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February 15, 2023

Digital Workplace Transformation Live - SPEAKER SPOTLIGHT: Your Race to Become a Fully Automated Enterprise.

Courtesy of UiPath's Bobby Patrick, Sonic Automotive's Jeff King & ADT's Peter Marra below is a transcript of his speaking session on 'Your Race to Become a Fully Automated Enterprise' to Build a Thriving Enterprise that took place at Digital Workplace Transformation Live.

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Session Information:

Your Race to Become a Fully Automated Enterprise

If you are not automating work today, you are behind. 66% of the Fortune 500 are now automating work across three or more departments. COVID-19 proved that automation was the only tool in the IT toolbag to respond quickly to new cost pressures, spikes in demand and backlogs and strained resources. As we come out of the pandemic, automation is taking off, separating tomorrow’s winners and laggards today.   

And employees love working with robots. They are not only freed from the mundane, robots also now leverage AI to help workers make better decisions, dramatically improving the customer experience and business outcomes.Join this session to hear how companies are using Robotic Process Automation (RPA) as the best path to true digital transformation. ROI is delivered in days and weeks, not months and years. $1 invested in UiPath, can return $25 or more in the very same year, a result unheard of in enterprise software… a category Gartner named the fastest growing once again in 2021.Learn how to estimate the value RPA can bring to your company fast. Because a fully automated enterprise is your best path to a digitally transformed enterprise.

Session Transcript:

Our next speakers, I am talking about leaders in the industry, cross, industry leaders, for excellence, innovation, culture, business, and digital transformation. So please join me, Bobby, Jeff, and Peter. I will briefly introduce each one of our, each one of our participants here. This will be a great conversation about, about your race to become a fully automated enterprise. I always start with Bobby Patrick here. He's the CEO of CMO of UI Path, the fastest growing a leading provider of robotic process automation and AI software in the world.

In his role, he leads global marketing strategy and execution. As UI path continues to usher in the automation first era, helping businesses of all sizes, digitize everyday business operations, and apply AI to deliver true digital transformations.

A technologist at heart, ah, Patrick has driven significant growth in technology businesses for more than two decades, ranging from Fortune 50 organizations to startups.

He's joined by Jeff King, as the vice-president of Procurement and Process Development at Sonic Automotive. Jeff is responsible for leading Fortune 300 companies, throughout a wide range of responsibilities, including procurement, supply chain, robotic process automation, AP, and customer service.

Jeff oversees 15,000 suppliers with a one point two billion dollar, annual expand, and he also serves as the chair of the Center of Process Excellence focusing on process improvement and automation joining us as well. We have Peter Mara. ... is the Intelligent Automation lead at ADT security. During his eight plus year tenure, ADT, he has worked in various roles. His time spent in accounting, financial systems, and ..., has afforded him the opportunity to expand his knowledge of the business, and its relationship to finance, and technology, ultimately leading to a rural centered around intelligent automation. Gentlemen, thank you so much on behalf of our global audience today for taking the time to share your expertise and insights on this incredibly exciting journey of digital transformation.

Good to be here.

Thank you, Josie.

Thank you, Joseph. I really appreciate this. The, this is an exciting, exciting, hopefully, session for everyone at B tests. I was here a year ago.

You know, the early days of code, but it's great to see how far we've evolved.

I'm thrilled to be here with Peter and Jeff, who are going to tell you some amazing stories.

Fun stories at both ADT, and Sonic automotive around automation. But first, I want to kind of set it up, if I can, a bit about kind of that.

What's going on right now, and what is now the fastest growing enterprise software category in the world that actually has been the fastest growing software category for three years, according to Gartner. And so there's something really big going here going on here. So I'll kinda set it up, hopefully, and then I'll hand it over to my my good friends, Peter.

And, Jeff, you know, first of all, I just want to kind of look back, you all know this, this, this is not, this is not your rocket science, but, you know, automation has been a big part of how we progressed as humans, and SSI as a society over the last few centuries, right? When the Industrial Revolution kicked off in agriculture, right, with the invention, the first of the cotton gin.

You know, automation has transformed the way we do agriculture right today.

And, you know, it used to be people with all the work, today, as people and robots.

And a lot of automate a lot of automation, that obviously help, you know, create a strong agriculture supply chain.

Industrial processes that, particularly during the last century automotive Vehicles. And, you know, you mentioned the Model T with Ford and such, clearly, that was an amazing things.

You can automate getting from place to place, versus, you know, riding on the back of a horse, or, or, or, or hiking. And then, even looking at today, automation is being applied, too.

Automotive around self driving cars, right?

And the beauty to self driving cars is that they are, the automation is being applied to the existing infrastructure.

We'd have to rebuild our roads or rebuild even signs. Autonomous vehicles can use the infrastructure that's in place today, right?

And so automation has been a big part of how we've evolved as a society, but today's work, really all around us, you know, everyone on, on this, on this webinar, I imagine, certainly at Sonic as well. And ADT, you know, today's work is largely digital.

It's repetitive, monotonous.

A lot of employees, it's been a lot of time in front of screen, A, tablet, you know a phone performing and working between different systems.

The real challenge has been is what can we do to actually help workers be more creative and be more valuable and make this digital work more productive? And this has been a big challenge that UI path has tried to solve since we were founded back in 2005.

And certainly, today, it's fairly obvious, with the advent of robotic process automation and things. But really this is at the heart of what, of what automation is all about. And I've got two quotes I wanted to share with you quickly.

one came from the CEO of Accenture who said, you know, Digital's, the main reason that just over half of the fortune of the companies in the Fortune 500 have disappeared since the year 2000.

... her ability to adapt to digital and to become more productive with all of the digital processes in the realities of how we do work today.

And then the second one here is, you know, during, during the crisis, and the recovery boards are demanding an acceleration of digital business. So we're kind of seeing here is this perfect storm of his challenge the companies are faced with today.

In terms of repetitive work, monotonous work holding them back, holding back a customer experience, holding back the ability to become more productive, creating sleepless nights for finance teams trying to close books every month every quarter, accelerated by coven. When people realize, Wow, I need to adapt fast to these changes.

Screenshot - 2021-07-31T184941.368In the reality of the world supply chains or, or hiring or operations. And so really, automation became one of the only tools in the tool bag that can really adapt quickly and help make people more productive in what is today a digital digital reality. And what's behind this challenge and complexity? And you will probably see this as well across your company of any size.

Are many systems, many database, hundreds, thousands, within different companies and organizations And these different kind of patchwork of technologies. They're not, they're not optimized. Lean or connected, right? There.

There are often pulled together by humans who interact with processes, down, get an e-mail, respond to an e-mail, download a PDF, look into Salesforce, create a PDF up data record, and then send a response back for a variety of systems that are involved. The problem is, because of all of these systems and databases, we've kind of had a stagnation in productivity for the last couple of decades. And so these billions of hours are spent on manual tasks.

And it's not getting easier, It's getting harder.

I'm sure you all see it as well. I haven't even at UI path in our marketing organization.

We're adding new systems, new new date, a new third party systems.

New tools to try to adapt our marketing organization. But it creates complexity in how we perform our processes.

So what's happening here?

So RPA is new kind of approach, here, again, the fastest growing enterprise software category.

delivers a new approach to solving this complexity due to solving the productivity stagnation, and it's creating amazing time to value in return on investment. Now, that's thrilling companies around the world.

We have 8000 plus, or 8500 plus customers worldwide today, You know, almost all the Fortune 100, and so you have this kind of momentum happening. People realized, Wow, this is how I can can deliver digital transformation fast.

So, this example here just showed you a robot interacting between that suite and Salesforce.

Go into Outlook and in Slack, send them to send a message. Really, there are millions of use case possibilities around any kind of can collect, connection between any kind of system, Any use case, but a robot does is basically interacts with those systems like a human does, and performs that work for them, to augment them, and to help free them up to be more, to be to be more creative.

So what happens here is these robots, if you don't, if you're not familiar, then with automation and robotic process automation, essentially, these robots look at a screen, they're not your physical robots with. and what the robots run on a computer, but they look at a screen like a human does.

They can see a screen that can know where different, different, different, different applications are that can think, and they can understand, OK, I need this screen is over here. I can go do this.
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I can move, you know, and they can create a, basically, a robot can perform a process, know that the perhaps is done dozens, or thousands, or hundreds of times in a call center, or in finance operations, or in HR.

And then, with the robots, can then perform that work with the same reliability and resiliency of a human.

If you don't realize it, actually, how you look at the screen is quite complex. There's get to get a robot to really be able to look at a screen where things can move, and fields can change, and do that process for you over and over and over. Even when things change with complete 100% of resiliency and reliability. That's the breakthrough behind it. We call that computer vision.

And essentially, it's an automation layer now that we've created, that's on top of all of those databases and systems that allow you to kind of digitize processes.

And what happens here, you know, big roi returns, your employees have, you'll create new capacity for a company.

and it's, and this is what's exciting right now in, in, in the in, you know, hear this from, you know, from Peter Peter, Peter and Jeff.

So this theme of this session really about, it's becoming this race that we see now across organizations worldwide who don't want to be like an excentric. But you want to stay and be thriving leaders in their industries in 5, 10, 20 years.

They don't want to put out of business by others who are digitizing faster and improving their customer experience faster with, with automation. There's a race going on here and so, really, a fully automated enterprise saying there are very few that are fully automated.

Everybody's on this journey, and Jeff and Pete, you will tell it will tell you this kind of as well. But this is sort of the destination now that CEOs and CFOs and board of directors now are driving as automation becomes a boardroom priority in this four kind of areas.

But fully automated enterprise one is a fully automate enterprise, thinks about, how do I sign them All automated will work to robots, and that exist in every function, in every organization, even in marketing at UI path. I have robots do the work of about a fifth of my employee base, right, so that I can, you know, our employees could spend more time on on creative functions. And a lot of that's repetitive work.

But we're more productive as an organization, and it's good for our, you know, for our employees and for our bottom line as well.

A fully automated enterprise thinks about, how do I provide a robot for every employee.

So what's beautiful is you can download our technology onto your, your laptop, or you can, or you can use our cloud automation cloud, and you can build robots literally over the weekend to do work for you. We have this happening right now in over one thousand universities, around, around the world, a big universities.

You know, in the US.

Large-scale universities, their business school students are learning how to use UI path, is their number one tool when they graduate, Big schools, like William and Mary, and my backyard in DC, George Mason, VCU, James Madison University, University of Maryland, all college graduates, are graduating with this technology being sort of a weapon, much like Excel, was when I was younger. And Lotus 1 2 3 is it wasn't in the world of accounting and mathematics.

UI path is the same that same kind of phenomenon. Third a fully automated replace democratizes development. Haven't made it easy for everyone, even if you're not technical or you're not an engineer, you don't know how to code, to be able to automate what you do. Have robots do work for you. And so that's kinda the simplicity behind this technology.

Btog CTAPeople in HR, people in finance, no longer have to depend on IT or engineers who are constrained and keeping systems current, to be able to go create automation digitally transform a process, right? So democratizing development is key. And then finally, every organization node, at some point, you have to apply AI to make the business more competitive to make, to help make decisions. You know, in a call center, from rules, based to experience based. Right? And to create the ability for a robot, to help a human, like a better and smarter decision based on experience.

And so, really, what we're happy, but a fully automated enterprise, that unleashes AI across every facet of a business. You apply a model to that automation. It's flowing, You know, through through, through your organization. So, you know, in essence, what's happening here, kind of, why this market is so on, Fire. And people are so excited about it, is, that, people are realizing that, if I can become a fully automated enterprise, this is how I actually become a digitally transformed enterprise.

And, so, we UI path, kind of my one slide, on kind of, the products. I don't want to confuse anyone or not. But we have a platform now that it helps people find the processes, the audit, which ones are high, impact, low risk, which ones can provide the highest return on investment.

How do I build automations fast, really fast time to value days and weeks, not months and years?

We're used to it, kind of traditional B2B, know, technology projects, right? How do I didn't manage and govern these robots so that they're secure? So, we know what's going on for compliance and things, as we build our kind of robotic workforce in our organization, How do I run these robots efficiently? Maybe they run on a laptop, and they run in the Cloud, or they run for dispatch worker.

You know, at at Verizon or Rogers Communications, big customers of ours, helping make their experience in the field better, right?

So robots are kind of running in different locations in a way that's optimal, you know, along with the human worker as well.

Then ultimately, how do I help people engage with robots easily and then measuring govern these? And this is sort of a platform that is what we call a flywheel that spends faster. If people get more excited about this, you'll see this from Peter and Jeff. There's Excitement. That builds. As people realize this technology, what it can do for companies and the return on investment.

So with that, and I do talk fast, I apologize for that.

But with that, I will hand over to the more important part of the presentation too, real life scenarios and first up here, Peter Mar from ADT. Peter, take it away.

Thank you, Bobbi. That was a great introduction. It's, I'm really glad to be here today. And want to say thanks to Jose for leading this.

I'm really looking forward, excuse me, to sharing with all of you in the audience a little bit about how and why we use UI path.

I think Bobby did a great job of setting it up, and relaying the excitement that we're feeling here. So, I lead the Intelligent Automation Program here at ADT.

Our program started a little over a year ago, and we're just getting bigger and bigger with each passing day.

I'd like to start out by providing a little bit of context and background on ADT and some of our current initiatives.

Go to the next slide.

ADT has been around for awhile. In fact, probably some of you are customers. Maybe some of your neighbors are you've probably seen are ubiquitous, blue yard signs, and our commercials on TV and online YouTube.

Each of the numbers on this slide tells its own story, but collectively, they add up to the fact that we are a trusted brand that operates at scale and in the business of protecting people and property, and saving lives.

And I bring this up, because it's important for two reasons. First, we have to make sure that any changes and improvements we make here, can work at scale.

And secondly, because we're so big, even making us, even making small improvements, we'll add up, and I'll talk about that in just a bit.

Go to the next slide.

Because we've been around for so long, it's safe to say that most people think of ADT, is an alarm, company, or monitoring company, and they're right. That is our bread and butter.

But today's home is increasingly becoming a smart home, the connected home.

And this gives us the opportunity to evolve our own offers and expand the types of protection that we provide.

And so I want to just share just a few things that we're working on within that context.

Next slide.

So, across ADT, we're working on numerous initiatives too many to individually identify. So we'd like to talk about them in terms of three categories, Connect and protect, smarter security.

An ADT anywhere connect and protect is our core offer, the bread, and butter, as I mentioned before, what we're mostly known for today.

But with our advances in technology, we're able to make our bread and butter even better.

For instance, we're working on ways to use sensors in the home to tell responders that there's not only a fire in the House, but how many people are in the house, on what floor, and in what room?

We might also be able to recognize that a family member didn't come home, like he or she normally is supposed to.

And then send a text to your phone, notifying you that.

we're also working with a range of technologies to help businesses increase security and reduce costs. And all these fall under what we call smarter security.

And just as connected technology has revolutionized home and business security, it's also giving us the ability to offer ADT protection on the go.

Our so secure mobile app puts the power of monitoring service in the palm of your hand.

Just tap the app and ADT can send assistance to your phone's GPS location.

Now I could go on and on about all the cool things we're working on here. But what I've been asked to speak to you about is RPA and our program.

So I just wanted to share some of the innovation that we have going on underway here at ADT.

So next slide.

As a publicly traded company, operating an industry where accuracy and speed can't be mutually exclusive, ADT is adapting new technologies to ensure, we can deliver on our brand promise of security and protection.

In particular, we look at, for ways to help execute on efforts within those three pillars, as I just discussed.

But broadly speaking, we look at RPA is a way to both boost accuracy and compliance, as Bobby mentioned, as well as reduce non value tasks, non value added tasks. That can keep our team from spending more time with customers, solving problems, moving projects for being more creative.

It's through this lens that we've been working with, UI path.

And I'm going to share a couple of examples of how our approach to RPA has benefited both ADT and our customers.

So, on the next slide, our automation or automation journey began with a pilot in our financial services group. We identified two processes that we deem to be relatively low complexity that had high volumes and that were impactful in terms of the work that was being done in one of which was actually a key socs control.

So, traditionally, these processes involve making customer account updates or comparing account components for accurate setup.

Sometimes these actions could lead to small, but important errors, which could ultimately be caught in audits and corrected.

So, not only was process time consuming, but the time needed to audit and revise was also costly.

And since implementing RPA, we've seen a reduction in errors as well as time to completion.

Through RPA, we're able to reduce the average handle time of these two processes by over 60%. Now, while auditors haven't done a full socs audit on the one process yet, we anticipate a reduction or complete elimination of those socks deficiencies.

And on the next slide, we're we're in the midst of automating certain tasks for our field representatives today.

Most of the business is driven from field staff that sells to installs for and services our customers.

We're looking at the entire spectrum of intelligent automation to support our field staff, allowing them to focus more on the value added work and less on the administrative parts of our job.

So for instance, our field system installers as part of their their job, they currently after, they currently have to call an ADT agent after each install has completed at a customer's home.

Event Email Graphic Virtual Conferences (17)-1And they'd call to confirm, the account has been set up properly. This takes time for both the installer and the ADT agent on the other line, meaning both, have less time to take care of other customers. So we found a way to automate the account confirmation, process leading, to increased time for more value, add, more value added activities.

And as we saw with our pilot in the finance team, we can expect an increase in accuracy which will reduce the number of potential issues accustom might have post install.

Internally, we've, given an identity to our new digital workforce, we call them blue bots.

We are currently planning to expand our reach into all areas of our business.

We did an initial opportunity scan late last year where we spoke to over 20 business functions, 20 groups, across a variety of business functions and uncovered about 100 different opportunities for RPA, mostly consisting of back office processes.

We plan to continue this search this year for more opportunities, scanning new areas where we haven't looked yet.

Our vision is to unleash intelligent automation across every facet of work at ADT just like that fourth pillar there. From RPA to virtual assistance, to document intelligence and machine learning, I believe there exists an ADT use case across the entire automation spectrum.

And I think it's probably safe to say that our blue bots are going to be very busy in the coming year.

So I want to just pivot for a moment, for those of you who are in the audience, thinking about starting down the RPA path in your own business, here are a few things that I just would suggest to consider.

Number one, is getting support at the top levels of your business.

Getting that executive buy in the best way for your program to move forward fast, is with a top-down approach.

Align your program and its goals with your business's overall goals.

Create a C suite steering committee that can help drive the strategy of the program.

In many cases, that shouldn't be too difficult, and, as I mentioned, will go a long way with getting that executive buy in.

The second item is around governance, especially for publicly traded companies, like ourselves. Governance is crucial.

Get connected with internal audit and information security teams.

Make sure you're aligned to your company's internal internal policies.

Create a written policy procedure document that outlines how your program will address items, such as ITG sees, segregation of duty, incident change, and risk management.

I really think that having a solid governance framework will allow for a much smoother automation cycle, and the third item is partnering with IT.

My program currently sits within the business, but IT are my best friends. Get to know who owns which applications, who can explain the architecture of your applications.

This will prove to be very useful, when automating processes and voiding, potential roadblocks and slowdowns.

So these are just a few top priorities. There's a lot of things to focus on when getting started, but these are a few that I think are particularly critical when starting an automation program.

And I think, by putting these compute key components into place, you'll be in a great position to begin automating at scale.

So thank you, I'll turn it back over to you now, Bobby.

Thank you, Peter, and now, over to, to Jeff King, VP Procurement at Sonic Automotive. Jeff.

Great, thanks, Bobby.

And, and before I jump in, I'm going to just re-iterate what Peter said. I wish I had that last slide, because he is that on. I totally agree with that. A top-down support, the steering committee, partnering with IT, is critical, because every time we think we know what we're gonna go automate, we find something in a system that we hadn't seen before, and we need to understand who owns it and what we're impacting. So great points.

Um, but I guess I'll jump in here with just a little bit about Sonic Automotive.

We have two major brands.

Sonic Automotive is our retail vehicle franchise, so it's your typical branded manufacturers, a BMW Store, Mercedes, et cetera, and then our eco park automotive arm is our ... brand.

Lot of a lot of data points on the slide, but suffice to say we've got a little over 100 locations at the time to put this slide together. We're in 14 states, we're up to 18 today.

But large company like I went on, and we'll just skip through this one.

And two things I want to talk about today and we'll get from fairly quick, or one is where did we start with automation? And then the second one is just a case study that I think is interesting. It might be fun to talk through.

So as far as where we started, Babi if you want to jump to the next slide, I think we started where probably everybody does that our shared services center.

So it's, I think Peter pointed this out back office processes that are just ripe for automation. It's repetitive. It's data entry. It's transferring information from one system to another, with a lot of logic based activities.

And not a lot of critical, um, fault processes involved.

And so a couple things that we did out of the gate where we saw a big roi early on, we've been, we've been at this about 18 months and stopped February of 2020 just before the pandemic.

Um, we've got a couple of things, high level, top three, so our factory invoice process.

The manufacturers are new car franchises, so think of like a BMW dealership.

Manufacturers decide what parts, we're going to have an inventory in our service department, so they will send us parts.

They have access to our bank account, so they'll take the money for those parts.

And to do the reconciliation, they'll post an invoice to a portal that every individual dealership has. So, across the 100 plus locations, you've got 100 plus portals and we had a team of folks and our Shared Services Center.

Screenshot (4)That would spend all day every day going into each portal, downloading all of the invoices that the manufacturers have posted that day, and copying every individual line of every single part that had been sent to our dealerships and copying that into our inventory and our accounting systems.

So, very manual, and it's nothing but transferring data from a portal, from a document loaded into a portal into our accounting system. So with that, yeah, the reason we did is we thought we could expand the service and bring more of our dealerships into the shared service center.

And so we grew, we went from having 50 dealerships being supported by shared services to now All hundred athletes today. It's 144.

All of them, we actually eliminated one position and then grew without hiring. What would have required an extra nine.

So the ROI is valid if we were able to grow without hiring those extra roles.

The other benefits that we saw that we knew we would see, but we didn't realize how impactful that would be.

Or the data processing speed and accuracy. So as soon as an invoice gets posted into that portal, now it's, it's almost instantaneous that it gets plugged into our accounting system, so we can do our reconciliations faster, which allows us from an accounting standpoint to close our books faster every month, every quarter every year. Because we're not waiting on all that data to get copied in from, from these invoices.

And other pieces, the accuracy, robots can't make typos. They read the information.

They stored in their, in their memory When they go to plug it into the next system, it's not like they're keying something in as a person why So they can't fat finger or type out of, so the data is actually more accurate, which showed up, very prevalently In our next process we went through real quick, is our stock ends, very similar manual process, the dealerships build a car and they're going to send it to us. Right, so a BMW X seven comes off the line before BMW's even set it to one of our stores.

They've got an invoice with the build sheet posted to our portal, and our dealerships don't know it's coming until they look at that portal, They don't have any information on it. They don't know how to price it, They can't market it, can't go on the website until it gets into our inventory system, So that's what this team was doing.

And, so, similar to the factory noise process, they would login to the, each individual portal, they go find a vehicle, bill cheat or invoice, and they take that information and plugin or inventory management system.

So, again, with that, we were able to bring more dealerships to be supported by our shared services environment and we eliminated the need to hire six extra positions, But at the same time, we saw it.

What, we didn't know what was happening was, as, as manufacturers, were releasing New model years, right? So, you might have an X seven in 20 19 that's got a platinum level, might say a certain thing, you have a certain entertainment package. What have you. But in 20 twenty, they rename it.

What the people were doing is they were guessing, right, so we get this ... that rolls off the line, would get the bill cheat.

And the people that were doing the stockade process didn't see an exact match to what was on the balance sheet. So they would guess at what an option was before, and the people didn't all get the same way. And so that leads to inconsistent an accurate inventory listings on our website. So we think we have this specific car with the specific options. We gotta look at the actual physical feel vehicle, and it could be a little bit different.

With the robots, we actually gave them permission to update the inventory management system.

So, if they saw something new, they updated and added it with all the details that are on that build sheet from the manufacturer, so we know it's accurate, and then the next robot that sees that same vehicle doesn't have to guess It's there. It's an option. So, we've actually cleaned our inventory management system almost on accident as we're going through that process, So.

we're talking to vehicles faster, We're doing it more efficiently, it's much more accurate.

And that allows us to sell our vehicles faster. If we get it posted online much faster than we used to in the manual way.

The last one I'll touch on that we're gonna do a case study, is provisioning a termination.

So, like Peter mentioned, all the, the various applications that, that our team needs to do. There are different functions, right?

We've got a huge corporate matrix that says, anybody that has, you know, job code one has these varying levels of access in these 38 different systems, I think, is what we're up to.

And we had a helpdesk that would go in, right? So, we hired somebody, and we'd say, OK, we hire Bob.

He's in this position, based on his job code, he needs this, access, This, access this access, all the way down the line.

And that information would flow into our helpdesk partner, and they had a bunch of people that would go in and provision that specific access in each, or whatever's appropriate of those 38 different systems.

What the robots do, And that took up to 48 hours, that was the SLA we have with them to allow them to do that With the robots do.

Same thing, but again, they can't make typos. So they get the information out of the HR system, and they do it almost immediately.

Screenshot - 2021-07-31T184941.368We've put a, an SLA commitment back to the business for hours, but we're seeing that they're being performed and completed in less than five minutes. On average.

So, if we hire somebody on Monday morning it, 8 30, somebody forgot to put an HR, but they showed up at the front door. As soon as it goes in the HR system, within minutes, they've been provisioned appropriately at every system that we have.

Conversely, on the termination side, right, you've got, Peter was to write soft controls and you've got important systems that may impact your financials, are the various access levels, somebody leaves your organization, you don't want them to maintain that access.

And, there are a lot of auditing, rules and regulations that kill around that especially in public companies that make sure that access is appropriate and in line with employment status at a minimum right and so with terminations we would go through and we had controllers and every location. Once a quarter.

They get access lists, all these different systems, where they would have to go through and make sure everybody list it has the appropriate access and is still employed, and that's a role, you know, 38 different systems worth times 100 dealerships. It's a massive manual reconciliation, just to make sure access is appropriate.

And part of that was because we had people that are fallible right, that would receive the termination notices and then go in and try and de provision in all these different systems, what the robots do.

Again, in near real time, they get the same information. They go, look, they don't have to differentiate from this matrix and say, OK, Bob should have had access to these eight systems. The robots go in, They look at every system. It doesn't matter if they should have access, or not. The robot goes in. It looks at every system and make sure that Bob doesn't have access and it actually takes a screenshot showing that it doesn't have access And stores that in a folder That we can then give to KPMG is our audit partner.

And it's, it's actually another unintended consequence that we stumbled into, but it's been phenomenal.

It's reduced our audit fees, and we've had the audit process, the robot goes through. And it's become an IT GC, as opposed to user access controls.

So, um, we've dramatically reduced our audit expense and increased our compliance with our controls substantially.

So those are some of the things we started with. And, then, let's jump into the next slide, Bobby.

And we'll talk about a case study with our Guest Experience Center.

So, we'll get into how we a process that we do at the Guest Experience Center and how we supplemented that with Tom Hanks' Meg Ryan, Liam neeson, and Kevin Costner, So, if you jump into that, Guest Experience Center, Bobby.

So, the process that we had as a manual, um, process, is leads that would come in on vehicles. We have a call Center. This is our call center. These are our agents.

So if you see a vehicle posted for sale on carvey, re-use, cars dot com, auto trader, any number of third party websites where all the, maybe all the major dealerships are advertising.

You click on that link and it sends a lead into our CRM system that goes to this team.

And what will happen is we'd get 15,000 leads a month.

And they'd be disbursed, right? You can't have one person manage all those leads.

And so the best thing we could do with the manual way is say, OK, we've got X number of people. Divide those leads up, give you some under. This person. This person. This person writes are all split up.

And then each person would go through and send an e-mail, make a phone call, whatever it is.

And the majority of them, the leads, we get are all just e-mail contacts.

And so, it's now assigned to this agent, and this agent is responsible for the communication, with that guest from start to finish.

And so, what happens is, if you were to click on a link that submit your information. It's our, our call center.

That lead might get assigned with 20 other leads to will stick with Bob. Right?

Bob is your guest experience agent, and he's now going to run down his list of 20 leaves that he has for today, and start sending out e-mails to each one, right? And as he's going, he's got to complete this whole list.

If the first person responds back, it's gonna go right to ball.

And so all of our agents are busy going through the list while customers are responding and they're, they're sitting and waiting.

Well, Bob's going through his list so that's the that's the process that we had in a manual way. So let's talk about Tom Hanks.

Tom Hanks is the robot we put in place.

Everybody's familiar with sleepless in Seattle right? So Tom hanks's character is why we named the robot after him.

He's out there searching, right. So this robot is out there just constantly looking through our CRM system. We have 124 different instances of the CRM system. So each dealership doesn't talk to each other, so Tom Hanks is constantly just recycling through all of them looking for a newly.

And as soon as you find one, he's going to grab the information is going to ingest all the details that we have about it. And he's going to pass it over to Meg, right?

So Meg Ryan is his counterpart from Flips in Seattle.

But as is the case, I think most places she's, she's the strong powerful woman that does all the work.

So, she takes all that information that Tom Hanks' provided on that particular lead and runs through a decision tree and says OK, based on where this lead came from, what information we have? If it's just an e-mail address, do we have a phone number?

Or did they provide custom comments or questions on different options?

Those sorts of things are based on all of that Meg Ryan, the robot's role is to determine what's the appropriate communication hayden's for that lead?

And then she passes it over to Liam neeson and so Liam neeson's role is, if anybody's seen taken this is, this is the iconic saint, right. So, Liam neeson role is to send off that first e-mail. And, and, go and find that lead and try and get them engaged.

So, from, if you remember the manual process, right, we looked at, the leads come in and they're assigned in buckets to the individual agents.

Event Email Graphic Virtual Conferences (17)-1And, they run through those leads before they're able to, it might be, you know, 20 minutes, half an hour before the initial contact gets a response.

With these three robots running, it's less than a minute.

And, so, in near real, time, We're trying to reach out and engage with the guests while they're engaging with us, right?

This all starts when they engage with us in this keeps that cadence scowling.

If Liam neeson doesn't have any success with this first e-mail, we then have the ongoing communication Kagan's, which in some cases, goes after 64 days. So, he passes that off to Kevin Costner.

this one's a little more obscure, but this is Kevin Costner it's in a movie called The Postman, where he found a bunch of unwanted mail, delivered it to people that didn't want it, so Kevin Costner's role in our guests experience centers to take the next 63 days. In some instances, and continue sending those e-mails, and trying to get a guest to engage from that initial leave that they submitted.

And, once they do, once a guest engages, one of the big benefits, and one of the reasons we did this one was on purpose, was to have the ability. As soon as a guest responds, since we freed up all the time the agents were sending, sending e-mails.

When a guest responds, we're now able to take that in real time and assign it to a human agent that is available right now to connect with somebody. So if somebody responds to that first e-mail in less than a minute, you can go through this entire process and have somebody on the phone with a customer.

Or it could be, you know, three weeks a month later, somebody finally responds to something. And maybe they're more engaged. Now needs to be where now we've got a live person.

It doesn't filter into a queue for somebody to communicate with.

So let's jump to the next slide Babi. We'll talk about some of the intended objectives, why we did this project.

Um, you know first and foremost, as with most things that we've done with automation, or to reduce and eliminate our overhead expenses, reduce our SGA.

We talked about the response times and trying to get faster response to our guests.

We're able to extend our communication cadence out to that 64 days, where, you know, the longer that cadence takes, the less likely a guest is to engage.

So, having people sending those e-mails, once you get to that tail, end of that cadence, it becomes less cost effective. So, we stopped doing it with a robot, it doesn't cost us any extra to send another e-mail and another 1 another 1, so we've been able to extend that cadence with the robot.

And then I just mentioned improving the guests response time. So those were our intended objectives.

Somebody actually, that we, we didn't know what was going to happen going into it, is reporting. I mentioned all of these CRM systems. It's one system, but, you know, 120 different instances of it. It didn't speak to each other.

So you might have a lead at one store that doesn't correlate with the lead somewhere else.

The robot reports on its activity back to us into a SQL server, and so it helps us understand where the guests are interested. So we first turned this on at one store.

We had 20 leads come in the first day and I believe it was 17. It was a very high percentage.

We're all on the same vehicle and it highlighted something that we never would have noticed Otherwise which is that vehicles price wrong? Right? Everybody's excited about it because it was priced wrong.

So we were about to lose a bunch of money on it if we hadn't known.

So this highlighted that for us within operationally this is where we hit that huge homerun is we increased our engagement by 7 75 percent from 4 to 7 percent engagement.

Closing ratio, right? Once they're engaged, do they actually buy a car than a 472%? So, 15,000 leads a month, on average. The manual way of 4% engagement would be 600 people.

You close 7% of that, we would sell 42 cars. That's what we used to see.

The new process with the robots, supporting the communication, the same 15,000 leads. We see 1050 people engage and close 12% of them, So we're selling 126 vehicles now, where we used to sell 42, which is a huge operational benefit.

Um, so I think my time is just about up. I could talk about this all day.

But with that, I think the next slide, if anybody has any questions or wants to just chit chat on automation, feel free to reach out.

Yeah, thanks, Jeff. I tell you, Peter and Jeff, that was awesome.

I mean, not only did you talk about the Roi, which is tremendous, right, kind of across the board but you showed how much fun automation can be with robots, right?

Whether it's Blue bots, or it's Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, Liam Neeson and Kevin Costner bots.

I hope people on the on the call get a sense for the amazing, you know, impacts to the business.

Transformational impacts the quick, you know, impacts, but also that people, It's just fine people like this.

and once you realize robots are doing the work you hate, and they make you help you serve customers better, and it's a, it's a wonderful thing for employee engagement and employee experience. So thank you both very much, Josie. I know we don't have a whole lot of time, but back to you.

Well, listen, this was fantastic for a great presentation on showing the potential, and the realization of that potential of robotics process automation today, very rich examples here. Share. Thank you so much, Peter and Jeff for, for, for those, for that level of detail on the implementation, which is what our global audience is, is very interested on. So I'll, you mentioned this for your presentation.

I want to ask one of the main themes that came up doing it as part of the audience questions, which is, you have touch about, talked about governance. You talked about structure. And the how to get it right, Can you summarize for us, like in NaN or so? What are some of the your key advice, maybe, for each one of you, very quickly? What is, what are some things that we must get right so that we can really harvest the value potential of RPA in our organizations?

Screenshot (4)Maybe, Jeff, Do you want to go first?

Yeah, sure. From my standpoint, you know, I think Peter hit on a pretty good, but I totally agree with amidst. From a governance structure, standpoint of the steering committee, I think, is where it needs to start.

And it doesn't necessarily need to be too formal, but as long as you've got a group of folks that have the right level of understanding of what's happening in the organization's strategic direction and various different projects, that helps drive prioritization of the right things, and the ability to get the right people involved. Where you may be automating a specific process in one business unit, but there's going to be overlap somewhere else.

And you're gonna need that support to be able to navigate across those business line.

So, for me, that steering committee, and having the ability to make, navigate through those challenges.

Terrific, Peter, Peter?

Yeah, I would agree with that.

I would also say, I would go as far as saying, A maybe even creating one of the other things I did was create a governance committee, which was like another level down below the steering committee. That included folks from IT, HR, internal audit information security. So, it was a cross functional team.

That was more, know, leaders of functions that were more aware of what's going on on the day to day and that could really help to advise, right, if there's a And if there's a potential automation that we're looking at that was sourced to us from a group, that might be going through a transformation, or there may be a new application.

No, that's going to impact that process.

Having that kind of cross functional group, Really, health has helped us to stay in tune with what's going on, make sure, making sure we're, we're aligned properly and not going, going down a path that's going to lead to. That's not going to deliver the value long term that we hope.

Excellent. And Bobby, any final words you'd like to share with the audience? Look, this is a fun.

You know, I've been a B2B, a longtime, lots of software companies, and cloud companies, know, a lot of times it's a struggle to get roi. It's a struggle to get excited about the impacts of these technologies they take a long time.

Not with automation, not with RPA, as Jeff and Peter showed, it's exciting, get your CFO, CEO, CIO is involved, because this is, this is an exciting part of how companies can get more productive, people get more excited and engaged, and customers, and employees.

Well, gentlemen, what I, what a great presentation, cross industry leadership. You're a great demonstration on how to leverage great technologists to create value and you are indeed creating the future today. Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and your expertise with our global audience, we're all very grateful for that.

Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Bobby.

Thank you, Jessica.

Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, what I want a great presentation from, um, Bobby, Peter, and Jeff, cross industry examples on how digital transformation is taking place in a very practical way, in a very tactical way, as well, where we're creating value, significant value for all stakeholders today. And, and this acceleration of RPA implementations throughout businesses has been fantastic. And, it's great to have insights from true leaders and practitioners who are doing it, not just conceptually talking about, about this, this implementations, That terrific insights. Again, very thankful for their thought and industry leadership in this important area of digital transformation.

We're going to be taking a break next now, and next, we'll bring a great leader from Johannesburg South, Africa. We're going to talk a little bit about energy. We're going to talk about renewables, We're going to talk about digital technologies. And we're going to have the leadership of Steve Apps, who is the Chief Advisor, Digital Transformation for U S, and C, which is ultra safe nuclear company and, and come on, anyone that, whose last name is F, mister. Apps, I mean, he was born to do to lead these transformations and we're going to hear directly from Steve and directly from his office in Johannesburg South, Africa very much Looking forward to them. That will be the final session of Day Chu. And I hope to see you back here at the top of the hour.

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About the Author

Bobby Patrick-1Bobby Patrick,
Chief Marketing Officer,
UiPath.

Bobby Patrick is CMO of UiPath, the fastest growing and leading provider of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and AI software worldwide. In this role, he leads global marketing strategy and execution as UiPath continues to usher in the “Automation First Era,” helping businesses of all sizes digitize everyday business operations and apply AI to drive true digital transformation. A technologist at heart, Patrick has driven significant growth in technology businesses for over two decades, ranging from Fortune 50 to start-ups.  

Patrick has driven significant growth in technology businesses for over two decades, ranging from Fortune 50 to start-ups. He most recently served as CMO for Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s multi-billion-dollar Cloud business. Patrick was responsible for global branding, product marketing, communications and demand generation to deliver on the company's strategic growth imperatives. He served previously as CMO for Basho, GXS (acquired by OpenText), and Digex (acquired by Verizon). Patrick began his career at the FBI as a computer specialist at the age of 16. 

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About the Author

Jeff King-1Jeff King,
VP of Procurement and Process Development,
Sonic Automotive.

With almost two decades of experience, Jeff King has distinguished himself as an industry leader in procurement, supply chain management, and process improvement. In his current role as Vice President of Procurement and Process Development, Jeff is responsible for leading Fortune 300 company Sonic Automotive throughout a wide range of responsibilities, including procurement, supply chain, robotic process automation, AP, and customer service. Jeff oversees 15,000 suppliers with a $1.2 billion annual spend. He also serves as the chair of the Center of Process Excellence (CoPE), focusing on process improvement and automation.

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About the Author

Peter Marra-1Peter Marra,
Senior Automation Manager and CoE Lead of the Intelligent Automation program,
ADT Inc.

Peter Marra is the Senior Automation Manager and CoE Lead of the Intelligent Automation program at ADT Security. During is 8+ year tenure at ADT, he has worked in a variety of roles.

His time spent in Accounting, Financial Systems and FP&A has given him the opportunity to expand his knowledge of the business and its relationship to Finance and Technology, ultimately leading to a role centered around Intelligent Automation.

  • Certified Public Accountant, Florida       
  • MS in Accounting from Florida Atlantic University
  • BA in Communications from Florida International University

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