SSCL Achieves Speedy Automation Results with UiPath

SSCL partnered with UiPath and Morpheus to automate its core recruiting, finance, and human resources (HR) processes.

This project underpins SSCL’s drive to offer its Government customers a smooth and efficient experience when using its shared service centres.

Shared Services Connected Ltd (SSCL) delivers innovative, results-driven recruiting, finance, accounting, and other business services to its portfolio of industry-leading clients. The company’s mission is to provide holistic, effective services that give its clients more business insight, control, and decision-making support.

To support this mission in innovation, SSCL decided to automate selected internal business processes to improve efficiency and reduce operating costs. Specifically, SSCL wanted to decrease the number of high-volume transactional tasks it required of employees, and in doing so, free them to spend more time focused on customer experience.

“We were looking to increase overall capacity and empower employees to have more proactive conversations with our customers,” explained Rachel Summers, SSCL’s Director of Operational Excellence and Business Transformation.

Choosing the right RPA vendor

SSCL initially evaluated several technologies and business services and determined that Robotic Process Automation (RPA) was right for its goals. SSCL selected one of the industry's RPA leading vendors, developed an initial strategy, and started down its automation path.

Unfortunately, SSCL quickly discovered that many of the business processes it had targeted for automation simply weren’t ready—a stumbling block the first vendor had not identified—and quickly decided that the initial RPA provider wasn’t a good fit. “There were a few different reasons for our decision,” recalled Summers. “The biggest factor was that our first vendor’s product just wasn’t what we initially thought it would be. For example, we learned that it would take far too long to develop automated processes that could deliver meaningful business results in our desired timeframe.”

UiPath stands out from the competition

It was at this point that SSCL decided to partner with UiPath. “I really felt that the UiPath account team was much more focused on a long-term approach to building a productive working relationship with us,” said Summers. SSCL also preferred the UiPath Enterprise RPA Platform over its previous vendor’s product. “The UiPath technology was much more intuitive and didn’t require as much ‘deep-dive’ technical training,” said Summers. “This would enable us to automate processes with the UiPath Enterprise RPA Platform very quickly to accelerate production times and improve the scalability of future automations.”

Morpheus completes the team

At the same time, SSCL made another important decision to engage a leading RPA services partner, Morpheus. The aim of the engagement was to help SSCL to build its own RPA capability whilst accelerating delivery of valuable automations. The UiPath account team helped Summers and her team to find the right partner who could offer a ‘light touch, deep expertise’ team.

Why Morpheus? “It was really their commitment to empowering us to be self-sufficient,” said Summers. “We knew that their development experience is first class, but they demonstrated a willingness to work hand in glove with our teams, to roll up their sleeves and help us develop the best possible RPA solutions each and every day.”

The proof of concept gets rave reviews

Once the teams were in place, Morpheus helped SSCL complete an initial proof of concept (POC) with a small team of five developers. “This pilot program was important to get the buy-in from executives and our entire team, especially because our previous RPA project wasn’t as successful as we hoped,” said Summers. “Morpheus was invested in the proof of concept and wanted to help us demonstrate that we could automate many vital processes.”

Under Morpheus’ direction, the SSCL developers discovered how easy it was to configure and develop UiPath Robots. “In fact, one of the of the business analysts told us they had done more in 24 hours with UiPath than they did in 12 months with the other automation vendor” Summers added.

The benefits of UiPath

Morpheus helped SSCL developers’ team create nine new automations in the first two months and that was not only a strong start, but also a solid foundation for what follows.

They have now swiftly moved to 5 automations every 20 days- a “first” from their perspective—and credited UiPath for this achievement for two reasons:

1. Training and enablement. "We've found that the UiPath support team and other resources, such as the UiPath Community Forum have been critical to helping us scale up and get ongoing help for the SSCL team," said Andrew Murray, Senior Architect, Morpheus. "Without these services, we would not have been able to get as far as we did."

2. The reusable nature of RPA components within UiPath. “Our first sprint developed 38 components, which could then be used for future automations,” said Murray. “When we started, we could develop five or six processes per month, and these components will significantly increase our future capacity without the need to add new resources.”

Summers put it another way. “Our goal was not necessarily to have a central RPA capability, but to create productive business-driven ‘RPA pods’ in all our delivery Centres of Excellence (CoE’s). This business-focused approach empowers our developers, our subject matter experts, and our business team leaders,” she said. “This enables us to create the best automations and to reduce transactional processes while also ensuring that any employee involved with RPA was empowered and self-sufficient to drive additional automations. UiPath and Morpheus made this possible.”

Early automation success

SSCL and Morpheus quickly developed and deployed UiPath Robots to automate several key business processes. Six processes were automated in the 1st 3 week sprint-an impressive achievement.

The first automation was for an HR recruitment process, which supports candidates who apply for jobs with various SSCL client organizations. Previously, all applicants came into a central line-of-business (LOB) system for processing, which required significant manual work for employees and slowed up the recruitment process. The new UiPath Robot extracts data from the required systems and transfers this vital information into several different downloadable reports. These HR reports are available to the client's recruiting team each morning before they start work, thus streamlining and accelerating recruitment in the Public Sector.

Another automated process related to managing employees' maternity leave. Now, a UiPath Robot performs necessary calculations, sends notifications to groups of employees, including those going on leave, and manages the entire maternity lifecycle. This has saved considerable equivalent (FTE) hours every week, has freed employees to focus on higher value initiatives and increased the accuracy and consistency of calculations.

The right tools for the right results

As Rachel Summers looked back on her company’s experience so far with the UiPath Enterprise RPA Platform, she was impressed by how far they’ve come—and where they can still go.

“Our initial goals were to automate our most transactional processes,” she said. “Of the 400 processes that we felt we could potentially automate, there were 120 processes that we’d identified as the most compatible for automation. We will continue to evaluate these processes to ensure that they are ready, and work with the Morpheus team to develop them.”

What's most rewarding is how UiPath Robots helped SSCL improve customer experience and the end-user experience.

"We have seen significant improvements in our net promoter scores (NPS) as well as our voice-of-the-customer metrics in the last six months," said Summers. "We truly believe they will continue to improve; in part because the UiPath Robots will help us save time and manage repetitive processes. Additionally, RPA technology allows our employees to be more proactive in working with customers, which is what we want them to do. UiPath allows our teams to use their expertise where it matters most: serving our clients and growing the business."