In response to Covid-19, organisations have accelerated their digital transformation by several years, leading to quicker adoption of new solutions. Organisations are looking to emerging technology such as Robotics Process Automation (RPA), and Virtual Chatbot Assistants which are already widely used across many industries to deliver benefits due to their quick and easy deployments.
RPA is software that automates rules-based actions and integrates human interactions within digital systems to execute a business process. It can enable transaction processing, data manipulation and communication across multiple IT systems both in back-office and front-office functions like finance, operations, or HR. It handles repetitive business processes using software robots to perform tasks, parse, and trigger error-free responses 24/7.
Previously these technologies were delivered in silo’s through individual pilots and projects, however, companies are beginning to realise the benefits of combing multiple solutions for enterprise transformation, doing so, creates a reliable integrated virtual workforce that can execute business processes without much human involvement.
Some of the benefits of utilising this technology within Human Resources are:
Improved Operational cost efficiency & productivity
10X faster employee onboarding
Staff cost reduced by up to 50%
Creating capacity to support sales activity & customer/client interactions
Reclaiming up to 40% employee time
ROI within four months
Real-time reporting and dashboards
Improved Employee Experience & Customer engagement
At ABP, we have been working with clients within both Human Resources functions and the Recruitment industry as a whole to identify opportunities to increase automation levels to support candidate placements.
Job Matching & Candidate processing solutions
One example of a current use case is that ABP has designed a bespoke Job Matching & Candidate processing solutions that use RPA to extract job postings from multiple external Vendor Management Systems (VMS). It then automatically creates a job opportunity in the recruitment companies internal CRM system. The robots can run on a 24/7 basis, continuously monitor the VMS systems, and extract data such as job description, status, commitment, job type, currency, and rates.
This data is then automatically transferred into the CRM system, and it further assigns the job opportunity to the Recruitment sales teams. The RPA solution also provides the operational team with real-time reporting on the number of jobs added per VMS, an average pay and job title rate. It is the first step in automating several manual tasks within the Candidate placement process, freeing up the sales consultants to focus on matching & placing the best individuals in the right roles.
Another example within Human Resources is utilising both Virtual Assistants and RPA to respond to colleague queries on typical HR activities such as payroll, timesheets and expenses. ABP has built a bespoke solution to utilise an internal chatbot to handle colleague queries in real-time, and the virtual assistants work with the software robots to trigger responses through accessing data/information on multiple systems & databases. Virtual Chatbots can pull information from various back-end systems (e.g., your document management system, your HRIS) and use it to answer questions about policies, procedures.
HR chatbots can process employee requests in real-time with minimal human intervention, this is creating capacity within the HR team to focus on more complex queries, and providing colleagues with real-time responses to their requests.
Summary of some of the use cases in HR are:
1. CV screening & shortlisting candidates
2. Employee Onboarding and offboarding
3. Payroll Processing
4. Expense Management
5. Employee Induction and Training
6. Background verification processes
The technology is not just limited to Chatbots & Robots, but the intelligence that these can build around it to reduce human involvement and improve processes along with enhanced customer and employee experience.
So how did we do it?
Our HR Automation Solution:
We have a data-driven approach to automation; we used the Process Mining capability to understand the process in-depth; this is the technology that allows you to scan your applications and build a heatmap around how users execute the process. It provides analytics around the process owners’ business processes in a graphical dashboard that the process owners can investigate to view the potential discrepancies or variations.
The analytics is then shared with the automation team to build automation that robots can execute. These Robots can also provide improved customer/colleague experience, as they can work as virtual assistants in combination to answer any queries. These queries could be as simple as how many employee profiles do we have in our CRM system for a particular location and skillset as a potential job match.
The scope of robotics in HR is rapidly expanding and limited, not just to a few organisations’ processes. With the industry already adopting automation platforms to automate many tedious processes, the RPA market is forecasted to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 7.10% over the forecast period of 2020 to 2027.