Friday, February 15, 2019

How Cognitive Technology Brings Intelligence To Robotic Process Automation


Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is helping companies reduce costs and improve on quality and productivity by automating some of their most time consuming, rule-based and replicable business processes. RPA is especially effective in the banking and insurance sector where it brings speed and efficiency to customer service and compliance. Based on artificial intelligence algorithms, Expert System’s Cogito cognitive technology enables an automatic, human-like understanding of the content of text documents.

Applied to RPA, Cogito adds greater business value and ROI for both repetitive and complex information-intensive processes.

Using Cogito, companies can expect up to 53% savings on activities such as FTEs and warranty management, and cost reductions of 30 to 60% for email management and quote processing, etc.

The integration of Cogito features (Natural Language Processing (NLP), semantic analysis and machine learning) with Blue Prism’s RPA lets enterprises automate repetitive business processes based on large volumes of unstructured data—text email, customer interactions, call notes etc., reducing errors, improving efficiency and increasing scalability of operations.

Other benefits are:


  • Cost & time reduction: 24×7 availability with no downtime equals significant savings for costs and time in performing labor-intensive processes.
  • Increased efficiencies: A human-like interpretation of content allows for fast and accurate processing, reduced manual errors, improved quality
  • and accuracy.
  • Improved customer satisfaction: Faster response to inquiries and other customer interactions.


Features:


  • Data extraction: Automatically access, identify and extract the relevant information in documents, forms, applications, invoices, emails, etc.
  • Integration: Cogito augments automation in each step of the process and is easily integrated with your existing architecture and RPA systems.
  • Scalability: Implementation is fast and flexible, and Cogito scales easily according to your requirements


How Cogito improves the claims management process


Thanks to its cognitive capabilities based on artificial intelligence algorithms that mimic the human ability to understand information in context, Cogito automates and improves claims processing over traditional claims technologies by capturing and extracting relevant data. Cogito:

  • Identifies each document type (invoices, forms, medical reports, accident descriptions, etc.)
  • Extracts the information regarding loss, damage or medical prognosis, etc. from the reports
  • Automatically analyzes the specific problem described in a report and understands if it is covered by the insurance policy
  • Uploads the relevant data into the claims database to support agents in validating the claim

All the information are sent to the RPA robot and it “uses” these data in the process.

Our experts say about Blue Prism Certification Exams



Wednesday, November 7, 2018

7 steps to success: Part 3 – Evolving your policies for the Digital Workforce


A Digital Workforce helps you meet your digital transformation challenges. But when you’re reviewing your internal policies and procedures, it’s vital to tailor these for your digital workers.

By combining robotic process automation (RPA) with Blue Prism’s industry standard Robotic Operating Model (ROM) your organization has access to a pool of scalable digital workers. You need the right human roles on your automation team, of course, but you also need to factor in the changing procedural needs of your robot workers too.


Stepping outside the human perspective


Humans think like humans – we see things from our own viewpoint. So, from a historical process perspective, your policies and procedures will be built around the human workforce. Until now, that’s made sense. But humans are not the only workers carrying out tasks in your organization in 2018. With the arrival of the Digital Workforce, you have a talent pool that’s very different to your human talent, and that means there’s a need to reassess how you set out your business-wide policies – to take into account the non-human perspective.

Thinking about your security as an organization


When you start to implement RPA and a Digital Workforce, your first engagement is likely to be your security team, asking them to supply a log-on for your robots.
How you start this conversation can be critical. This may be the first time that your security team has been informed about ‘safe’ robots being allowed into their network, so their initial reaction may be more critical than positive – after all, they’ve spent their careers defending your network real estate against the ‘Invasion of the Bots’.

What’s important is to explain in clear detail how these digital workers are wholly security compliant. Digital workers are safe, secure and come with a logical access model that protects the network from any kind of malicious intervention. Have these conversation early and make security part of the digital transformation journey.

Revising your human-specific procedures


Digital workers work consistently, but they don’t think like humans (just yet). So internal policies that are targeted at your human workforce need to be revised. As humans, we’re used to software updates appearing on our desktops and for us to respond and execute these updates. But a robot won’t do that unless you’ve told them how to deal with it – so it’s important to include these version and software updates into your process architecture.

Have a process where any updates are cascaded out to your Digital Workforce at 2am each morning. That way it’s built into your procedures and you know it’s being taken care of. Tell the robots how to react in a given scenario and give them the information to carry out the required process effectively – that’s the key learning here.

Cascading a software update is a simple thing to do, but it’s an approach that will only happen if you’re truly embracing RPA and digital transformation in the right ways.

Does a robot need a screensaver?


Why do we have screensavers on our computers? We need screensavers because humans leave their desks. We go to the coffee machine, or we go and have a chat with our friends.

But a robot doesn’t have friends to chat with and doesn’t leave the desk – it just sits there working, 24/7. So why have a screensaver kicking in after 10 minutes of screen inactivity?

The answer is that it’s an outmoded policy – the robot doesn’t need it. We’ve seen organizations where a process nudges the screen every nine minutes to prevent the screensaver kicking in. But that’s a workaround, not a sensible policy.

So the question is why create a workaround for a human problem when you’re dealing with a Digital Workforce?

Policies that meet the needs of your Digital Workforce


To get the best from your digital transformation implementation, you need policies that are designed and built specifically for your Digital Workforce.

When I see examples of workarounds within the business, I know that that there isn’t a true cultural adoption of these digital policies across the organization. What’s needed is a top-down approach to updating your policies, so the whole business is bought into the digital approach.

It’s about evolving your policies to take into account your new digital workers.

7 Steps to Success


Keep an eye on our blog over the coming weeks as we continue to breakdown the whole ROM process into 7 key steps.

Teaming the Blue Prism ROM method with our code-free RPA gives you a successful automation implementation – with a Digital Workforce that’s both scalable and robust.

This reduces costs, improves customer satisfaction and empowers your people to take on new responsibilities, boosting employee engagement.