Automation for improving efficiency for a Japanese trading and investment company

Challenge

The trading and investment industry has become tremendously complex and competitive. Automation presents a significant opportunity for these companies to improve the velocity of their repetitive, large-volume processes while reducing errors and practically eliminating their dependency on their human workforce—making them competitive and more profitable.

Our client identified five processes for automation:

1. Download customer billing invoices from ERP and mail them to the customer. The client has about 70 customer accounts, to whom approximately 200 invoices must be sent monthly. The process is labor-intensive and time-consuming. Errors and interruptions in sending the invoices cause delays in payments.
2. Download daily banking cash reports from the bank's client information system. A human workforce checks daily to see if the daily cash report for active clients exists in the system, then downloads them and saves them as a pdf file. The process is dependent on the availability of a human workforce.
3. Download daily banking cash reports from client internet reporting. A human workforce checks daily to see if the daily banking cash report for active clients exists in the system, then downloads them and saves them as a pdf file. The process is dependent on the availability of a human workforce.
4. Download daily banking cash reports. A human workforce checks daily to see if the daily banking cash report is available on the client’s website. The reports for all trade styles have to be downloaded. These reports are created almost daily, so it is necessary to check for them daily and download and save them as a PDF file. The process is dependent on the availability of a human workforce.
5. Download the tax income consolidation report. The reports must be downloaded daily and consolidated before being distributed to stakeholders. The process takes 60 minutes every day and depends on a human workforce’s availability.

Solution

• Downloading customer billing invoices from ERP and mailing them to the customer: The complete invoice download process was automated to mimic the existing process and scheduled to work daily. The bot gets the list of invoices to be printed from a master file, logs into the application, checks the customer’s billing invoice status, prints the invoice, navigates to the tracking screen, updates the status of the invoices in a tracker, and sends the invoice by email to the customer, and logs out of application, with zero human intervention.
• Downloading banking cash reports from bank client information system: The entire process has been automated, and the bot runs on a daily schedule through UiPath Orchestrator, eliminating human dependency. The bot logs into the bank to download the cash reports and check if the reports are available. It then selects client accounts and opens the reports page and statements, which are downloaded as a pdf file. The bot then sends a success/failure email and logs out of the bank system.
• Downloading daily banking cash reports from client internet reporting: The entire process has been automated, and the bot runs on a daily schedule through UiPath Orchestrator, eliminating human dependency. The bot logs into the bank's CIR to download the cash reports, selects the current date, and ensures that reports “Cash Activity” exist. The bot clicks the report for each client and then converts the report to a PDF file. The bot then sends a success/failure email and logs out of the bank system.
• Downloading daily banking cash reports: The entire process has been automated, and the bot runs on a daily schedule through UiPath Orchestrator, eliminating human dependency. The bot logs into the portal to download all the cash reports, checks for "Charge Back/Credit Back Notice" and "Client Cash Report for Trade Style," selects the statement and trade style, and saves the file to the repository using a predetermined naming convention. The bot then sends a success/failure email and logs out of the portal.
• Download the tax income consolidation report: The entire process has been automated, using a solution developed for a sensitive application and has been deployed to Windows surface machines. The bot logs into the consolidation system to download the tax reports, checks for "Summary Consolidated and IS Tree Consolidated Entity Descendants" report, sets the report criteria, and downloads the report as an Excel worksheet from which it generates a "Consolidated Income Report."

Results

Using a 100% automation approach to the five processes, human dependency was eliminated, as was the likelihood of errors creeping into the processes. The automation increased the efficiency of each process by several magnitudes. For example, the AHT for downloading customer billing invoices from ERP and mailing them to the customer was reduced by 300 seconds/invoice.

Impact

• Customer Billing Invoice: 900 person-hours of effort saved annually
• Banking Cash Reports from Client Information System: > 415 person-hours of effort saved annually
• Banking Cash Reports from Client Internet Reporting: >450 person-hours of effort saved annually
• Banking Cash Reports: > 500 person-hours of effort saved annually
• Tax Income Consolidation Report: ~5,000 person-hours of effort saved annuall