Five Case Studies to Inspire Your RPA Strategy€¦ · Five Case Studies to . Inspire Your RPA...
Transcript of Five Case Studies to Inspire Your RPA Strategy€¦ · Five Case Studies to . Inspire Your RPA...
Five Case Studies to Inspire Your RPA StrategyHOW TO DEPLOY ROBOTIC PROCESS AUTOMATION ACROSS YOUR BUSINESS
“We have cut the time taken to process a loan application and return a decision to lendersfrom three to seven days to 43 minutes or less. This is a tremendous achievement, and it would not have been possible without the insights revealed by Kofax solutions.”
Brian Mueller, Integrated Records Management Manager, Colorado Housing and Finance Authority
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................1
RPA FOR BANKING & FINANCIAL SERVICES .......................2
European Bank Saves Thousands of Hours a Week on Know-Your-Customer Checks
RPA FOR FINANCE & ACCOUNTING ..........................................5
Arrow Lets the Data Flow with Automated
Procurement Processes
RPA FOR LOAN AUTOMATION ....................................................... 7
Spotcap Revolutionizes Lending with Flexible and Accessible Financing for Small and Medium-
Sized Businesses
RPA FOR LOGISTICS & TRANSPORTATION .........................10
Crete Carrier Corporation Revolutionizes Logistics
Operations with Robotic Process Automation
RPA FOR INSURANCE ................................................................. 14
Safe-Guard Products Adjudicates Claims 75%
Faster with Kofax
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INTRODUCTION
If this is your year for RPA, we just have one question: Is your
organization considering an RPA solution that will successfully
scale beyond a POC or initial deployment?
Meet Kofax RPA™, the #OriginalBot that’s helped more than
600 organizations achieve exceptional benefits in operational
quality, speed and cost savings.
Built for scale with a proven scalable architecture and easy-to-
develop robots both business and IT users love, it’s no wonder
Kofax RPA has more robots deployed than any other RPA
solution on the market.
Discover the power of Kofax RPA in these five inspiring case
studies. From customer due diligence to insurance claims
automation, Kofax RPA automates your most painful processes.
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Robots Reduce Compliance Tasks From Minutes to Seconds for European Bank This bank used Kofax RPA™ to automate data-gathering
processes linked to Customer Due Diligence (CDD) and
Know-Your-Customer (KYC) checks. Today, the bank can
now complete data-collection tasks that once took roughly
15 minutes in under 90 seconds on average, saving
thousands of person-hours a week. Faster, more complete
customer investigations reduce costs and risk of regulatory
non-compliance.
CHALLENGE
In recent years, there has been a sharp rise in regulatory
pressures concerning Anti-Money Laundering. It has become a
must for financial services firms to comply with strict Customer
Due Diligence (CDD) and Know-Your-Customer (KYC) policies
to prevent identity theft, financial fraud, money laundering and
terrorist financing. The price of non-compliance is high—
institutions failing to meet regulatory rules have been subject to
an estimated USD 10 billion in fines since 2013.
For this European bank, complying with CDD and KYC
requirements is a top priority. However, it found that relying on
manual methods to perform the necessary investigative work
was far too time-consuming and cost-intensive.
A spokesperson from the bank explained: “Highly skilled
analysts were spending hours of their day combing through
both internal and external systems to gather the relevant
information on customers—a tedious exercise. And with
legislation growing increasingly complex, we were constantly
scaling up resources to keep pace with new requirements.
Our manual approach was quickly becoming unsustainable,
and we were in urgent need of a more automated and
efficient way to manage CDD and KYC investigations.”
“Kofax RPA has completely transformed the way that we manage CDD and KYC investigations.The entire process is faster and more robust than ever before, and our analysts have more time to dedicate to value-added tasks.”
Spokesperson, European bank2
SOLUTION
A longstanding Kofax customer, the bank was already using a
range of Kofax software across its business. Working with Kofax,
the bank found an answer to its compliance challenges in an
unexpected way.
The spokesperson said: “Kofax was presenting and
demonstrating the Kofax TotalAgility Suite to our Document
Logistics team, and they happened to touch on the topic of CDD
and KYC. Kofax instantly recognized that their Kofax RPA
offering could provide us with the perfect solution for these
challenges. A few weeks later, we ran a proof-of-concept
exercise, where we were able to see the capabilities of Kofax RPA
first hand. This convinced us that the solution was an ideal fit for
our needs.”
After performing extensive checks to ensure the solution met strict
security and privacy requirements, the bank worked with Kofax
and the bank’s own delivery partner to deploy the solution.
Thanks to Kofax RPA, the bank has been able to automate what
were once time-consuming and error-prone CDD and KYC
investigations. When analysts need to perform a check on a new
customer, Kofax RPA robots will trawl the bank’s internal systems
and databases, as well as external sources (such as Chamber of
Commerce business registers, social media, news archives,
Politically Exposed Persons (PEP) databases, and more) to verify
the customer’s identity and determine if they have been linked
to any illicit activity.
RPA FOR FINANCIAL SERVICES– EUROPEAN BANK
This European bank offers a full range of products and services to retail, private and corporate clients..
PRODUCTS
Kofax RPA™
FOCUSRegulatory Compliance
Robotic Process Automation
Customer Due Diligence
Know-Your-Customer
Intelligent Automation
“We run the robots overnight; they gather any relevant
information on the customers we have identified and put it all
together in a report,” explained the spokesperson. “When our
analysts arrive at work the next morning, they have all the
supporting data they need to inform CDD and KYC checks.”
The project has been met with highly positive response at all levels
of the business. Inspired by this initial success, the bank has
significantly expanded its use of robotic process automation,
bringing similar efficiency gains to other areas of operations.
The spokesperson noted: “We have now established a center of
excellence for robotic process automation: Business owners send
their automation request to IT, where a dedicated development
team analyses the requirements, performs feasibility checks, then
designs and deploys a solution for robotizing the requested
business process. Today, teams from our Retail and Private
Banking, Corporate Clients and Operations divisions all take
advantage of Kofax RPA—and we see huge potential for extending
the solution to more areas of the business in the future.”
RESULTS
Kofax RPA has brought newfound efficiency and accuracy to CDD
and KYC checks. In retail banking, the company has cut the time
taken to gather data for CDD investigations from 15 minutes to 90
seconds. And in corporate banking, data collection that once
took at least 10 minutes to perform can now be completed in 70
seconds. Similarly, the bank has shortened time spent on data
gathering for Anti-Money Laundering investigations from 20
minutes to 2.5 minutes.
The spokesperson remarked: “We perform upwards of 2,800 CDD
and KYC investigations every week, so the efficiency gains that we
have achieved with Kofax RPA mean that we are saving thousands
of person-hours of work a week.
“Our analysts have been released from tedious, time-
consuming data-gathering work to focus on more productive
and rewarding tasks.”
In addition, the bank has improved the breadth and quality of its
investigations. It is now able to include new data sources such as
social media websites in its CDD and KYC checks, resulting in
more comprehensive searches. And as data-gathering is now
entirely automated, the bank has minimized the risk of errors
occurring or key information going unnoticed.
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Equally importantly, Kofax RPA provides a full audit trail of all
investigative work, showing when robots are running, what sources
they visit, and how long the data extraction takes. Armed with this
information, the bank can provide auditors with clear evidence that
it has performed its due diligence around CDD and KYC processes,
and is operating in full compliance with the latest regulations.
The spokesperson concluded: “Kofax RPA has completely
transformed the way that we manage CDD and KYC
investigations. The entire process is faster and more robust than
ever before, and our analysts have more time to dedicate to value-
added tasks. As we continue to extend the benefits of Kofax RPA
across the business, we look forward to helping even more
employees work more efficiently and accurately.”
RPA FOR FINANCIAL SERVICES– EUROPEAN BANK
We perform upwards of 2,800 CDD and KYC investigations every week, so the efficiency gains that we have achieved with Kofax RPA mean that we are saving thousands of person-hours of work a week.”
Spokesperson, European bank
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“We expect to save hundreds of hours/month of manual work to process special quotes and invoices—with shorter cycle times, data accuracy and increased customer and employee satisfaction.”
Wolfgang Fischer, Senior Division Manager eCommerce
Arrow Central Europe Components
Arrow Electronics
Recognizing that Arrow Electronics’ ability to help customers
create innovative new products was being limited by manual
steps in the company’s special quote and invoice processes,
the company successfully implemented Kofax Kofax RPATM
to achieve better integration with suppliers, shortened cycle
times, assured data accuracy and increased satisfaction
levels by customers and employees.
CHALLENGE
For more than 75 years, Arrow has been helping customers
innovate in many industries around the world. Arrow’s
engineers work closely with customers throughout the entire
product life cycle, from the initial idea through all stages of
development. Arrow’s EMEA Components product
management team plays a vital role in the process as its
members help customers determine the components and
related costs for innovative new products.
As company specialists in product marketing and
procurement, the product management team prepares
hundreds of custom proposals per partner, per week on
average. The preparation process was mostly manual—
special quotes simply didn’t work with Arrow’s existing B2B
processes and interfaces, such as EDI and RosettaNet,
because these are non-standard requests. To find the best
source for a particular component, the product asset
specialists asked multiple suppliers for quotes.
In addition, the process steps were often repetitive across
suppliers. For a given request, the same information was
provided to each supplier, but was submitted via different
methods—email, PDF or web portal, depending on the
supplier’s process. Offers from suppliers were also returned
in varying media formats and these had to be manually
incorporated into the proposal. Handling invoices from
suppliers was a similar situation: the process was manually
intensive and included repetitive data entry. This was not an
ideal process for a company seeking to process several
hundred proposals per day.
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SOLUTION
For Arrow, using Kofax RPA within its components
organization in Central Europe made perfect sense for a
number of reasons. Quick and easy implementation was a
main advantage. With Kofax RPA best practices as their
guide, Arrow was able to implement Kofax RPA—avoiding an
expensive IT project, a long chain of approvals and having to
wait many months or more.
The workflow automation capabilities were another key
advantage. In the fast and uncomplicated POC (proof of
concept), Kofax RPA was complementary to Arrow’s existing
middleware—and unique in the market as it could automate
their manual tasks that standard integration tools could not.
One example: an Arrow specialist logs into a web portal using
credentials to request a quote and evaluates the response
delivered via email.
Furthermore, Kofax RPA’s synthetic APIs interface perfectly
with Arrow’s existing B2B infrastructure, so no special
coding, integration or assistance from IT was needed. Kofax
RPA’s automated workflows mimic what users had to do
manually to request and process quotes and invoices,
regardless of format or location.
RESULTS
Arrow opted to implement Kofax RPA supplier by supplier.
Because the first several workflow automations produced
outstanding results, the improvements were noticed
enterprise-wide. Overall, the company estimates it reduced
manual effort by three minutes per order. That translates into
hundreds of hours per month saved for Arrow’s Components
unit in Central Europe. On a global level, the business impact
should further escalate because Arrow has thousands of
suppliers worldwide.
The company said the benefits of using Kofax RPA are far
more valuable to Arrow than just time saved. Now, product
asset specialists can spend their time working closer with
customers to help advise them on component options, as
well as build stronger relationships with suppliers and do
more negotiation. Cut-and-paste errors have been
eliminated while faster invoice payments may yield more
savings by way of qualifying for special discounts.
Although replacing a significant part of Arrow’s special quote
and invoice processes was considered “unthinkable” before,
automation through Kofax RPA is a success. According to
the company, taking advantage of templates and frameworks
has not only helped simplify and speed implementation
times, but has also established a strong foundation and best
practices for the global rollout.
Arrow Electronics is a global provider of products, services and solutions to industrial and commercial users. Located in Neu-Isenburg, Germany, Arrow is a supply channel partner for more than 100,000 original equipment manufacturers, contract manufacturers and commercial customers through a global network of more than 460 locations in 58 countries.
PRODUCTS
Kofax RPA™
FOCUS
Intelligent Automation
“As company specialists in product marketing and procurement, the product management team prepares hundreds of custom proposals per partner, per week on average. The preparation process was mostly manual—special quotes simply didn’t work with Arrow’s existing B2B processes and interfaces, such as EDI and RosettaNet.”
Wolfgang Fischer, Senior Division Manager eCommerce
Arrow Central Europe Components
RPA FOR FINANCE AND ACCOUNTING– ARROW ELECTRONICS
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Spotcap
Spotcap is shaking up the banking landscape with its
proprietary credit platform, which provides short-term loans
to small businesses online. Powered by market-leading
Kofax RPA™ Robotic Process Automation (RPA) software
and a unique credit assessment algorithm, Spotcap
empowers businesses with tailored finance, allowing them to
focus on what really matters – their business.
CHALLENGE
If you run a small business, then you know that securing a
loan can make all the difference in taking operations to the
next level. And you’ve probably also experienced how much
of a struggle it can be to obtain funding from traditional
financial providers.
Spotcap was founded with the aim of disrupting the business
lending landscape. The company provides efficient financing
for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) of all kinds—
from retailers who need a capital injection to buy extra stock
at peak seasons to marketing agencies with creative
advertisements to produce.
Karl Sponholz, COO of Spotcap, stated, “SMEs have long been
underserved by banks when it comes to acquiring financing.
Part of the reason for this is that it takes considerable expense
and effort to process loan applications using conventional
methods—and as most SMEs are only looking for relatively
small lines of credit, it simply isn’t an attractive proposition for
traditional lenders to take on this business.
“We knew that if we could offer a more efficient way to
provide finance to SMEs, we had an opportunity to shake up
the lending industry. Our idea was to create an entirely
online and automated credit platform, which would make it
fast and efficient for businesses to apply for loans and for our
teams to process and approve applications. To turn our vision
into reality, we first built our proprietary credit platform and
then needed to find the right technology to support it.”
“What sets Spotcap apart from a typical credit provider is the efficient way we can turn around a loan offer, and the RPA capabilities that Kofax RPA delivers are key to enabling our quick and efficient service.”
Karl Sponholz, COO, Spotcap7
Founded in 2014, Spotcap provides flexible and accessible funding solutions to small and medium-sized businesses. Spotcap employs more than 120 people and is headquartered in Berlin, Germany, with a local presence in Spain, the UK, the Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand.
PRODUCTS
Kofax RPA™
FOCUS
Customer Onboarding
Robotic Process Automation
SOLUTION
Spotcap has developed a proprietary credit algorithm which
assesses the financial condition of a business to provide
deep insight. Unlike traditional lenders, who typically make
credit decisions based on historical financials and credit
scoring, Spotcap uses predictive models to evaluate real-life
business and cash flow data alongside conventional credit
and financial information—providing a holistic picture of a
company’s performance and creditworthiness.
What’s more, Spotcap’s service cuts out the need for
paperwork and manual processing. To apply for a line of
credit, business owners simply enter some personal and
business information online. There’s no need for customers
to set up meetings with a credit advisor or put together
stacks of documentation to support their application.
The end-to-end process is fully automated, and in most cases
Spotcap can provide an offer to a customer within minutes of
receiving their application online. Once an application has
been approved, Spotcap will offer the business a credit line,
ranging from €10,000 all the way up to €250,000.
So how does the company enable this game-changing
approach to lending? With the help of some cutting-edge
technology, including the Kofax RPA software.
Sponholz commented, “Kofax RPA was one of the very first
solutions we purchased; it’s an absolutely critical component
of our platform. What sets Spotcap apart from a typical
credit provider is the efficient way we can turn around a loan
offer, and the robotic process automation capabilities that
Kofax RPA delivers are key to enabling our quick and
efficient service.”
For every application that it receives, Spotcap must analyze
thousands of data points in order to make a decision about
whether to offer or withhold a loan. With Kofax RPA, the
company has built and deployed hundreds of robots. Spotcap
uses Kofax RPA robots and supporting application program
interfaces (APIs) to automatically extract data from a wealth
of sources, including customers’ accounting software,
company registers, tax authority records, credit databases,
e-commerce websites and more. The Kofax software then
integrates all of this data and transforms it so that it can be
readily used by Spotcap’s credit assessment algorithm.
“With Kofax RPA, we can gather and integrate data in real-
time, and without the need for human intervention,” said
Sponholz. “What this means is that while a customer is
online, we can process their application and get back to
them with a decision in just a few minutes.”
Having successfully harnessed Kofax RPA to power efficient
and automated lending operations, Spotcap is turning its
attention to streamlining internal processes—empowering its
teams to work more efficiently.
“Spotcap exists to empower SMEs with tailored finance, allowing them to focus on growing their business without having to worry about financing. We can do this with the solutions we have built in house, and with help from leading technologies such as Kofax RPA.”
Karl Sponholz, COO, Spotcap
RPA FOR LOAN AUTOMATION– SPOTCAP
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Sponholz remarked, “We work with big volumes of data and it
takes a great deal of manual effort to manage it all. Many of our
people find their time consumed by repetitive tasks, such as
importing data into spreadsheets or copying and pasting
information into different business systems. We plan to use
Kofax RPA to automate most of these activities; the technology
is very powerful and we want to take full advantage of its
capabilities, freeing up our people to focus on more rewarding
work, with impactful results for our SME clients.”
RESULTS
Kofax RPA has been quick to prove its value at Spotcap;
delivering a full return on investment in under a year, and
giving teams the agility to bring new ideas to life fast.
“All of us at Spotcap were very excited about Kofax RPA from
the get-go, and it has certainly lived up to our expectations,”
stated Sponholz. “We find it very easy to work with the
software; we can prototype and deploy new robots rapidly—
with many taking just a few hours to build. This kind of agility
is a great benefit, as we can bring new ideas to life very
quickly and cost-effectively.
“Recently, we worked with Kofax to run a one-day robotic
process automation workshop, where we invited attendees
to ‘build a bot’. We had a great response and even non-
technical users were able to easily get to grips with Kofax
RPA and come up with some really inventive solutions for
automating tasks.”
Spotcap has clearly hit on a winning formula with its
innovative approach to business lending. Since launching in
2014, the company has secured more than €100 million in
funding and now operates in five countries.
Sponholz commented, “We have grown by almost 300
percent between 2015—2016. Today, Spotcap ranks among
the top 30 fintech companies in Europe and the top three in
Germany. Kofax RPA has been with us since the very start of
this journey, and has played a key role in our success.”
As business has boomed, Spotcap has been able to count on
the impressive flexibility of Kofax RPA to keep pace with
rising demands.
“We’ve been able to scale our processes and systems quickly as
the business grows,” noted Sponholz. “Kofax RPA makes it easy
to scale up our operations, so we can take on more customers
and extend more lines of credit in a very efficient way.”
By offering a more efficient way for businesses to access
credit, Spotcap empowers SMEs to focus on what really
matters— their business.
Sponholz concluded: “Spotcap exists to empower SMEs with
tailored finance, allowing them to focus on growing their
business without having to worry about financing. We can do
this with the solutions we have built in house, and with help
from leading technologies such as Kofax RPA. By making it
easier for smaller companies to access the financing they
need, we are empowering them to take their businesses to
new heights and strengthening the economy as a whole.”
RPA FOR LOAN AUTOMATION– SPOTCAP
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Crete Carrier Corporation Crete Carrier revolutionizes its logistics operations with
robotic process automation, powered by Kofax RPA™.
Streamlined scheduling allows the company to get ahead of
competitors to secure prime delivery slots—improving
on-time delivery rates and saving time and costs—while
freeing staff from tedious manual work to focus on building
better relationships with customers.
CHALLENGE
In just 50 years, Crete Carrier has blossomed into one of
America’s leading trucking companies, providing
transportation services for industry giants such as Wal-Mart,
Lowe’s, ConAgra Foods, and Kimberly-Clark.
Crete Carrier aims to deliver the very best service for its
customers, whatever their size. With operations spanning
three divisions, dozens of facilities and tens of thousands of
vehicles, keeping the wheels of business turning smoothly
takes considerable effort.
Matt Schnake, Website Integration Administrator at Crete
Carrier Corporation, began, “Our customers count on us to
deliver their freight safely and on time. And appointment
scheduling plays a crucial role in helping us to achieve this.
When a customer tenders a load, our teams need to take into
account a host of factors in order to ensure we can deliver the
order on time and in the most cost-efficient way. Our
representatives need to consider how many miles of transit
there are from the pickup point to the destination, which
vehicles and drivers we have available at a certain time at each
facility, and whether the customer is available to receive a
shipment during the hours we can deliver. It’s a very labor-
intensive process, and we found that as business grew, it was
becoming increasingly difficult for teams to keep up with the
sheer amount of work that went into scheduling deliveries.”
“Robotic process automation is not about replacing jobs, it’s about letting people focus on value-add work. This adds up to a better experience for customers—as they receive more personal and responsive service—and a more efficient way for Crete Carrier to run the business.”
Jim King, Website Integration Administrator, Crete Carrier Corporation
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Crete Carrier Corporation is one of the largest privately owned trucking companies in the US, providing a range of dry-van, refrigerated-items, flatbed and specialized transportation services. Headquartered in Lincoln, Nebraska, Crete Carrier Corporation operates 18 facilities across the country and employs approximately 6,000 people.
PRODUCTS
Kofax RPA™
FOCUS
Robotic Process Automation
Jim King, Website Integration Administrator at Crete Carrier
Corporation, continued, “Our trucking services run 24/7, but
the people who were tasked with scheduling appointments
by and large worked Monday through Friday. This meant that
if we received a tender on the weekend, it would sit there
until a representative got into work on Monday. This was
potentially causing us to miss opportunities: there are only so
many delivery slots available on a particular day and the
longer we take to schedule an appointment, the less likely it
is that we can make a customer’s preferred timeframe. Also,
if we fail to respond to a customer request promptly, they
could potentially take their business to another provider.”
Keen to ease the pressure on its staff and maintain its high
rate of on-time deliveries, Crete Carrier set out to find a
solution that could help it to manage appointment
scheduling more effectively.
SOLUTION
Crete Carrier’s search led it to Kofax Kofax RPA—a powerful
robotic process automation platform. Using Kofax RPA, the
company has built hundreds of intelligent software robotic
processes that streamline various process oriented tasks
involving internal systems and external portals.
Schnake commented, “We’ve been using Kofax RPA for
almost four years now and have deployed more than 380
unique robots running more than 1 million robot executions
yearly with a runtime of more than 16,000 robot hours. 24
additional robots are currently in our design queue. We have
just three people looking after the Kofax solutions—the
robots are very easy to configure, and once put into
production, they pretty much manage themselves”
For appointment scheduling, Crete Carrier prepares Kofax
RPA robots with a range of information, including the pickup
and drop-off points, shipment distance and desired delivery
timeframe. When the company receives a new tender, Kofax
RPA robots uses these parameters to pick an appropriate
delivery slot. If the solution is unable to secure an
appointment on its first run, it will extract all the information
it has received and send it to a human operator, who can
establish a new set of parameters and instruct a Kofax RPA
robot to re-attempt delivery scheduling.
King said, “Typically, Kofax RPA will be able to schedule an
appointment on its first run, but if our criteria are too tight or
if there is any other issue, our representatives can step in and
work with Kofax RPA to establish a delivery slot on the fly. It’s
a much faster and flexible approach.
“And because Kofax RPA works round the clock, in most
cases we can give customers a delivery appointment very
quickly, even if it is outside normal office hours. This helps us
avoid evening and weekend lag time, and deliver more
reliable and responsive service.”
“Today, we use Kofax RPA robots to read through all those emails and confirm the current location and load status of a particular vehicle. The solution has considerably improved our ability to know where our equipment is and what state it’s in, so we can plan our operations more accurately. Plus, now we have significantly reduced the requirement to send drivers out to check on the status of a vehicle, saving time and money to help Crete Carrier run more efficiently.”
Matt Schnake, Website Integration Administrator, Crete Carrier Corporation
RPA FOR LOGISTICS AND TRANSPORTATION– CRETE CARRIER CORPORATION
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Smarter shipment tracking
In addition, Crete Carrier harnesses Kofax RPA to enhance
visibility into freight as it moves across the country. With an
immediate view of the position of trucks and trailers, as well
as their loads, the company can keep deliveries moving in a
much more controlled and efficient way.
Schnake explained, “In the past, teams would have to go
through stacks of emails with logistics partners and
customers to see which goods were loaded or unloaded at
various points in a shipment journey, and where different
vehicles were at a given point in time. Sometimes, we even
had to send drivers out to different facilities to check if a
particular vehicle was available—wasting fuel and time that
the driver could otherwise be spending delivering an order
to a customer.
“Today, we use Kofax RPA robots to read through all those
emails and confirm the current location and load status of a
particular vehicle. The solution has considerably improved
our ability to know where our equipment is and what state it’s
in, so we can plan our operations more accurately. Plus, now
we have significantly reduced the requirement to send
drivers out to check on the status of a vehicle, saving time
and money to help Crete Carrier run more efficiently.”
Keeping customers up-to-date
Crete Carrier’s customers are also reaping the benefits of
improved freight tracking.
Schnake noted: “We provide delivery information and
updates to certain clients via dedicated web portals. In the
past, staff updated the portal information manually, which
was time-consuming and caused delays in information
delivery, particularly outside of office hours. Clients knew
that the web portals were not always up-to-date, so they
often called our customer service team to ask about their
deliveries, creating more work for our representatives.
“Today, that has all changed—Kofax RPA robots update the
web portals with delivery information automatically
eliminating tedious manual work for employees and helping
clients keep a close eye on their orders.
“In fact, we have one client who evaluates our service against
a variety of metrics, including estimated time of arrival [ETA]
conformance. Previously, we were sitting at about 15.4
percent ETA conformance; after introducing Kofax RPA to
automate delivery status tracking, we have increased this to
99.9 percent. Our client is delighted with the improvement
and has told us that we’re performing better than any of their
other freight carriers.”
The improved insight into shipments is opening up valuable
opportunities for Crete Carrier to service new kinds of business.
King gave an example, “We have some clients who deliver direct
to their end-customers—a much more sensitive and time-critical
task than standard business-to-business shipping. As we’ve been
able to show that we can proactively communicate where orders
are at every stage of a delivery, our clients feel confident
entrusting us with more critical shipments.”
Extending the benefits
Spurred by the increased efficiencies that Kofax RPA has
brought to delivery and logistics management, Crete Carrier
has subsequently introduced the solution to many other
departments, including road services, billing and recruiting.
Schnake recalled, “At first it was difficult to get buy-in for
Kofax RPA from our users; people were scared that the robots
were going to steal their jobs. But once staff saw the solution
in action and understood that it was there to help them, rather
than replace them, they couldn’t get enough of it. Kofax RPA
has delivered enormous value to our business and we keep
finding new ways to get more out of the solution.”
RESULTS
By automating the complicated and time-consuming task of
appointment scheduling, Crete Carrier can secure optimal
delivery slots—boosting its chances of getting orders to
customers on time and via the most cost-effective routes.
Schnake stated, “Kofax RPA has transformed scheduling into
a much more streamlined and efficient process. When staff
had to rely on manual methods to schedule deliveries, there
was a limit to the number of appointments they could
realistically set up in a working day. As a result, we were
RPA FOR LOGISTICS AND TRANSPORTATION– CRETE CARRIER CORPORATION
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largely confined to scheduling deliveries a day or two ahead
of time, which meant that we were potentially missing out on
securing better delivery slots that might have been available
further down the line.
“With Kofax RPA, there are no longer any constraints around
scheduling. Unlike human operators, the robots can run 24/7
without breaks. This means that as soon as a new tender
comes in we can get right down to securing a delivery slot.
And what’s more, Kofax RPA is able to schedule
appointments weeks and even months in advance if we have
orders than can be booked that far ahead of time.”
He continued, “Now that we can schedule appointments
much further in advance, it allows us to get out ahead of
other freight carriers and selectively choose the delivery
slots that fit all of our criteria as best as possible, instead of
having to compromise on what’s left over. This maximizes our
odds of securing appointments that help us meet our
delivery time targets and enable us to make the most
effective use of our trucks and drivers. For instance, if an
order comes in that requires pick-up in Cincinnati, and we
already have a driver making a delivery close by, we can slot
in that additional appointment and get the driver to make
the pick-up straight after. This saves fuel and time in transit,
and can help us to deliver orders faster—a win-win situation.”
Crete Carrier estimates that Kofax RPA schedules between 40
to 50 percent of appointments in a completely automated
way, with no need for human intervention. By freeing staff
from this tedious work, the company is empowering teams to
refocus their efforts on more strategic activities.
King concluded, “Thanks to Kofax RPA, our representatives
spend much less of their day dealing with routine tasks, so
they have more time to dedicate to customer-facing
services. This is the beauty of robotic process automation—
it’s not about replacing jobs, it’s about letting people focus
on value-add work. In our case, that means building closer
relationships with our customers; for example, they might be
able to meet a client, which previously they may not have
had time to do. All of this adds up to a better experience for
customers—as they receive more personal and responsive
service—and a more efficient way for Crete Carrier to run the
business, helping us stay on the road to continued success.”
RPA FOR LOGISTICS AND TRANSPORTATION– CRETE CARRIER CORPORATION
13
Safe-Guard Products Adjudicates Claims 75% Faster with Kofax TotalAgility Safe-Guard Products uses Kofax solutions to revolutionize
how it manages millions of contracts and thousands of
claims, reducing adjudication times by more than 75%,
boosting productivity by 30% and improving customer
satisfaction by 15%.
CHALLENGE
Every year, Safe-Guard processes more than two million
contracts and thousands of claims. Whether a customer is
purchasing a product or filing a claim, the company must
ensure a prompt response—or risk damaging customer
satisfaction and potentially losing valuable business to more
agile competitors.
“We’re here to help our customers when they need us,” said
Tim Dewey, Vice President of Operations Technology at
Safe-Guard. “To achieve this vision, we need to keep
customers informed at every stage of their insurance journey
and ensure that their requests are dealt with in a timely,
accurate manner.”
With its rapid business growth, Safe-Guard recognized a need to
move beyond traditionally high-touch, paper-based processes if
it was to meet customer expectations for prompt service.
“We sell a large proportion of finance and insurance
products through car dealerships, which routinely rely on
pen and paper,” Dewey said. “Claims processing was a
similarly paper-heavy process. In each of those areas we
have to collect a significant amount of documentation from
external stakeholders and customers. Our administrative
teams spent considerable time and effort scanning and
processing hardcopy documents, as well as reviewing and
sorting email attachments into folders.”
“With Kofax solutions underpinning our mobile app, we can put new capabilities directly into our customers’ hands and help them access the services they need anytime and anywhere—boosting satisfaction and loyalty.”
Tim Dewey, Vice President of Operations Technology, Safe-Guard
14
Safe-Guard realized that it had a valuable opportunity to
transform the sales and claims process into a more efficient,
streamlined experience.
“We wanted to eliminate any sticking-points in the customer
journey that could cause contract and claims requests to be
delayed,” he added. “The key to achieving this was to reduce
the amount of paper and number of touch-points, as well as
eliminating redundant process steps. We also wanted to
engage more deeply with our customers, keeping them
up-to-date throughout the sales and claims lifecycle and
providing them with more convenient access to the services
they required.”
SOLUTION
Safe-Guard selected a suite of document and business
process management solutions from Kofax to turn its
ambitious vision into reality.
“We recognized that if we could provide greater
transparency and efficiency in our initial engagement with a
customer, we could deliver a higher-quality experience,”
Dewey said.
As a first step, Safe-Guard set out to automate the contract
and claims submission process and reduce the number of
times a single document is handled by an employee. The
company automated the capture of paper documents,
scanning them directly to a Kofax TotalAgility document
management solution without manual intervention. Similarly,
documents received by email and fax are also flowed directly
through to TotalAgility, producing a single, central
information store.
Regardless of how a document enters the system—by mail,
fax or email—it is identified by document type and sent to a
work queue that matches it to an existing claim or contract.
Next, each document goes through an extraction process
that identifies and stores any pertinent data.
To deliver a further boost to efficiency, Safe-Guard worked
to track each step in the contract and claims handling
process to identify areas for improvement, using Kofax
Analytics for TotalAgility.
“With Analytics for TotalAgility, we were able to establish key
metrics, such as how long each step took, who touched each
document and how many times, the number of documents
classified in each batch, the average time per classification,
and so on,” remarked Dewey. “Tracking these metrics
provides us with two opportunities: one is to recognize the
superstars, and the other is to work with people who aren’t as
efficient to help improve their performance. With the new
insight, we can take steps to improve processing efficiency
even further.”
Safe-Guard delivers products to the motor vehicle industry. Its products are sold at more than 10,000 dealerships across North America.
PRODUCTS
Kofax TotalAgility®
Kofax Analytics for TotalAgility
Kofax RPA™
Kofax Mobile Capture Platform™
Kofax Mobile SDK™
Kofax Transformation™
FOCUSClaims Processing
Mobile Capture
BI/Analytics
Customer Engagement
Robotic Process Automation
“We recognized that if we could provide greater transparency and efficiency in the initial engagement, we could deliver a higher-quality experience for our customers. We saw an opportunity to use Kofax products to streamline a number of processes and eliminate redundant work, which would allow us to respond much faster to customers.”
Tim Dewey, Vice President of Operations Technology, Safe-Guard
RPA FOR INSURANCE– SAFE-GUARD
15
Improving the customer experience
Beyond optimizing behind-the-scenes processes, Safe-
Guard is also enhancing the front-end customer experience.
Today, it provides customers with regular updates on the
status of their pending claim or contract application, along
with other communications, including “how can we help”
notices—all of which help to keep customers informed and
put them at ease.
On the claims side, Safe-Guard is working to launch a web
portal that will offer customers up-to-the-minute insight into
the status of their claim. They will also be able to view which
documents are required to complete a claim and upload
them directly. Documents submitted via the web portal will
be processed through TotalAgility as if they had been sent
through traditional channels.
What’s more, Safe-Guard plans to extend this self-service
functionality to a range of devices, using a new mobile app
built on Kofax Mobile Capture Platform and the Kofax
Mobile SDK. With the mobile app, customers will be able to
take photographs of claims-related documents using a
smartphone or tablet and securely share them with the
provider for processing. Safe-Guard anticipates that this will
significantly accelerate the claims cycle and empower
customers with a more convenient way of submitting claims.
“Kofax Mobile Capture does a lot more than just capture a
picture; it reduces the file size, synthesizes the data and
brings it all into our system automatically,” said Dewey.
“With Kofax solutions underpinning our mobile app, we can
put new capabilities directly into our customers’ hands and
help them access the services they need anytime and
anywhere—boosting satisfaction and loyalty.”
Accelerating the payment process
An important step in the claims payment process is
evaluation of the claim itself. Before a claim can be paid,
Safe-Guard must quantify the value of the customer’s loss.
That process involves numerous steps. An adjuster reviewed
every one of the required 14 claims documents to locate the
relevant information and then manually copied and pasted it
to a new document. At the same time, the adjuster
researched websites such as Kelly Blue Book (KBB) and the
National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) for
corresponding information, and again copied and pasted that
information into the same new document. This document was
then summarized and entered into a contract management
site. Safe-Guard employed 20 adjusters who did nothing else
but work through this process for every claim.
Many of these manual steps are now automated with the new
system. TotalAgility extracts 86 data points from the 14
claims documents, eliminating the need for assessors to
manually review them. Safe-Guard then uses Kofax RPA to
perform two separate tasks: 1) automatically pull the 86 data
points into a centralized document and 2) go out to websites
like KBB and NADA and extract any vehicle data and vehicle
information related to the claim.
“Having Kofax RPA automatically scrape information from
those sites allows us to move the claim through the
adjudication process much more efficiently,” according to
Dewey. “Kofax RPA is a critical product for us.”
Kofax RPA validates the amount that should be paid on the
claim and then populates the data into a proprietary contract
management system—moving it to a payment status and
eliminating yet another manual step. The claim is then
routed to Safe-Guard’s accounting and finance department
to print the check. With TotalAgility and Kofax RPA, the
process from claim submission to payment is not only faster
but more accurate. “I like to say that Kofax RPA makes it all
happen ‘automagically,’” he said.
RESULTS
The new approach to contract and claims processing has
delivered significant benefits. Document capture has been
transformed into a fast, low-touch activity, helping Safe-
Guard handle contract- and claims-related documentation
more efficiently than ever before.
“In the past, document capture alone used to take up to two
hours a day; now it takes just 10 to 15 minutes. And during
this process, documents used to be handled by an operator
three to five times. Today, they’re touched just once—a
reduction of up to 80%.”
RPA FOR INSURANCE– SAFE-GUARD
16
In addition, Safe-Guard estimates that the new solutions will
reduce the time to adjudicate a claim by at least 75%, as
Dewey added, “This will help us to accelerate the end-to-end
claims lifecycle, from submission to payment. If all the relevant
claims documents are submitted to us by 2:00 p.m., we could
release and send a check by noon the next business day.”
By automating and streamlining processes, Safe-Guard staff
can handle growing volumes of work more easily, increasing
productivity of the claims processing team by approximately 30%.
The newfound efficiencies have allowed Safe-Guard to run a
much leaner team, even as its business continues to grow. At
one point, Safe-Guard assigned just under 50 full-time
employees to manage the paperwork related to contract and
claims processing. They expect to cut that number in half,
showing a return on their investment in less than 18 months.
Equally important, the new approach is already having a
positive impact on customer service levels. Safe-Guard
estimates that it has achieved a 25% reduction in the number
of calls from customers checking on the status of their
contract or claim, and customer satisfaction scores have
increased by 15%.
“The ability to digitize and streamline many aspects of
customer interaction, from contract purchase to claims
submission and management, will make it that much easier
for customers to do business with us. This will help us
increase satisfaction and loyalty, and gain a valuable edge on
competitors. We consider our investment in Kofax solutions
to be a game-changing differentiator in the marketplace,”
finished Dewey.
RPA FOR INSURANCE– SAFE-GUARD
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