Setting up Robotics Process Automation processes at scale

Introduction:

Robotic Process Automation has always been confused and linked with the replacement of jobs requiring human effort. In contrast, it is letting people focus on value-adding tasks while relying on the repetitive things with the automated processes.This adds up to a better experience for customers as they receive more personal and prompter service, and allows the organizations to efficiently run their business processes.

For this reason, the RPA industry is developing at a lightning-fast speed and a Forrester Study has concluded that this 1.7 Billion USD industry will grow to 2.9 Billion USD in 2021, which was only 250 Million USD in 2016.

This discussion is about logistics and transportation business corporation, whose business operations have been revolutionized by the robotic process automation, suggested and facilitated to be implemented by Transcurve Consulting after an extensive analysis of the challenges being confronted.

Challenges:

It took 55 years for the corporation to be in the state where it is today and provide a wide array of services including, dry van, refrigerated items, flatbed, and specialized transportation services to big names like Sun Pharmaceuticals, Cipla, Future Group, Reliance Industries, etc. Their clients counted on them to get their freight delivered on time and the appointments and scheduling played a pivotal role in this. While getting a load tender, the team needed to consider myriads of factors like the distance between pickup point and the destination, availability of specialized vehicle and driver, and whether the client is available to receive a shipment at the time of delivery.

This highly labor-intensive process was becoming increasingly difficult for the teams to keep the pace up with the sheer amount of work that went into scheduling deliveries. Another challenge was that the trucking facility ran all days round the clock but the scheduling appointments by and large worked Monday through Friday. The tender received on Friday evening would have to wait for a representative to come on Monday and process that. This greatly caused missing opportunities because of the delivery slot availability on particular days and the late processing also missed the preferred delivery timeframe. The late response also had chances of customers looking for other service providers.

Keen to alleviate the pressure on staff, the corporation set out the organizational development and operational excellence experts Trancurve Consulting, which after a thorough investigation provided the specific ad-hoc and the most optimized solutions to the business.

Approach:

Initiating the investigation with rounds of interviews and interactive sessions, The Trancurve Consulting Consultant assessed the need for a powerful process automation system. The AI-powered programmed robotic process capable of streamlining various tasks involving internal systems and external portals was assessed to be the sure-shot solution for the challenges of logistics giant.

With the strong international networks and the ad-infinitum knowledge across various industrial segments worldwide, Transcurve suggested the most efficient system developers and facilitated the specialized software-based robotic automation to be implemented in their global business process.

Transcurve also led the pilot RPA Team from identifying the right processes, candidates, process mapping, picking the right type of bot (task, Meta or IQ) and then executed the cycle of validation, testing, deployment & sustain for 4 standard processes & 10% reporting portfolio as well. The Transcurve Consultants only allowed the pilot implementation of the system when they got themselves fully satisfied after analyzing the test runs before.

The Transformation:

The system of robotic processing units was very easy to configure and once put in task-execution, it pretty much managed itself! For the appointment scheduling, then the corporation started to prepare their automated process with a complete set of information like pickup and drop points, distance, and desired delivery timeframe. While receiving a new tender, the RPA robots used the parameters to pick the most appropriate delivery slot. If the system failed to secure an appointment of the first run, it extracted all the information and passed it on to the corporate personnel who established new parameters and instructed the system to re-attempt delivery scheduling.

The system with a much faster and flexible approach, working 24*7 gave customers a fast delivery appointment even outside the normal working hours. Avoiding the evening and weekend lag time, the RPA system made to be facilitated by Transcurve Consulting delivered more reliable, efficient, and prompt responsive service.

Additional Perquisites:

In addition to the envisaged and core benefits the better system developed, Transcurve also offered the following add-ons:

Better Shipment Tracking: Corporation also harnessed the enhanced freight visibility with GPS tracking and the immediate view of the truck position along with the load made deliveries moving in a controlled and efficient way.

Keeping Clients Updated: The traditional client-update method required the staff to manually provide information after contacting the driver but now with Transcurve’s service, the system automatically updated clients through the various portals with real-time accurate information.

Extending the benefits: Encouraged by the enhanced efficiency of the delivery and logistics management, Corporation gradually implemented the easily configurable system to their other departments (like road service, billing, recruiting, etc.) as well.

Winding Up:

Earlier the people in the corporation thought that such automation is going to steal their jobs but experiencing it in action and understanding the help which is provided, the employees reinvested their time into new set of roles and responsibilities with adequate training and development for advanced skill sets.