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Five Case Studies to Inspire Your RPA Strategy HOW TO DEPLOY ROBOTIC PROCESS AUTOMATION ACROSS YOUR BUSINESS “We have cut the time taken to process a loan application and return a decision to lenders from 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

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Page 1: Five Case Studies to Inspire Your RPA Strategy€¦ · Five Case Studies to . Inspire Your RPA Strategy. HOW TO DEPLOY ROBOTIC PROCESS . AUTOMATION ACROSS YOUR BUSINESS “We have

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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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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