Such was the
success of
automation,
Royal Mail
increased robot
numbers by
400% in nine
months
working as efficiently as they could and, frankly,
where they don’t need to be doing things at all.
We are able to standardise our processes, then
automate and look to create reusable components
that can be simply ported from one process
automation to another.”
By going through process simplification first,
the Centre can identify where RPA can deliver the
most value to a process and prepare those tasks or
process elements for automation.
By May 2018, the Centre of Excellence was
fully staffed and operational and had defined four
categories of robots – cost saving, service delivery,
financial control and revenue improvement – and
had successfully delivered nine new live robots for
different parts of the Royal Mail business.
That’s when people really started to notice, as
Hulton explains: “People were beginning to see
the benefits in terms of cost saving, productivity
and employee satisfaction. The business told us
that they wanted our automation to get bigger,
faster and scale up across the organisation. So
that’s what we did.”
Applying RPA strategically
Over the next nine months, Royal Mail went from
nine robots to 50. The strategy was to identify an
area of the business with a pressing challenge,
investigate all the processes within that area and
identify where automation would deliver the
best and most immediate effect. With aggressive
business targets to meet, the Finance and HR
shared service centres were ideal candidates. They
both needed to achieve significant cost savings
and find capacity without increasing headcount.
The approach was simple and effective: “We
worked with the business users to spot five to
10 different processes that could be automated
quickly and would remove a lot of the repetitive
mundane tasks,” explains Hulton. “This wasn’t
just about cost savings. It was a combination of
savings, cost avoidance, revenue generation and
freeing up capacity. We estimate that our robots
APRIL 2020 AUTOMATION
helped to deliver more than
£4.5 million in value to the
business in 2018/19.”
To match the impressive
speed of delivery – a new robot
averaged between four and
six weeks from concept to
production – the team began to
focus much more on testing and
support to ensure high quality,
robust automations that could
scale across the business.
“Often RPA is brought in at
a departmental level and you do
things the way you want them –
not the way the IT department
would,” says Turner. “However,
we found that imposing some of
the IT disciplines when it comes
to service delivery is extremely
beneficial. If you take longer in
testing and roll-out, then your
robots are stable, and they do
what your business users need.”
“Ruby hurt our reputation
a little, so having a focus on
producing high-quality robots
is helping us create confidence
within the business that we can
deliver to their requirements,”
agrees Hulton.
Towards standardised
business operations
Royal Mail operates over 1,300
delivery offices throughout the
UK. Each one acts like a small
business with staff undertaking
hundreds of small, manual
administrative tasks every day.
The processes within every
delivery office are very similar
but each separate operation
has developed slightly different
ways of doing things. The team
is now looking at ways to use
automation to help standardise
these processes across the
network of delivery offices.
Key Benefits
● The first two Proof of
Value automations saved
the time equivalent of four
staff members;
● Increased number of robots
by over 400% in nine months;
● Business processes can
now be automated in under
six weeks from initial idea to
final delivery;
● RPA has delivered over
£4.5 million in value to the
business in 2018/19.
“Every day, the offices are
doing many simple things,
generally on a variety of
spreadsheets, all taking time
and effort,” concludes Hulton.
“We’d like to apply the same
approach of identifying the
five or ten process steps most
viable for automation and show
the benefits that would bring
to every delivery office. Even
if we just free 20 minutes in
the day for our managers that
would translate to realisable
cost savings and better quality
of service.”
Royal Mail delivers 14 billion
letters and 1.8 billion parcels
annually, meaning efficient
operations are vital
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