data collection and less time on data analysis. But with RPA the transfer of data is flawless, allowing the employee to have more time on analyzing the data leads to better decisions making. The increasing use of RPA in retail will impact the workforce by allowing humans to shift their focus to more value-add tasks and become more productive.(Antony Edwards, n.d.)
Automation will reshape retail business models and the value chain, establishing organization with fewer layers and a better trained and trusted workforce driven by real time data and analytics. The winners in this sector only will be those who understand these consequences and act quickly to address them.
The aim of my thesis to study the impact of implementing RPA on the retail industry from different aspects and how both, RPA and retail experts understands the benefits and the challenges of implementing RPA into the retail industry. Furthermore, to find the best potential process to start the automation journey.
13 | P a g e Research Questions:
Q1: What is the impact of implementing RPA to the food & non-food retail industries?
Q2: which is the best potential process for automation that have the most benefits in the food& non-food retailing?
14 | P a g e 1.3 Methodology: My research will be a quantitative research consisting of a mix of primary and secondary data. Quantitative analysis focuses on collecting and generalizing numerical data through groups of people or on describing a specific phenomenon.
In the third chapter, there will be the secondary data research, I will collect data from previous case studies and surveys, then summarize and analyze it to help with answering the research questions. Here are the list of previous surveys and case studies that I will use:
1. Taking RPA to the next level- By Protiviti Consulting (2019). It is a global survey of 450 companies across multiple regions, industries and different companies’ size. The research highlight the most effective practices and lessons learned when adopting RPA in the most applicable industries. (Protiviti, 2019) 2. Docprocess - Carrefour Case study (Docprocess, 2018a) 3. Docprocess – Cora Case study (Docprocess, 2018b) 4. Auxis Consulting & Outsourcing- Case study (Auxis, 2018) 5. Infosys – Case study (InfosysBpm, 2018)
In chapters 4, a survey will be designed through Google forms, and the process of finding possible candidates will be through the famous social media platform LinkedIn, the suitable candidates for the survey will have experience in RPA or in retailing or even both. Then, the result will be collected and analyzed in order to find the answer of the research questions.
Further analysis will be conducted By SPSS software using the Chi-square test & Creamer’s V to measure the association and test the significance between the chosen nominal variables. The variables are the field of experience that the respondents have as an independent variable, and the most suitable process to start automating using RPA, the percentages of processes that can be automated in the retail industry, and which department in the retail industry needs RPA the most as a dependents variables. This analysis will help to discover the different perspectives in the process of adopting RPA into the retail industry from RPA and retailing specialists points of view.
Last but not least, in chapter 5 will be a conclusion and recommendations.
15 | P a g e 2. Literature Review: The literature review structure in this thesis will consist of two parts which will discuss the backgrounds of the main concepts in details. First, Robot process automation and second is RPA applications in the Food Retail industry. It will provide a deeper understanding of the characteristics & benefits of RPA, RPA life cycle, steps of implementation, change management and RPA project evaluation. Next, a deeper look into the application of RPA in the retail industry processes and activities to find out how RPA going to affect it. Moreover to find the best potential process to start the automation journey.
2.1. Characteristics & benefits of RPA: The Literature indicates that the purpose of RPA is to mimic rule based, high volume, repetitive and mundane human tasks in business processes by interacting with front-end systems like humans usually do.(Wright et al., 2017).
But before going deeper into RPA, we need to state the difference between RPA and AI (Artificial Intelligence). AI and RPA are two of the most effective innovations for companies to accomplish many goals with the purpose of increasing customer satisfaction and employee productivity while reducing operating costs. While RPA augmenting people with process automation, AI is augmenting automation with artificial intelligence. As mentioned earlier, RPA is the use of software (bot) to standardize and automate business processes which means that RPA robots do the same thing every time. They're not learning from one repetition to another, and they're not going to redesign or come up with a better way to perform their programmed tasks. On the other hand, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a simulation of human intelligence processes by computer systems or "machines." These processes involve learning (acquiring knowledge and contextual rules for the use of information), reasoning (using context and rules to draw conclusions), and self-correction (learning from successes and failures). Common applications of AI include chatbots, image recognition and, sentiment analysis. Another difference is RPA uses structured inputs and logic while AI uses unstructured inputs and develops its own logic and since organizations have both (structured and unstructured data), many processes require both RPA and AI.(AI & RPA: What’s the Difference | NICE, n.d.)
What makes RPA unique is its ability to access everything through the desktop as a human operator would; read the internet, use passwords, make calculations, create /amend spreadsheets,
16 | P a g e make payments, read emails / PDFs etc, manipulate data, trigger responses and communicate with other digital systems(Can Robotic Process Automation Deliver a Quick ROI? | Independent RPA/AI Consultancy | JifJaff, n.d.)
RPA users does not require extensive programming skills & knowledge. It is only important to train employees about how RPA works, which is typically easy to understand. This gives it an advantage over the existing method of automation. Furthermore it’s not disruptive like the traditional automation method, RPA avoids complexity and risk. Via a managed user interface, the software robots access the systems of end users, thereby reducing the need for underlying system programming. The transformation processes in RPA is very straightforward and simple.(Rpaimplementation – Medium, n.d.).In addition to that, it’s relatively easy to get started on RPA. Actually a great characteristic of RPA Technology is the facility in which organizations can test and learn in an environment in which they can gain experience without risking negative impacts. (Muraleedharan, V., Griffiths, J., Abel, M., & Ives, 2016). In the literature review, it’s point that, comparing to large heavy weight IT systems, RPA is relatively cheaper, faster and easier to implement.
There are two types of RPA software robots, attended and unattended robots. Attended RPA bots are like a virtual assistant, helping employees with their tasks to boost productivity, they assist front office tasks but it needs employees to trigger them. On the other hand, unattended bots run automation that works on its own with minimal employee involvement. The aim of unattended bots is end to end automation, automating back end processes where bots can execute the entire process independently.
The main focus about RPA benefits in the literature review is operational efficiency which is mentioned in the literature review in terms of decreasing in cost, time and human resources, reduction in manual task and workload and increase productivity. RPA technology has been shown to reduce the cost of human resource-related spending by 20 % to 50% percent based on quantitative measures, such as the number of full-time equivalent workers (FTEs) replaced by robots. Furthermore, cutting the cost of transaction processes by 30% to 60% (Insight, n.d.). It also led to reduction in process cycle time, waiting time and task handling time which means time effectiveness.
17 | P a g e RPA Increase productivity by the facts that robots (bots) works 24/7 none stop during weekends, and holidays, offering maximum flexibility to cover peak periods and by automation tedious jobs employees can engage in more value-added activities and operations that involve personal interaction, problem solving, and decision making. Robotic process automation allows employees to complete and work on a higher value tasks within the company and its customers and when employees feel their work is valued and worthwhile, their productivity increases.(The Institute for Robotic Process Automation, 2015)
Furthermore, RPA will increase the quality of the service within the organization by reducing mistakes, incorrect data inputs, missed steps and common transactional errors.(Muraleedharan, V., Griffiths, J., Abel, M., & Ives, 2016) And tasks that are automated are expected to achieve 100% accuracy.(Lamberton et al., 2017). A research (Willcocks et al., 2015) indicates that companies are implying RPA as a tool to help them to increase quality and deliver service excellence to customer.
Many studies reported that RPA Increase compliance due to the fact that many of the activities involved in compliance seem to be suitable for automation. If you consider the repetitive, rule- based, high volume nature of processes like employee compliance (e.g., licensing and registration, personal account dealings), surveillance (e.g., social media surveillance), or Know Your Customer (KYC) .(How RPA Can Increase Compliance through Enterprise Automation - CiGen | Robotic Process Automation | RPA, 2019). The higher compliance is due to the fact that software 'robots' have been configured to comply with regulations and that all processes are recorded and therefore easily audited.
RPA is scalable and flexible, the robot workforce can be scaled up or down quickly and efficiently at minimum cost depending on the workflow. (RPA : The next Step in Retail Automation, n.d.), regarding work hours, robots are much more flexible than humans by the fact that robots can work any time and non-stop. And it is much easier to increase the workload of an automated process than of a manual process, which means that RPA can easily be scaled.
Lacity and Willcocks research summarized RPA benefits/values adopters have obtained from implementing RPA successfully into three main categories: shareholder value, customer value and employee value. The figure below illustrate what they call a triple win.
18 | P a g e Fig (1): Triple win, adopted by (Lacity & Willcocks, 2016)
Even though there are a lot of RPA benefits stated in the literature review, the benefits obtained from implementing and deploying RPA will differ from organization to organization. Benefits fulfillment depends on many key factors such as a successful implementation plan with an appropriate RPA team, change management, origination readiness, and continually process identifying, optimizing, and assessing for the RPA life cycle. Companies with a lack of knowledge of the RPA team may experience that some part of the RPA lifecycle is not successfully performed, which can have a negative effect later in the RPA lifecycle and result in project failure. The evaluation of the RPA project depends primarily on the project objectives and thus on the type of processes that are automated.
19 | P a g e 2.2 RPA implementation: When it comes to RPA implementation through the company, how to identify where to deploy RPA and which process to start with are a common challenges that many organizations face(Consulting et al., 2011). In the context of the company, it is critical to assess RPA as it need to line up with company goals, strategies and challenges.
To start the automation journey, there is a strategy called quick automation wins which helps to shift legacy mindset and make it easier to convince skeptical employees and C-suite leaders that the processes that made your organization successful might need to be redone and to be automated. Quick wins come from automated 'low-hanging fruit' processes which mean start automation with easy and simple processes. These early victories show stakeholders and employees the immediate benefits of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and ROI.(Lomanto, 2019).
2.2.1: Picking the process: Selecting the right process to start automation is the key to success, as mentioned in the literature review, picking the right process is very important. In order to determine which processes can prove to be good candidates for automation, an evaluation needs to be performed through all the operations, within and across different departments. Nevertheless, since most companies operate in a complex and delicate environment, carrying out such an objective analysis becomes nothing short of a difficult task.
It is possible to consider and rate the following attributes in a structured way to assess the suitability of an automation process:(Guide to a Successful RPA Implementation in 2020, n.d.)
The total volume of transactions that can be performed without human intervention. The amount of labor or resources required to execute repetitive tasks at regular intervals. The ability of the components and sub-components of a process to be digitalized. The capacity of a process to deliver an excellent customer experience without any manual errors. The possible constraints which might obstruct the harvesting of automation benefits. The capability of the rules that govern a process, to be mechanically defined and programmed.
20 | P a g e The sensitivity and relevance of a process in the overall organizational workflow.
Moving on to the appropriate process characteristics. By searching through literature review, I summon the most common characteristics:
Fig(2): RPA process characteristics (Sigurðardóttir, 2018)
Some other important process characteristics that weren’t mentioned in the figure is the process should be mature which means stable and employees clearly understand them, easy to achieve and measurable impact, simple, well documented and has a digitalized structured data input.
2.2.2 RPA Life Cycle: RPA lifecycle provides a structure to the automation process where at each stage we can ensure that the implementation is as expected. There is no specific defined structure for the RPA lifecycle. Nevertheless, this is the generally RPA lifecycle stages, from the creation of bots to the execution of the bots:(Robotic Process Automation | RPA Life Cycle, n.d.)
Discovery and identify phase The initial stage of the RPA lifecycle is the discovery phase. The RPA process architect analyzes the client's requirements in this phase. Then it is further determined whether or
21 | P a g e not the process can be automated. If it is possible to automate the process, the RPA analyst team could include the RPA architect team to analyze the process's complexity and decide how to carry on with the project.
Solution design phase The steps for automating the task are designed based on requirements. The technical architect of the RPA is developing a Process Definition Document (PDD) in collaboration with the process architect, which includes information about the whole process. They follow the methodology of development and develop a strategy for automating specific tasks as much as they can to reduce manual work. Once all the requirements are met, the next step is to set a project plan including budget, duration of the project and a team. Then the analyst team creates a flowchart to understand the process flow, which helps to select the correct automation processes. The RPA tool is used after the selection of processes to start the development of bots and automate tasks.
Development phase In this phase, the RPA developer creates scripts/bots to automate the tasks with the help of RPA tools. Scripts/bots for automation are generated by following the PDD that was previously developed in the designing phase. Generally, there is no coding requirement. But depending on the tasks that are to be automated, it may change. The next step after developing the bots is to test the developed bots.
UAT (User Acceptance Tests) The RPA development team tests the developed bots in this phase. In a pre-production environment, these bots are tested to examine how users can use them for automating specific tasks. If the test phase is successfully passed, then it is further transferred to the next phase. In addition, if the testing fails, then it is transferred back to the development phase, where errors found in the testing phase are examined and solved by RPA developers.
22 | P a g e Deployment & execution After developing and testing, the bots are deployed into the production environment when only they have completed the development and testing phases. After the deployment process, the bots are excited and users can use them to automate their tasks. Bots are also checked to ensure that the implementation is performed as per requirements. The figure below explain the life cycle of a bot:
Fig(3): (RPA Life Cycle - Javatpoint, n.d.)
Those stages can be summarize with proof of concept (PoC), pilot and rollout. A proof of concept goal is to determine whether RPA and the chosen vendor are suitable for the organization and its challenges, it is an efficient way of understanding whether automation will be successful within the constraints of a customized business environment and how it will influence existing systems. It also provides an opportunity to test the selected software/platform and the resources involved to ensure that a successful rollout is carried out in the future. A PoC should be treated as a project that have a clear goal and it takes about 30 days to be conducted. The steps of PoC are planning, process analysis, Configuration, deployment and in the end full execution for the bot.(RPA POC: Making a Case for Proof Of Concept - Six Effective Steps, n.d.)
23 | P a g e After a valid PoC, a pilot project with an approximate duration of 10-12 weeks is conducted. The pilot project is to expand and include the rest of the automation activities selected while implementing governance and maintenance mechanisms to maintain the integrity of the RPA installation. Next is the rolling out RPA robots for use in production and spread them to other areas in the company.(3 Steps for a Strategic Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Implementation and Integration | MoreThanDigital, n.d.)
Fig(4): Typical RPA implementation phases (Lovin, n.d.)
2.2.3 RPA Team & Center of Excellence (CoE): Ui Path, a global software company that develops a platform for robotic process automation says: “A Center of Excellence (CoE) is essentially the way to embed RPA deeply and effectively into the organization, and to redistribute accumulated knowledge and resources across future deployments.”(Build Your Robotic Process Automation Center of Excellence, n.d.) At the core of the COE lies the RPA team which consists of a set of clearly defined roles and responsibilities and is responsible for implementing and managing automation throughout the enterprise as quickly, as effectively and as safely as possible.
24 | P a g e A center of excellence is a team, a shared facility or an organization that provides leadership, best practices, analysis, assistance and/or training for a target area.(Khalil et al., 2001) And the target here is RPA project
Here are some robotic key roles that should be appointed from the business side within the actual CoE team for a better implementation plan:
RPA Sponsor: He is the person who is responsible for establishing the technology as an organization strategic priority and will underwrite corporate resources. RPA Champion: the role of RPA champion is to deploy and drive RPA adoption and acceptance through the organization, The Champion is the guardian of the solution for robotic RPA as a whole. They are responsible for guaranteeing a healthy automation pipeline, while leading the virtual workforce's operational management. RPA change manager: They are the ones who create the plan of change and communication aligned to the project's deliverables. In the process of change, they are a driving force, ensuring that each stakeholder is well informed and comfortably tuned to the changes taking place.
In addition to those roles, there are RPA business analyst, RPA Developer, RPA solution architect, RPA infrastructure engineer, RPA supervisor and finally, RPA service support. (Build Your Robotic Process Automation Center of Excellence, n.d.)
“A CoE creates a hybrid team of business process experts, enterprise architects, and innovation leaders tasked with imagining, building, and maintaining a company’s process robots.”(Diego Peña, n.d.) Many firms find that the best way to effectively scale and manage risk is a hybrid model that establishes a partnership between some in-house resources and a reputable RPA provider.
Behind every successful RPA project is an outstanding human team that can scale a company’s pipeline of RPA opportunities from ideas to delivery and value realization. Change management is not easy, and putting the best RPA team structure in place can make or break a project.
25 | P a g e 2.3 RPA project evaluation: A research stated that companies implementing RPA must chose key performance indicators (KPI) based on their goals, strategy and the objective of the project. Mainly there are common factors used for evaluating RPA projects.(Sigurðardóttir, 2018) These factors are:
Full time equivalent (FTE): it is a unit of measurement that helps employers forecast workforce needs. Its method of calculation depends on the reason it is needed. FTE is normally 8 hours per day, 5 days of week, 52 weeks per year
Return on Investment (ROI): RPA is the queen of ROI by nature. It is easy to implement, does not require changes to existing systems. The typical main factor that is used to measure ROI is FTE. Therefore, The most basic RPA ROI is calculated from this formula.(Measuring RPA ROI: Why Is Measuring Key to Success?, n.d.)
ROI= Cost of RPA Automation – (Hours Spent on Performing the Process Manually * Cost of Manual Labor)
The cost of RPA Automation depends on many cost factors, such as: License cost, how many processes are going to be automated, how many employees working on the RPA project, the cost of training and hiring RPA experts if needed and IT infrastructure.
Employees and customer satisfaction: The change of employees and customer satisfaction is not easy to measure. Employees satisfaction could be affected in two ways. First, it will increase if the goal of implementing RPA is to get rid of tedious and boring tasks therefore redeploy the employees to higher-value tasks. Secondly, it may decrease if the purpose of implementing RPA is to replace them. Employee satisfaction measures could be incorporated into your RPA ROI by reducing employee turnover, improving productivity and improving the image of the employer, making it easier to target new skills.
26 | P a g e On the other hand, customer satisfaction could increase if the purpose of the process is a better quality and service. For example, offering RPA-enabled service 24/7 could be a significant competitive advantage that should be measured by the business impact.
Errors cost: This measure shows how much the automation of a process has reduced the need for corrections or the elimination of errors in the process. Error cost is supposed to decrease when processes are no longer done manually. You need to know the cost of error if automation improves process quality. In a purchasing process for example, getting rid of small regular typing errors can generate savings by eliminating the need for cross-checking and reducing the number of slip orders filled.
27 | P a g e 2.4 Change management in RPA: Change management is reactive at many firms. New technologies present new challenges and businesses react, trying to balance the benefits of new tools against changes that employees may find uncomfortable.(Change Management Strategies - Automation Adoption | UiPath, n.d.) Introducing RPA means a change in the content of work. Robots can be used to amplify and increase human strengths, meaning humans will do what they can do best: handle all the unstructured parts of processes, an example is data that needs to be deducted beyond basic logic, something only a human can do.
To fully unlock the benefits of RPA, One of the things that automation will change is the style of leadership, Understanding how digitalization is influencing and changing leadership practices in organizations is essential since today digitization is taking place in almost all sectors of the economy at a very fast pace and in an exceptionally profound way. New technologies and solutions to drive their business forward and to survive in a highly competitive market. This not only involves changes in the economy and the work system, but also changes in leadership, thinking and acting. To support this digital transformation, the company needs to shift from its traditional, hierarchical structure to a flexible, decentralized organization with a team/project-oriented leadership to keep pace with the complex and fast changing environment and the increasing customer requirements. (Foerster-Metz et al., 2018)
Employees are careful about how automation will impact themselves, and it is vital managers do not simply ignore this aspect of RPA (Lacity & Willcocks, 2016). Especially in skill development, the shift will be noticeable. Naturally, it is important to consider how RPA can be developed and where those skills can be acquired, but it is also important to keep in mind the shift in capabilities of the retained human workforce. For example, if robots perform all the repetitive tasks, the work content for humans will shift more towards creativity and problem-solving and higher-value cases. A plan must be made to redeploy these resources, otherwise possible FTE savings will not be realized properly, with nothing to do for the resources freed by RPA(James R. Slaby, 2012).
As a new technology with radical effects on employee lives, RPA is bound to face organizational resistance to change. The organization implementing RPA must be alert to see possible discrepancies with the existing culture and structure of the organization. There are a number of barriers that have to be overcome. Organizations with more suitable culture have an advantage and
28 | P a g e are more likely to perform well in the implementation phase (Willcocks et al., 2015), but with proper management these barriers for other organizations can be lowered significantly. To strengthen the buy-in from the entire organization and properly enable strategic service automation, the automation project requires support from senior management (Lacity & Willcocks, 2016). It is not only enough to develop strategies, the management must also enable the execution. One way to do this is for the project to have a sponsor or a champion – a visible spokesperson who will actively try to sell RPA to the organization, not least by actively trying to face obstacles and lower barriers that threaten the progress. Lacity & Willcocks (2016) give an example, where in a hospital environment the process automation champion learned of a tedious and time-consuming task, searching product specification data online. He proceeded to automate this task with first priority. By doing this, not only did the hospital save in terms of resources freed, but also by lifting an annoying and visible task from the 12 operations, the employees learned first-hand of the benefits RPA can offer. This created enthusiasm and helped further the automation a great deal.
It is necessary to pay attention to the internal communication surrounding the implementation of RPA. Willcocks et al. (2015A) describe how: in their communication strategy, a company planned ahead and tactically countered the fear of RPA. The message management wanted to give was that RPA would allow people to shift their focus at work based on their own interests, promising that everyone would keep their jobs. Communication also ties in with the previously mentioned project champion; the role is an essential tool in conveying the message effectively (Lacity & Willcocks, 2016). A strengthened acceptance and willingness to actively support the RPA project does not only make the initial deployment more fluent, it also helps in generating follow-up projects. The company should help employees understand the benefits service automation will bring to combat change resistance and help overcome their anxiety about RPA. With employees knowing what process automation can achieve and what the benefits are, they will be happy to give further suggestions for possible target processes. Although it will require them to learn something or two. Often that extra training is called upskilling.(Change Management Strategies - Automation Adoption | UiPath, n.d.) Wetmur said that this upskilling must go beyond offering employees a fancy new tool. "You need to train employees on how to use the technology. You need to make them think about the business problem they’re trying to solve and the capabilities that are out there. They have to think bigger and think deeply about what they can use technology to solve for them." - Katherine Wetmur, international CIO, Morgan Stanley.
29 | P a g e 2.5 RPA applications in retail industry: As I mentioned earlier, automation will change and reshape retail business models. Research conducted by McKinsey has shown that approximately half of the retail operations can be automated using current, on-scale technology. Although this number is troubling, there will be less change in terms of job losses and more in terms of the evolution of jobs, the creation of new ones and reskilling. Therefore, automation will lead to job development as businesses invest in growth.(McKinsey, 2019). RPA is a precursor technology working in harmony with existing retail systems, but also a significant yet manageable step towards the adoption of disruptive technology such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. (RPA : The next Step in Retail Automation, n.d.)
RPA have many application in retail activities, in this paragraph I will split them into three main sections. First, supply chain activities such as demand and supply planning, logistics and inventory management, invoice and contract processing management. Second, RPA in back office activities such as customer support management, call centers, returns process, accounting and finance, payroll management, marketing and consumer behavior analysis. And last but not least, RPA in the shop floor activities such as workforce management, trade promotions and store planning.(RPA : The next Step in Retail Automation, n.d.).
One of the main challenges that retail facing is margin pressure. Margin pressure is perceived as any cost or revenue change that could reduce the calculation of the margin, ultimately resulting in lower profitability. Gross, operating and net margins are three of the most significant profit margins that companies are watching for marginal pressure.(Margin Pressure Definition, n.d.) With increasing retail margin pressure which driven by high competition in the retail industry, Retailers are considering automation as a priority. McKinsey research shows that typical supermarket retailers face 100 to 150 basis points of margin pressure and typical department stores between 350 and 500 basis points. These points can be significantly offset by a comprehensive automation program. Automation initiatives across stores, supply chains and headquarters functions can generate an incremental margin of 300 to 500 basis points, which retailers can reinvest in their growth opportunities. Moreover, an evaluation of the available automation technologies shows that they can already operate a traditional retail grocery store with up to 55 to 65 percent fewer hours. (McKinsey, 2019). A good example of automated retail store concept is
30 | P a g e Amazon Go, by integrating automation technologies, McKinsey believe that Amazon Go has the ability to offer top-notch benefits through additional transaction traffic from reduced waiting times and the use of customer insights to tailor promotions. Further potential may emerge from the ability to commercialize customer data and insights.
One of the fields that will get affected by automation is merchandising, retail merchandising refers to the way retailers make their products available in shops, and it is about attracting customers to a particular goods or services in a variety of ways. Retail merchandising involves practices and techniques such as in-store design, the selection of particular products to meet the target market, and physical and digital promotion of goods to consumers(The Complete Guide to Retail Merchandising | Smartsheet, n.d.). In merchandising, automatable activities account for about 30 to 40 percent of the time used for merchandise planning activities. Advanced planning systems can automate historical data and generate predictive scenarios, significantly reduce the time required to schedule merchandise, and enable retailers to make faster decisions. Furthermore, it will lead to predictive impact analysis which in turn could automate pricing and promotions. The automation of those activities will enable retailers to save time and to focus on high strategic activities creating more value for the company. In the figure below, the projected impact of automation by core merchandising activities.
Fig (5): different impacts of automation on retail processes. (McKinsey, 2019)
As the figure shows, the impact of automation is significant on merchandising planning, pricing and promotions and Inventory replenishment activities and that makes automation a requirement for retailers to evolve.
31 | P a g e Another considerable application of RPA is the HR department, knowing that 93% of HR employees time is spent on repetitive tasks and 65% of HR rules-based processes can be automated.(RPA : The next Step in Retail Automation, n.d.). A case study shows that implementing RPA in retailing for the purpose of creating an application for hiring employees can reduce the hiring time by more than 80% and the store administration hour by 20%. That being said, the productivity of new hires also increased by applying advanced analytics to applications .(McKinsey, 2019). Furthermore, there are some actual activities in retail that make huge benefits if automated such as Trade promotions, Sales analytics, In-Store planning, and new product introduction. Trade promotions is a manual process requiring a huge data collection and analysis and it represents the second biggest expense in the sector. But with RPA increasing efficiency and the ability to monitor and evaluate promotions easily and accurately, it will facilitate tracking and analyzing how trade promotions are doing. Sales Analytics, with a large amount of sale data, it require an intensive effort by employees to analyze it, but RPA provides complete audits and real- time feedback, helping retailers and suppliers to do a more efficient review to optimize revenue opportunities. In-store planning, through RPA, accessing the database can lead retailers to better store planning. And last but not least, RPA can monitor client opinions in real-time which helps in the process of pricing products and new product introduction. (RPA for Retail Sector - Retail Industry Automation | UiPath, n.d.). Back office and front office tasks such as bill checking, invoice processing, payments and partially any financial processes as back-office tasks. Moreover, call centers and chat robots as front office tasks are all suitable for RPA.(RPA : The next Step in Retail Automation, n.d.)
32 | P a g e 3. Previous surveys & case studies In this chapter, it will be the secondary research part, there will be an overview of previous surveys and case studies related to RPA implementation into the retail industry, the survey takes into consideration the implementation of RPA in many industries. But only the effect of RPA on the retail industry will be summarized. The case studies are about using RPA to automate different retail processes in different companies and what results to expect from automating those processes. By analyzing them, they will contribute to answering the aforementioned research questions.
3.1 Taking RPA to the next level – By Protiviti It is a global survey of 450 companies across multiple regions, industries, and different companies’ size. The research highlight the most effective practices and lessons learned when adopting RPA in the most applicable industries. But in this research case, only the effect of the implementation of RPA into the retail industry will be mentioned and analyzed.
In the survey, companies were grouped into three categories based on RPA implementation level: Leaders, which are ahead of their competitors (32%); intermediates, which are matches the others (41%); and beginners, which are falling behind others (27%). Then, it correlated the self- ranked usage levels with each company reported stage of RPA maturity. Based on that, The RPA maturity phases of companies are:
1- Not considering or not applicable.
1- planning/experimenting: testing RPA applications, developing plans and case studies for RPA.
2- Implementing: Implementing RPA in some processes.
3- Maturing: Maintaining RPA implications and implementing new ones
4- Advanced: Most processes are automated.
Generally, beginners are in the planning/experimenting stage, intermediates are in the planning/experimenting and implementing stages, are leaders are in the implementing and maturing stages of RPA
33 | P a g e The survey mentions that there will be a growth in the overall adoption of RPA across many industries, most of the companies now are in the implementing-maturing phases of RPA (2021).
RPA maturity stages varies by industry. For example, financial services and technology/telecommunication companies are far ahead meanwhile, retail, manufacturing companies lag. Energy and utilities companies progressed the least.
3.1.1 Insight of RPA adoption in retail industry In the pie chart below, the RPA stage the in retail industry:
RPA stage in the Retail industry(2020-2021)
26%
74%
Planning/implementing Maturing/advanced
Fig (6): RPA stage in the retail industry.
As it is seen here, 74% of companies in the retail industry are in the planning/implementing phase and 26% in the maturing/advanced.
The retail automation market was valued $11.24 billion in 2018 and is predicted to be valued $23.58 billion by 2026, rising at a 9.6 percent CAGR from 2019 to 2026.(alliedmarketresearch, n.d.) That means that retail companies in the planning/implementation stage will gradually scale up to the maturing/advanced stage by automating more processes and deploying more bots.
According to the survey, companies witnesses a huge benefits beyond cost saving. The top ranked benefits according to companies were: Increased productivity, better quality and stronger
34 | P a g e competitive advantage. The percentages in the table below represent what companies reported about the biggest benefits of RPA use in the retail industry.
Table 1: Biggest benefits of RPA use in retail industry Increase productivity 23% Better quality 15% Stronger competitive market position 15% Higher customer satisfaction 12% Greater speed 10% Greater employee satisfaction 8% Improve compliance 6% Fewer errors 4% Higher revenue generation 4% Reduced cost 3%
23% of retail companies reported that using RPA increase productivity and 15% of them reported better quality and another 15% for the stronger competitive market position which makes those benefits the top three benefits.
Regarding the first biggest benefit which is increased productivity. Growth in Productivity was 27% in 2019 and expected to grow to 78% in 2021. And expectation indicates that to grow even more in the future.
Revenue growth on another hand was 17% in 2019 and expected to reach 79% in 2021. To use RPA to increase revenues, business leaders should consider what the company will do with the additional time provided to employees. Eliminating a few hours of administrative work for executives will free up time for them to develop and execute new ideas. RPA may also be used to improve the frequency and amount of data reported to managers. These enhancements will help the company to adapt more quickly to market changes.
Moving to cost reduction, a massive increase from 17% in 2019 to 82% in 2021(As expected). The retail industry has the highest change among other industries regarding cost reduction, Companies in the early stages of adaptation will see the greatest relative increase.
35 | P a g e The figure below will illustrate the abovementioned expected changes in productivity growth, revenue growth, and cost reduction between 2019 and 2021.
Productivity & revenues growth and cost reduction.
90% 82% 78% 79% 80%
70%
60%
50%
40% 27% 30% 17% 17% 20%
10%
0% Productivity growth Revenue growth Cost reduction
2019 2021
Fig (7): Productivity & revenues growth and cost reduction
Furthermore, according to the survey, half of all companies agree that RPA has eliminated or will eliminate many jobs in the future, and even more understand their employees' concerns about work displacement. Companies are taking important measures to assuage employee concerns, including being transparent about their preparations for RPA implementation plans, working closely with employees to consider and alleviate their fears, and emphasizing the positive aspects of time saved on mundane repetitive tasks.
The table below will state what companies in the retail industry are saying about the impact of RPA on their employees:
Table 2: Impact of RPA on the employees Many employees are concerned that automation 68% will cause them to lose their jobs. Since RPA will handle routine/basic tasks, staff 50% skills will become more analytical and strategic
36 | P a g e Our company works closely with employees to 55% consider and resolve their concerns about RPA. Our management team are transparent about all 63% plans to use RPA. Our RPA implementation strategies includes plans 54% for training, developing and redeploying staff. Most employee that working with RPA are happy 50% that mundane task have been automated. We are facing a significant shortage of staff that can 47% help implement and maintain RPA The use of RPA has or will eliminate essential 46% number of jobs in our company
We can indicate from this table that the percentage of employees that are concerned that automation will cause them to lose their jobs are relatively high (68%). However, companies are trying to alleviate those concerns by being transparent with the employees about RPA use plans (63%), working close to them (55%), and engage them in this development process.
3.2.2. RPA adopting top obstacles across industries: To start the automation journey using RPA, companies need to find out the best way to create scalable bots that can be rolled out across the organization and support the future use of AI. Furthermore, companies need to ensure that targeted processes are fit to RPA process characteristics that were mention earlier in the thesis.
Despite of the above mentioned benefits for RPA, many obstacles may occur when starting the RPA automation journey, the figure below will show the top RPA pro obstacles industries may face, those obstacles can occur in three different levels: Organizational, technological and financial & regulatory.
37 | P a g e RPA obstacles across industries
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45%
faliure to prioritize potential RPA iniatives 40% Concerns about data privacy/cybersecurity 40% High implimintation cost 37% Difficalty in scalling applications 37% Making a convincing business case 32% Difficalty in deciding the best applicatin 30% Regularity constrains 30% Aversion to risks 28% Limited RPA skilles/talents 24%
Organisational Technological Financial & Regulatory
Fig (8): RPA obstacles across industries
As may be seen here, the obstacles with the highest percentages are failure to prioritize potential RPA initiatives and concerns about data privacy with 40% each. Followed by high implementing cost and difficulty in scaling for 37% each. This figure shows the obstacles that many industries may face when starting their RPA project, but later on, in my survey, a question will be asked to find out the top obstacles that the retail companies face when adopting RPA.
However, this survey also highlights some lessons learned from the most advanced companies in the use of RPA to help other companies improving their RPA implementation plans and to alleviate the above-mentioned obstacles. Some of those lessons are: starting the RPA journey with processes that are simple to automate through RPA, yet when automated will have a significant impact(ex: ROI), moreover, making processes as efficient as possible before automating them, and consider the scalability of the application and whether it can support the adoption of advanced AI technologies, and last but not least, companies need to track the cost effectiveness of each RPA application, and to plan and budget for ongoing RPA bots maintenance.
The survey also state that the most common business functions that use RPA across industries are IT management, marketing and communication, quality, process improvement, product development, and finance/accounting, in the future, it will spread even further to include other departments. However, in my questionnaire I will investigate the most suitable business function to use RPA in the retail industry.
38 | P a g e 3.2 Carrefour Case study- Doc-process This case study states the cost-saving produced by automating invoice processing for one of the biggest retailers in Europe, which is Carrefour. The strategic goal of Carrefour is to digitize its business processes while improving compliance and control, moreover to lower the costs.
Carrefour faces several challenges on the financial operational level which are:
1. Slow and costly processes – 1.2 Million invoices from suppliers were manually processed.
2. Poor data quality – 45% of all invoices contained at least one error.
3. Difficult invoice control - causing a significant amount of work for invoice correction.
4. Delayed payments which caused negative relationships with vendors.
The solution Doc-process provided focused on supplier invoices, by increasing processing speed, reducing supplier’s lawsuits, on-time payments, and no errors in invoices. Furthermore, they changed the supplier’s invoices from paper invoices to e-invoices, and automate the Account payable (AP) process.
The results were enormous:
95% supplier onboarding rate. Supplier onboarding refers to the process of establishing a new business relationship with an external supplier and incorporating the supplier into the company's systems and business processes. Which is often a challenging and time- consuming task. (Epiqtech.com, n.d.) Over 2.9 million e-invoices per year. Accurate invoices with less than 0.1% errors. Paper invoice-management time reduced by more than 50%. A sharp drop in supplier lawsuits. 100% full compliance for both the buyers and the suppliers.
Continuous process improvement results in cost savings. Invoice automation using RPA assisted in reducing Account payable staff numbers and redirecting it to other, more value-added activities.
39 | P a g e 3.3 Cora case study – Doc-process Cora is a retail brand of hypermarket operates in several Europeans countries, and it is a subsidiary of the Louis Delhaize group. In this case study, the retailer had already started its journey towards invoice processing, they were using optical character recognition (OCR) which is a vital component for every successful RPA approach. In a nutshell, OCR is a technology that uses mechanical or electronic means to extract text from images and documents.(NICE.com, n.d.). But still, they was facing a problem with the length of the process, and because they had to send all the invoices abroad, documents were lost, image scanning was of low quality, and traceability was lacking, making treasury operations and reporting difficult.
Doc-process provided mailroom services to automate data capture and integration from paper documents into Cora's information system. This move was crucial in order to make the transition to invoicing as seamless as possible without affecting current business flows. Furthermore, it automates the account payable process flow, which lead reduce the time of invoice processing. Invoices were received, checked, and posted within minutes of being sent, allowing for a real- time view of the cash situation and much more precise cash-flow forecasting.
The overall result of the automation solution were:
Only 6 months for project Return on investment. 100% invoices received and validated within minutes of issue. 100% accurate reporting. 100% real time view into financial and accounting processes. 100% invoices matching with the deliveries.
Again, the use of RPA to automate invoice processing reduced the overall cost (150K euro saving in 18 months), and reduced the headcount dedicated in the finance & Accounting department and redirected it to more value-added operations.
40 | P a g e 3.4 Auxis Consulting & Outsourcing- Case study The retailer in this case study is a leading brand for men and women apparel, accessories, and fragrances, with revenues of approximately 1$ Billion and is headquartered in Florida – USA.
This retailer's main aim was to seek efficacies and cost improvements for its accounts receivables operations. Many processes in this area were handled manually which contributed to wasting the staff time on low-value tasks, in addition to that, the company has different clients, including big box retailers and small fashion boutiques which led to complex AR operations.
Auxis conducted a deep view of the process and create a proof of concept for automating AR functions. Robotic process automation (RPA) was a particular area of focus by Auxis, using this technology as a relatively low-cost solution to provide a quick route to deployment and ROI. Auxis was able to define and prioritize 18 different initiatives to drive process productivity and cost improvements in the AR function, ranging from “easy wins” that were simpler to execute and would produce quick results, which is ideal for RPA to start with.
60% of all claims processes have been automated using RPA which led to efficiency gains by 81% and 75% cost improvements, with an 8 months payback period. Electronic data interchanged (EDI), which means an electric interchange of business information between two companies(Up.com, n.d.). A lot of errors were generated from EDI, so a bot was developed to handle these errors which led to 63% efficiency gains, 60% cost improvements, with a 10 months payback period. Auxis also developed a bot to automate the process of entering credit memo details and CM details, which led in return 86% efficiency gains, 100% cost improvements, and a 5 months payback period.
The processing of manual orders and order changes was also automated, the automation of these tasks would result in 56 % efficiency gains and 50% cost improvements with a 12 month payback period.
41 | P a g e 3.5 Infosys – Case study In this case study, Infosys used RPA to eliminate repetitive, manual tasks that were part of the trade promotion process of a leading consumer packaged goods retailer serving nearly 5 billion consumers in over 180 countries, so in this case study, trade promotion process was selected to be automated and not invoice processing.
Sales & development professionals must conduct a large amount of backend administrative work while setting up the trade promotion process. This takes up a significant portion of their day, which could otherwise be spent growing the company. Moreover, it requires huge data collection and analysis. And because of the huge amount of manual work that was involved in this process, it was full of errors.
As a solution, Infosys developed RPA bots to automate all key processes in trade promotion management, such as extraction of requests from the ticketing solution, validate the extracted tickets, data massaging, and posting in the system. Over 80% of the process were automated. The figure below will illustrate the workflow of the trade promotion process before and after the deploying of RPA bots:
Fig (9): The workflow of the process before & after RPA The results of this RPA solution were: 830 000 $ net saving. 37% Full time equivalent (FTE) reduction. Noiseless transition with operational stability maintained. Reducing errors.
42 | P a g e 3.6 Summary: From all the case studies that were mentioned, we can conclude that invoice processing including AP/AR functions is one of the most suitable processes for retailers to start the automation journey due to the fact retail managers must deal with hundreds of different vendors, each of whom generates a large volume of invoices, contains a huge amount of manual tasks, and when automated it has a high ROI, and a fast pay-back period, Which in return will provide solid evidence for retail managers to adopt and deploy more RPA bots across the organization functions.
The invoice process is so important because late payments can be extremely damaging to the company, especially when it comes to vendor relationships. Not only can a single late payment result in a financial penalty, but consistent late payments can cause suppliers to stop doing business with you, leaving you scrambling to find substitutes. Therefore, the automation of the invoice process will lead to on-time payments which will contribute to reducing financial penalties and errors which will maintain a good relationship with the vendors.
The case studies indicate that the benefits of automating invoice processing outweigh the benefits of automating the trade promotion process, yet it depends on the industry size and other many factors.
43 | P a g e 4. Questionnaire Analysis & Results: In this chapter, the results of my questionnaire will be analyzed, the questionnaire was designed by Google form. Due to the thesis topic, the questionnaire was only directed to individuals who have experience in RPA/IT or retailing, or even both. The process of collecting respondents was done on LinkedIn by sending a personal invitation to prospective individuals.
The respondent’s occupations were diverse from all across the organization functions with different levels of experiences such as RPA developers, consultants, and analysts. IT engineers, and managers working in the retail industry. Information technology (IT) was introduced to the questionnaire for the reason that to be experienced in RPA, IT background knowledge is needed.
40% of the respondents have 1-4 years of experience, 35% have 5-10 years of experience, and 25% of respondents have 10-21 years of experience in their fields.
For this research it would be interesting to investigate whether the field of experience variable can affect the respondent’s answers in some questions, leading to a different point of view.
All in all, the figure below show the fields of experience that respondents have by percentage:
Field of experince
15%
25% 60%
RPA/IT Retail Industry Both
Fig (9): Field of experience 60% of respondents have experience in RPA/IT, 25% of them have experience in the retail industry, and 15% respondents have experience in both RPA and retailing.
44 | P a g e The next graph will show the answers of the questions which is: what are the biggest benefits of RPA in retail industry? In this question the respondents can select up to two answers.
RPA Beneifits in retail indusrty
Reduce errors 15%
Reduce cost 52.50%
Increase employee satisfaction 5%
Improve data quality & Analytics 40%
Increase customer satisfaction 12.50%
Increase quality 30%
Increase Prductivity 40%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%
Respondents answers
Fig (10): RPA benefits on Retail industry. As the figure show, reducing cost (52.5%) is number one benefit, following by increasing productivity and Improving data quality & analytics, both with (40%).
The next graph will answer on a question which say, which department in the retail industry needs RPA the most?
Departments that need RPA the most in the retail insutry
9% Accounting & Finance 9%
Supply chain activities including 38.00% Inventory management Human Resources
Customer service 45%
Fig (11): Departments that need RPA the most
As the figure show, Supply chain activities including inventory management is the top department that need RPA with 45% followed by Accounting & finance with 38%.
45 | P a g e Further analysis was conducted using SPSS to show the effect of field of experience that respondents have (Independent variable) on the question which is: which department needs RPA the most (Dependent variable), the result of Cramer’s V value was 0.441 which shows a medium effect. This effect can be translated as shown below:
Table (3): First SPSS analysis (Experience – Departments) Experience Accounting & Finance Supply chain activities including inventory management RPA/IT 41.7% 45.8% Retailing 30% 60%
In this table, it is indicated that RPA/IT specialists thinks that Accounting & finance department is the most department that need RPA (41.7% > 30%). On the other hand, Retail specialist think that Supply chain activities including inventory management should be the most department that needs RPA (60% > 45.8%).
The next figure will show the result of the question which says: which process suggested to start the automation journey with? In this question the respondents can select up to two answers.
Process to start the automation journy with.
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60%
Invoice processing 55%
Inventory control & Management 55%
Trade promotion 10%
Payroll management 30%
Call center & Chat bots 15%
Return processing 5%
Respondents answers
Fig (12): Process to start the automation journey
As may be seen here, the highest percentages go to Invoice processing and inventory control & management with 55% each.
46 | P a g e Further SPSS analysis was conducted to show the effect of respondent’s field of experience on the previous questions (Which process to start the automation journey). The results of Cramer’s V value was 0.597 which states that there is a large effect. This effect will be explained in the table below:
Table (4): Second SPSS analysis (Experience – Process) Experience Invoice processing & Invoice processing & Inventory payroll management inventory management management RPA/IT 41.7% 8.3% 12.5% Retailing 0% 30% 40%
It can be concluded from this table that both RPA & Retailing specialists agree on the invoice processing process to be the first process to start the automation journey with, but regarding the Inventory management and payroll management, it shows that RPA specialists have chosen payroll management process as the next suitable process, on the other hand. Retailing specialists have chosen inventory management.
In the next graph, the result of a question about the percentages of the expected processes that could be automated in the retail industry.
The percentge of processes that can be automated in the retail industry
12.50%
42.50%
45%
20-40% 40-60% Above 60%
Fig (13): the percentage of processes that can be automated in the retail industry
47 | P a g e A further analysis was conducted by SPSS to investigate the effect of respondent’s field of experience on the answer of the previous question (the percentage of processes that can be automated in the retail industry). The result of Cramer’s V value was 0.252 which indicates a small effect.
Table (5): Third SPSS analysis (experience- percentages of processes that can be automated) Experience (20-40%) (40-60%) (Above 60%) RPA/IT 8.3% 50% 41.7% Retail 30% 40% 30%
It can be stated from the table that comparing to retail specialists, RPA specialists are more optimistic about the percentages of retail processes that could be automated, but with a small to medium difference.
The next graph is to investigate the obstacles that the retail industry faces when adopting RPA. (In this question the respondents can select up to two answers.)
The obstacles that the retail industry faces when adopting RPA
0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40% 45%
Dealing with legacy systems 40%
Managing emloyee's resistance 30.00%
Difficulity in deciding the best application 25%
High implimintation cost 25%
Making a convincing business case 23%
Infrastructural issues 17.50%
Difficulity in scaling 12.50%
Concerns about data privacy 7.50%
Respondents answers
Fig (14): the obstacles that the retail industry faces when adopting RPA
As shown in the graph, dealing with legacy system is the top obstacle with the highest percentage (40%) followed by managing employee’s resistance (30%).
48 | P a g e Regarding the top obstacle that retail industry face when adopting RPA, a further question was introduced into the survey to investigate whether RPA can work in harmony with the existing retail systems. The results is stated below using Likert scale. (1 = Strongly Disagree, 2 = Disagree, 3= neither disagree nor agree, 4 = Agree, 5 = Strongly Agree).
Do you agree that RPA can work in harmony with existing retail systems
0.45 42.50%
0.4 35% 0.35 0.3
0.25 20% 0.2 0.15 0.1 2.50% 0.05 0 0 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Disagree 3 = neither agree or 4 = Agree 5 = Stronly agree disagree
Respondents answers
Fig (15): First Likert Scale (RPA-Retail systems)
As the figure shows, 77.5% of respondents agree that RPA can work in harmony with existing retail systems and only 2.5% disagree, on the other hand, in the previous question, dealing with legacy systems is considered one of the top obstacles when adopting RPA across the retail industry. The reason of that is, every company legacy systems consist of many and complex collections of application/software, more software means more processes need to be automated by RPA which means more RPA bots to deploy and more bots lead to increase the complexity of the process, moreover, more bots will lead to increase the maintenance and infrastructural cost, and more license need to be paid for every bot deployed.
But once the RPA bots are deployed they can work in harmony with all those software (Retail systems) no matter how old they are because it basically mimics the human interaction with that software.
49 | P a g e Last but least, the last question was put into this survey to investigate the effect of RPA on employees and whether will the creating of new jobs will be more than the loss of jobs regarding the retail industry. Likert scale will be used for the answers. (1 = strongly disagree, 2 = Disagree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree, 4 = Agree 5 = Strongly Agree).
The statement: There will be less change in terms of job losses and more in terms of the creation of new jobs.
There will be less change in terms of job losses and more in terms of the creation of new jobs.
40% 37.50%
35% 33%
30%
25%
20% 17.50%
15% 13%
10%
5% 0% 0% 1 = Strongly disagree 2 = Disagree 3 = Neither disagree 4 = Agree 5 = Strongly agree nor agree
Respondents answers
Fig (16): Likert scale. (Job creation- Loss)
It can be indicated from the figure that 70.5% of the respondents agree with the statement which is that there will be more creation of jobs than job losses in the retail industry when introducing RPA. There will be many jobs lost due to RPA in the retail industry but on the other hand, the creation of new ones will be higher. So it’s up for the company and the employees to re-skill and redeployed to higher-value new jobs.
50 | P a g e 5. Discussion:
In this chapter, the results of the research will be discussed, answering the research questions, furthermore to suggest follow research fields regarding the effect of RPA on the retail industry, and the research limitations will be mentioned.
The main objective of the research is to study the effect of RPA on the retail industry, moreover to find the most suitable process to start the RPA automation journey. Because RPA is a relatively new term, the researcher decides to collect primary and secondary data in order to provide as many details as it could be. The main findings are based on the literature review, previous survey & case studies, and the researcher questionnaire, where the researcher aimed to find RPA and retailing specialists as respondents to answer the questionnaire. The researcher studied previous surveys and case studies because it was important to gain experience from previous RPA implementations and how it did affect the different retail industries.
The effect of RPA on the retail industry have many aspects such as increased productivity, reduced cost, and improve data quality & analytics, those were the top three benefits token from the researcher questionnaire results. On the other hand, Protiviti survey agrees on the first two benefits but not on the reduced cost, only 3% of the retailing companies in Protiviti survey reported reduced cost as an RPA benefit.
This could be a follow field to research, in my opinion, RPA cuts the cost of the process that is being automated but in some cases, if it’s not implemented and deployed properly, it could also increase the cost for maintenance and infrastructure resulting in insufficient cost reduction.
Regarding change management, RPA will change the content of work, and in order to cope with this change, companies need to shift from their traditional, hierarchal structure to a flexible, decentralized leadership style. My research founding state that many employees are concerned that automation will cause them to lose their jobs, so in order to deal with this, the company should be transparent and to work closely with employees to consider and resolve their concerns about RPA. From my questionnaire respondents agree that RPA will create more jobs than job loss, so companies need to make plans to train, develop, and redeploy their staff to take full advantage of RPA.
51 | P a g e Another important thing to talk about is RPA adoption obstacles. In the researcher questionnaire, the first top obstacle faced by the retail industry when adopting RPA is dealing with legacy systems, and in the following question, the respondents agree that RPA works in harmony with the existing retail system. It sounds like a contradiction. To make it clear, company legacy systems consist of many and complex collections of application/software, more software means more processes need to be automated by RPA which means more RPA bots to deploy and more bots lead to increase the complexity of the process, moreover, more bots will lead to increase the maintenance and infrastructural cost, and more license need to be paid for every bot deployed which make it a hard choice to for retailers to whether adopt RPA or not. But after the implementation of the RPA bots, then they can work in harmony with the existing retail systems.
This dealing with legacy systems adoption obstacle could be a follow field to conduct further researches but from IT students perspective. Another problem to consider is that legacy systems consists of applications/software’s and a change in a software or a software update leads to break the RPA bot because RPA bot only deal with standardized processes with no changes/updates and expectations.
Moving on to the second research question. According to the case studies and the researcher questionnaire, it can be stated that invoice processing is the most suitable process to start the automation journey because retailers deal with a huge amount of vendors which results in a large volume of invoices, a huge amount of manual tasks, and when automated it has a high ROI, and a fast pay-back period. And to investigate the RPA/Retailers specialist's different perspectives, a deeper analysis was conducted using SPSS found that there was a correlation between respondents field of experience and their answers to this question. And it states that after invoice processing. RPA specialists suggest payroll management to be the next process to automate, on the other hand, RPA specialists suggest inventory control and management be the next suitable process for the automation journey.
The questionnaire results also state that RPA specialists are more optimistic when it comes to the percentages of processes that can be automated in the retail industry using RPA but only with a small difference.
52 | P a g e Limitations:
Due to the reason that the topic was limited to RPA and retailing fields, and the fact that RPA is a relatively new field, the process of finding respondents was not easy, resulting in a small sample size. If the sample was larger, it would be more representative, resulting in more accurate results.
53 | P a g e 5. Conclusion:
Robot Process Automation (RPA), a technology that enables the automates of routine and manual tasks and processes is here to stay, it has a wide range of applications in the retail industry departments such as supply chain activities that contain demand and supply planning, logistics, and inventory management, invoice and contract processing management. RPA in back-office activities such as customer support management, returns process, accounting and finance, payroll management, and marketing. RPA delivers enormous benefits to retailers which include increase productivity and quality, reduce cost and gain a competitive advantage in markets, and many more. RPA, in my opinion, will be a game-changer for the entire retail industry.
In order to reap the full benefits of RPA and overcome RPA adoption obstacles, it requires a properly staged roadmap designed by both RPA and retail specialists in order to share their different experiences and visions to pick the most suitable process to start the RPA project, the first process should be simple and have a fast payback period (Ex: Invoice processing). Moreover, the literature rearview suggest to conduct proof of concept for the picked process, and to create and deploy pilots to test the automation capability & efficiency. It also should be considered as a cross- functional project. Retailers should engage their employees in this development process and be transparent with them about the project's plan, furthermore to train and reskill those in order to be redeploy to higher-value jobs.
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57 | P a g e Appendix:
Info About the questionnaire: In simple terms, RPA is about automating repetitive, rule-based, manual, and high-volume business processes by using software robots. The “robot” can emulate and integrate the actions of a human interacting within digital systems to execute a business process. (Mimicking the human interaction with the computer).
RPA is actual in the retail industry due to the fact that there are many suitable retail processes to automate using RPA.
This questionnaire aims to help me to study the effect of RPA on the retail industry.
I know that your time is valuable, but please take a part in this questionnaire and I will be gratitude. It will only take about 5 minutes.
Thank you!
The questionnaire link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSckM- jIKKGlCtu3mmcWrh8GUcprowUfLBK0bHXY0lLUHLlDLw/viewform?fbclid=IwAR21LsbO B33CIGRw71jja0Oo-Hj2run3n_PwOw320Vko9qRW2JIViFZlGiI
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