AUTOMATION APRIL 2020
SPECIAL
DELIVERY
Royal Mail has implemented a raft of
automation solutions to help improve
its efficiency – and has benefitted to the
tune of £4.5 million in 2018/19 alone
BY CHRIS BECK
The daily post delivery service is part of the
fabric of everyday life – in the UK, 85%
of people see Royal Mail as an important
part of their local community. However,
changing customer behaviour and new
digital communication challenges means
the UK’s leading mail provider has to continually
improve its efficiency and innovation. The
company worked with global software provider,
UiPath, to help bring the power of Robotic Process
Automation (RPA) to its central business activities.
Royal Mail is one of the oldest companies in
the UK, able to trace its history back over 500
years. Today, it employs over 160,000 people
and delivers 1.8 billion parcels and 14 billion
letters every year. However, in order to achieve
its business objectives profitably, Royal Mail has
to be lean and efficient in the way it works in all
areas of the business.
In 2017, Wendy Hulton, head of the process
simplification and automation team at Royal Mail,
established a proof of concept to demonstrate
what automation could bring to the business. “I’d
seen RPA in action and wanted to show what it
could do for the company,” she says. “Royal Mail
needs to find new ways of doing things and is now
investing in our digital capabilities. I felt that we
could take a lead in automation to help deliver the
cost savings and employee productivity gains the
company requires.”
Marvin, Winston and Ruby too
With the help of consultants, PwC, Wendy
created a small team and began what quickly
became three Proof of Values – each given its own
human name to help with user adoption. ‘Marvin’
automated part of the customer set-up process
while ‘Winston’ helped with supplier set-up.
Both were similar processes that took data from
forms, checked it, getting additional data and
completing the set-up. In a matter of weeks both
had been designed, developed and delivered to
the business.
Gary Turner, Royal Mail’s
head of RPA implementation,
comments: “Both Marvin and
Winston were quite simple
processes and we were able to
show that each saves the time
equivalent of two employees.
However, we were able to
demonstrate something more
important: how the robots
helped us improve the quality of
the processes they automate.”
The automation process
allowed the team to identify
that 40% of the customer set-up
forms being received into the
process were incorrect. They
had data errors or information
was missing. The team also
discovered that the incorrect
forms weren’t being returned to
the originator but, instead, the
person doing the set-up would
correct the forms, which added
up to wasted time and money.
Marvin automatically returned
the form and identified where
it needed changing. Within
three weeks, the number of
incorrect forms had been
reduced to almost a quarter of
the previous total.
“While we got everything
right with Marvin and Winston,
we weren’t so lucky with Ruby,”
admits Hulton. “We attempted
to automate an entire HR
recruitment process end-to-end.
It was too big and too complex.”
Ruby handled everything
from the placement of
recruitment ads, to application
management to booking
interview appointments.
While the automation worked,
it wasn’t robust enough
and failed to meet user
expectations. It was a very
important piece of learning for
Hulton and her team.
She explains: “Ruby
showed us that you shouldn’t
automate everything. You
should look at the parts of
the process that best suit RPA
and build a simplified process
where people and robots
work together. In Ruby’s
case, it has meant developing
six new robots that each
undertake very specific tasks.
Our mistake with Ruby has
meant we build much better
automations going forward.”
Simple is best
The success of the Proof
of Values allowed the team
to establish a Centre of
Excellence in September 2017
with an extremely important
addition. What started as a
central hub for automation
only, became process
simplification and automation.
“The danger with RPA is
that if you automate a bad
process, you just have a faster
bad process,” explains Turner.
“The benefit of the combined
approach is that it identifies
where there are issues in your
current processes. You can
look at the process and see
where improvements can be
made, where people are not
34 www.manufacturingmanagement.co.uk
/www.manufacturingmanagement.co.uk