How Can RPA Protect Workers in the Coronavirus Era?

The emergence of the Coronavirus pandemic on the world stage has completely upended most of our previously held assumptions about the future direction of the global economy, forcing us to ask – and seek urgent answers for – some very tough questions.

It’s very much with these questions in mind that McKinsey has launched a series of briefings, based on in-depth conversations with hundreds of companies around the world, exploring the impact of the coronavirus outbreak on business and how enterprises have responded to the challenges posed by it.

Protecting Valued Staff for Business Success in Uncertain Times
As McKinsey’s noted, at a company level these responses generally encompass five specific sets of actions, namely workforce protection, supply chain stabilization, customer engagement, financial stress testing and nerve center integration. The maintenance of these activities is crucial for enterprises to ensure business continuity in the face of the dynamic nature of the pandemic.

Let’s focus on one of these actions, workforce protection, and have a look at some of our recent success stories that perfectly illustrate how Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is leading the way in helping businesses around the world keep their workers safe, healthy and productive.

Success Story 1: EMEA-Based Insurance Broker Stays Up-To-Date With Fast-Changing Policies
As companies continue to adopt new policies to respond in real time to the coronavirus crisis as it develops, a large EMEA-based insurance broker wanted our help to inform employees of changes to working procedures and ensure consistency of activity across departments, no matter where their team members were physically located.

In tandem with their IT department, we rapidly deployed attended robots inside a week to “help” employees while they work, giving customized tips and advice where necessary to provide an optimal, personalized online training experience. Thanks to RPA, the broker was able to reduce confusion around policies, catch human error before it happened and minimize costly ramping-up time.

Success Story 2: American Accountancy Firm Ensures Compliance With Workplace Reporting Regulations
Due to ever more stringent government regulations aimed at curbing the pandemic, companies across the economic spectrum have suddenly found themselves required to provide much deeper levels of reporting to ensure a safe working environment.

We were contacted a few days ago by an existing customer, a large accountancy firm based in the USA, who wanted to find a quick yet efficient way of seamlessly processing and analyzing vital information, originating from multiple sources across different departments in various locations. We worked with them to build a custom RPA wizard to integrate their disparate systems and enable the effective transmission of information across the company, regardless of the type of system it was stored on, all without having to resort to complicated APIs.

To ensure even greater levels of compliance, the company also chose to deploy our attended robots to effectively enforce the reporting requirements by prompting staff and reminding them to submit the necessary information, even when they’re working from home.

Taken together, these measures mean the firm can easily create all legally mandated reports, on time and accurately, and remain on the right side of the authorities.

Success Story 3: European Telecoms Company Makes Sure Remote Workers Have (and Know) Everything They Need
As more and more countries use lockdowns as a fundamental component of their fight against the coronavirus, companies have increasingly adopted the work from home model, wherever possible, as a key survival strategy. A large European telecoms company was looking for a solution to  supply their newly-remote workers – at speed – with everything they need to do their job properly, such as hardware, infrastructure access and office supplies, without having to take on more staff to process these requests.

Within a matter of days, with a smart automation solution that processes requests sent by remote workers, collates them and then breaks them down by service provider or supplier. Orders are then sent in bulk to the different providers or suppliers, who then dispatch the requested equipment directly to the remote worker. For an added personal touch, the employee receives an automated SMS notification that the order is on its way.

Finally, to help their employees learn important new skills irrespective of their location, attended robots were harnessed to guide trainees smoothly through all types of online courses to bring them up to speed as quickly as if they were in a classroom.

For more information about how Kryon’s free Full-Cycle Automation Suite package can help you quickly adapt and succeed in the new business reality, click here.