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June 23, 2020

RPA & IA Live - SPEAKER SPOTLIGHT : Lessons Learned from successful RPA Implementations that have saved millions of dollars

 

Courtesy of Caesars Entertainment's Rias Attar, below is a transcript of his speaking session on 'Lessons Learned from successful RPA Implementations that have saved millions of dollars' to Build a Thriving Enterprise that took place at BTOES RPA & Intelligent Automation Live Virtual Conference.

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Session Information:

Lessons Learned from successful RPA Implementations that have saved millions of dollars

RPAs can be used to ease the connection and interface between different technologies or between old legacy and newer systems. It is perfect to replace processes that are highly manual, rule-based, and repetitive. While this tool has proven success, they come with a big bill and lots of monitoring and validation. 

While RPAs can save significant cost and time they cannot replace fully integrated systems that talk to each other without the need for a middle-channel to bend the data and translate into other forms. I will provide several examples of how we utilized RPAs to save millions of dollars and avoid significant headache. I will also list some steps I would do differently next time I implement an RPA project.

  • RPAs are fantastic, if they are done right and if the right resources/partners have been utilized
  • Significant cost and time can be saved using RPAs
  • Monitoring and validation can come with big bills
  • Next time I implement RPAs I would probably invest in resources
  • Many RPAs can last for years and can do magic
  • When translating data between different systems/technologies, RPAs are great “band-aids” that can temporary replace fully integrated systems. However, a fully integrated system should be the ultimate goal if money, resources, and time are available because the solution is native and should works seamlessly.

Session Transcript:

Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to RPA and intelligent automation lies, we have truly saved one of the best. For last, we have lessons learn from successful RPA implementation that have saved millions of dollars. So we're setting the bar very high here, because our next speaker can live up to those expectations. Re-assess our vice-president for Enterprise Project Management Office and Strategic Initiatives at Caesars Entertainment. He's a business strategist, transformation expert, operational excellence leader, program, and change management professional. He has worked for various companies from small to large Fortune 500, and in a variety of industries in the United States.

In the Middle East, in Canada, he has initiated, planned and executed transformation programs that have contributed over one billion dollars combined for their organizations. He's also publishing a book in October and launching a business consulting practice called, say, A plus. He join us today from Las Vegas, Nevada, Welcome Reyes.

Great. Thank you, Jose. Thank you. Thank you, Jose.

Welcome, everyone, and thank you for Brian and Visa, to give me this opportunity again for, for today's session, I really wanted to share my, my, my journey with RPA, with all of you, to give you some insights on how we did the implementation and and what, what did we do? What can we do better? And, and the lessons learned. So as some of you may know, I lead the Transformation and Program Management Office and, Continuous Improvement in the Caesars Entertainment, The toughest part of my job as when the CEO comes to me and asked me to get about $200 million every year.

A Beta to supplement the targets.

And you go and you try to tackle this through process re-engineering through technology, through people and data. So we try everything.

And a couple of years ago, we came across RPA and we started kind of playing around with this RPA. We engaged a couple of companies to help us understand what RPA is all about. The, the, the good lessons learned that I heard that we experienced RPA was that, it is fantastic. It is very, very beneficial. I could not save tens of millions of dollars without, it's partially without RPA.

I have to tell you that we have our share with you some success stories. But this thought, I wanted to kind of share with you this, this preliminary cover of my book, which is called Change Doing. What we are all about to do in our organizations is to change. We are, we are here to change. We, we want to make a positive impact changing for the sake of change is meaningless without A, defined the predefined goals and objectives. So our objective is always to change to adapt to the changes in environment, and to find ways to capture, and and realize positive positivity and that change.

And this is kind of what I'm talking about in my book, it's about changing to an oil change doing. It's not about change only, but to win. And there, I tackle that people process technology aspects. And RPA is a part of my book, Believe It or not. And this presentation highlights some of those items I talk about in my book. So feel free to, to check it out in full.

So I want to start with, again, change. People resist change, I have to tell you my office job.

I think a couple of years ago was to convince, not only management but managers and line workers. That I need to change, and archaea was one of them.

Screenshot (22)People prefer to deal with the devil they know. They notice the devil, but they're comfortable with it. And they usually do not like to change the change management. It's a big aspect when you want to connect to RPA. You have to convince people you have to talk about, not only talk about, but you have to show in real data, what RPA is all about and how that, how. it helps.

So we all start with discomfort zone. We're all happy. And, you know, the customer, or the CEO, or the C suite, or the management are very happy and familiar with this process. Then you start changing things. You move into like, the danger zones, like, Oh, wait, a second. This is unfamiliar. This is This is, I'm stressed, I cannot work on on this anymore. If it's really out of my comfort zone. So, as soon as you start like the learning learning curve, but to to spike, you start to see the learnings, I was like, OK, Wait a second. It's not as bad as I thought, But I may need to find ways to understand it. And then, this is where your life opportunities, And then the growth is, like, the ultimate.

Where do you start to see potential. And this is kind of where you want to reach. You want to, you want to find your spot, like, where exactly can. And how fast can you move from discomfort, Zone through this growth zone, with your management to implement the RPA. So, again, when we talk about learning and machine learning, I like this quote from Alvin Toffler. He says, The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.

So it's really interesting, because because we always try to latch on the knowledge, we know. But we try to avoid, not may, not all, but many of us, who try to avoid, like, I don't want to learn something new, I already proven.

Btog CTABut that's not the case, And this is what we, we did with RPA.

We, we started to realize that the data is power, and we all know about that.

But there's a different level of data, and I wanted to explain this a little bit before I jumped into RPA. So the first element of data is just raw data. The raw data is just a collection of facts and numbers at, when we start to put those together, and, and, and form some, sort of, like information, which is like an aggregation of this data.

And, now, it's not only just the numbers, it means something, it's an information, it tells me something, and that's kind of fix it to a knowledge. The knowledge is now I'm forming a good understanding of this data, and the information, And I'm trying to understand what's going on, what the story, and as soon as I start using this knowledge to create a decision, a partial decision comes wisdom. So, this is kind of the trait of a human being, usually is the wisdom. Usually, until recently, wisdom has been only unique to humans.

It was, it was very tough to have computers as powerful and the software that awful enough to mimic the human wisdom until recently and this is what, you know, the RPA and artificial artificial intelligence is all about.

So, you know, the journey of the level of artificial intelligence. Again, I'm just gonna spend two minutes on this. So on artificial Intelligence, really begins with the what, if algorithms, And then the next level would be like Business Intelligence or BI as a Machine learning as incompatible donation. So RPA live in that, like automation, But what if statement is just a simple what if we used to do it like back? even in the Atheist You know, in the in the visiting the basic. You know, even before Visual Basic if than whatever, we still use it in Excel, you use it in many, many softwares. But this is like the basic, what if that machines can help?

The, the business intelligence becomes handy when you have like a bunch of data. And you want to create those graphs and dashboards and like and illustrate or put this information in there in a meaningful structure. Now, the machine learning becomes like, the next level up when we use this data, and, and, and, and reform some sort of machine learning capabilities. Or, we reach that machine learning activities, where the machine starts to realize certain behavior, and understand that, if this behavior is going to happen, This is what I need to do.

But, on a complicated mainframe, then, the night of automation is the highest level of machine learning. And this is kind of where the machine can do: this is the bot really where the machine can do almost everything. And this is where the wisdom, you know the machine can and can reach that wisdom capability. So I just wanted to kind of show you, you know, how we started kind of realizing the different kinds of elements. And, and why it's really is important.

So when you talk about RPA, RPA, as most of you know, can be used for many applications. I, I heard, I heard several speakers talking about like amazing RPA examples in their organizations.

Brandon, I believe, from your iPad. Talked about like a box for every person. So that's, that's a very interesting vision.

From from, from our perspective or from my perspective, what I have experiences like RPA are very, very helpful. When the process is either highly manual, it's the rule based and it's repetitive. So if you have those three, the RPS can actually hit all marks. We use RP is a law when we try to connect and a a legacy legacy system with cloud as well. So this is usually very hard to achieve with proper integration. I mean, you have to have some sort of a middleman. And that RPA becomes a smidgen that connect those dots, so.

So, this is kind of what we have used IDAs for.

Our Bot Cycle started with, just the idea, you know. Of course, after we get the buy in from the leaders and investments, and the systems necessary to put the RPA and the partners that we need to partner with, to create those ideas, we need to have those ideas. And, and the ideas come in different shapes and sizes. I mean, so so you need to figure out what ideas are best suitable for RPA. So the important aspect is to make sure that you hit the mark, otherwise, you will lose confidence. You may need to start with a bot that actually hit the mark and create this aha moment The Eureka moment. So it was like, whoa. Wait a second. This is amazing.

So, first, we need to kind of filter those ideas, and maybe pick those ideas that may, you know, highly likely hit to hit the spot. We do the initial assessments. We designed the bots. We kind of go through this iteration. I heard about ..., we go through this iteration of, of, you know, design and test and design and test, and then we have the UA T, Then we developed a stabilized the bot and then relaunch it.

This is, what we do at Caesars, when or what we did at Caesars. So, so how did how the RPA works? And again, I'm not the subject matter experts here, but I'm just sharing with you my experience with it. I'm sure there are so many SMEs in here in the audience that can speak to this more intelligent, more intelligently than I do.

But this is kind of my humble experience, where again, with the intake, we get the RP. at RPI Requests, we we made, we have to, we have to make sure that you have a proper process, if the process is not to write, the bot will not be right. So, we have to redesign the process, in any methodology, you may, you, may seek, or you may have. But you may need to redesign the process, because the current process that you may have, for a human, may not be applicable for robots. So, so, you may need to kind of redesign process, Elizabeth, and make sure that the process assessment is complete, and it's, it's good enough for the boss. We do the business case. At the end of the day, any change we do, most of the time, I would say, almost all the time, has to have a positive impact. The positive impact, in my experience, is that is linked to the bottom line. If you can generate a dollar, then you're successful.

If you can generate a customer satisfaction that transition to a dollar, you're successful. If you can transition to lower costs, that transition, that, that means lower dollar spend. That's successful. Anything that is meaningful and measurable. So I encourage all of you to have a measurable impact for anything you do. And specifically, RPA is, this is really what we did.

We tied all arc, is every single RPA to almost as GL, almost as a G, a level, sometimes. And we say, OK, this ball generated X dollars of money.

This dollar saved 40 people, literally, of who were doing manual work.

So, this is where the business case, and complexity, and benefits kind of all comes into play. When you put all of this together, you get your leadership sign off, and then you start developing the box. Where do you put the bot is another thing, now, I mean, the cloud is the most secure, and more more stable environment for the bus to live. And then you have to establish, those triggers. So, what would trigger the bot? Is it the scheduled sugar, every single time, at a certain time, every single day or a week or whatever. Or is it an automated sugar, based on an activity or based on a certain, a certain process, that would automatically trigger or KPI. Maybe it was just triggered that spot.

Email Graphic Virtual Conferences (4)-1Then you put all those inputs for the bus, so the bus has to grab all this information, whether it's a flat file, whether it's a PDF, a website, and application, multiple applications, so you need to kind of figure out what, what those inputs are. And then the action.

And when you put the action, that kind of where the bots have, you know, delivers the objective. And make sure that you always throw those exceptions, because they're almost almost always exceptions, and it comes really complicated when you have many, many, many exceptions.

So this is how, you know, RB RPA worked. And in our vision, I'm gonna give you some samples from from what we have done and how we actually leverage ....

The hospitality industry and specifically, the casino industry, is very complicated. We are like five industries and one we have, We have a hotel.

We have food, beverage, we have Entertainments, we have gaming convention, and behind All of this, we have a very complicated supply chain, very complicated marketing channels, Very complicated hiring channels, And, I mean, it's 65,000 people as we currently have, And, again, it just is just a very complicated system, or multi industries in one industry. So, one example is marketing. So, so, I think that was one of the first you bought, we think, the first box was in accounting and audit.

That was actually good, but they're really meaningful. Bought that we did was in marketing. So, we, as casino operators, we send offer.

We send a lot of offers to customers to come and dine or game or or do anything, at our, you know, 40 plus properties.

So, the offers that we send, our custom tailored, we send every customer, a specific. Sometimes, we say, Mass offer those mass marketing. Like a, like a billboard, or just a regular mail.

But most of the time, we some recent custom tailored offers. Why, because there's a customer who spend a million dollar a day, gambling, or gaming, and there's customer who spent 50, maybe $20 a day.

So there's what we call a network, and it's one of the customer, what every customer walks. So customers would spend a million dollar We have to send them an offer. That's actually wasn't a lot of money. So we send them, like, I don't know, $5000 of free I don't know, dining or something like that. Sometimes, we offer them, Like Avila Avila at Caesars, I don't know if you've seen this, lets you just go to YouTube and see like Caesar's villas. There.

If we don't sell those, but if we have to sell them, they're like 30, $40,000 a day, top of the list. So for those billionaires who have like the greatest smashes, you have to impress them with something. So anyways, make a long story short. We have to impress those people. So we send them no video which offers for the ones that, and then you have that peer and all the way that spectrum to the maybe $1 customers.

So, how would you send the right offer to the right customer? And we have millions and millions and millions of customers.

So, we used to have, we have the mail and direct, you know, by the way, direct mail and e-mail.

So, we, we, we used to have people So we have this system, we have the Salesforce. They have multiple systems that create the offers.

But we used to have people that just audits take some ram, random samples of offers and then audit them. We had like, whole Department to do this.

So, what we did, we started using the box two to proofread or approve every, single, not one. Not a sample, every single, direct mail, and every single e-mail. And, believe it or not, the direct mail, that go to the printing company, It's sent PDFs so, you know, the system generates all those direct mail postcard or leaflets and whatever. And then the printing company print them. So, what we usually look for you to do is like for those people to go to the PDF, the proof file. That has to be sent to the printing company, and make sure that, oh, it's the right amounts to the right customer.

Like literally, and we're talking about millions, millions of others, every month, so we created a bot just simply to do this, too, to, to grab all the information from different areas.

I just outlined here, the process for the e-mail, but, like if there are multiple processes, where, you know, it's open, it's multiple templates. It opens it, logs into the fiscal system, grabbed the name, or the slot, into our casino system, as it brings the net worth of that customer mesh them together. Look at the criteria. Look at the offer.

Put all of those together, proof it, and then flag either yes or no or whatever. And then process them.

And as soon as this process and it is just send them automatically to the to the to the printout. Can you imagine millions and millions and millions of proofing not to mention the human error? that could happen between the 0 on 1 and fatigue and whatever the bot does not. It just does it perfectly, but the process has to be mapped correctly.

The systems and the links and the files all have to be precisely map and, and verified before we launch the spot, so that is, that was one of the most successful boss that we created is, it's about proofing because we don't want to offend a $5000 or $10000 offer, $100 customer or patron, right? So, that's just one example. We receive a lot of money in the spot. Another example was was hotel.

So in the hotel environment, we we have multiple booking agent. We have the website, we have Expedia, we have looking, we have a third party vendors, whatever it and then we have direct bookend.

Great, So we used multiple box for the hotel. one of them is to just aggregate all of those, into, like 1 to 1 centralized system. And then, and the problem with that. Because sometimes the rate that the list at Expedia has may change from the rates that we have in the system, because it changes every second sometimes. So, so that's 1 1 example of both that we created to re validate the rates between the hotel system, which we call LMS. Our LMS is like it's very old, 19 sixties, or seventies, a 400 system.

And then, you know, our hour, our partners, and they invalidate all those rates.

So validating rates was one of them, Validating information is another one. Repricing is another one. So we had multiple multiple blocks targeting hotels and targeting efficiencies That saved us hundreds of thousands of dollars of either missed opportunities wrong, around gray or or sometimes miss patrons, Believe it or not.

Sometimes the the reservation comes in and because we're dealing with very complicated no legacy systems that are very old And then a cloud system that maybe the our partners using can can generate inconsistencies and sometimes transmission loss in between. So, you may, you may lose the reservation, Just imagine you're tired. It's one o'clock after midnight or traveling, You come into the hotel, and there's no reservation, Wait a second, I reserved to exceed yet, well, but it's not showing me and my in my, in my portfolio here and we don't have room. Can you imagine that experience. So we tried, also to, to create a bot to validate those reservations. So this is another very successful example that we use Bots or RPA for the third example, it's actually about retail. So it's another industry that, that we is industry without within an industry that we have in the company. So, we have, how many outlets.

So, if you have many, many, many, hundreds of outlets, and, we have warehouses. And, we have items that order directly from, from, from, vendors. And, we have items that we order from our warehouse to fulfill the orders. So, we, created a bot to create those purchase orders, because, we didn't want those to be manually entered, and the problem was, the system that, we had in, the warehouse was very old, and the, the, the, POS, systems where, where, like, new Dynamics 365 ecosystem so, translating, and, and, and, and, and, and having those two talking together was very challenging. And we had so many manual work in, between those two too complicated processes.

Screenshot (4)
So, you can, you can see how, you know, hundreds of hundreds of items every day has been like, ordered, automatically toolbox, based on a certain threshold of every item, like water, cigarettes, and whatever. I mean, those, those things can be like immediately triggered.

You can probably have your, like, procurement system order those. But the problem was, again, like the transportation between what do we have in the warehouse? Where do you have in that specific location that the need of the retail? And then, and then have a bot to verify this information. And that's only, this is the, also the accounting treatment, that was another big deal.

The accounting treatment of every single item, and changing, changing accounting, transaction, or, or, or took those those items into G L. But that's also another bought that we created.

That's also very, there's, I mean, I'm telling you, some of those parts, if you now go to the stakeholders, and ask them, can, can we, can we go back to the previous profit? There was no, absolutely not. We cannot, we will be dead. So the RP is became a very substantial and critical piece of our foundation in multiple operations. I'll give you another example, it's about scheduling.

So, every day, we have, dealers are the tables. We have different types of labor at the, maybe restaurant outlets or retail outlets are conventions outlets. So, we have very complicated scheduling for labor. So, the, The managers were scheduled the labor, and the labor would just come to work. This is like very basic, but, things happen, somebody gets sick, somebody gets, somebody, gets, early, somebody leaves. So, you, would, you would think that, your, that, your HTML, or human resource system may capture all of this, but you wish it's not as easy. So, this is kind of where, if we have, like, a centralized system for scheduling.

But, through the mergers and acquisitions that we did over the past 20 years or so, we got stuck and, and multiple fragmented system, Like every, almost not almost, but many, many departments and hotels And areas where, like, having their own system to schedule labor. Some of them used Excel, help them use a centralized system that we have. Some of them use a macro that they developed or a database that they developed, or SQL or whatever.

So we, like, we have a second, we need to figure out how we can do this better.

And we want to make sure that all the clock in clock out is accurate, if somebody who, who clocked in early cannot cannot just be given extra time because, I mean, they were not supposed to be there early. Or somebody who come in late, has to be penalized, or maybe somebody who is scheduled to work at the surface ships and then call it off how we can. And you don't want to. You don't want to pay that person. So we want to make sure that before everything goes to the payroll, you validate or invalidate the inputs, The outputs, the exceptions. And this is kind of a simple process of the, of the bot that we created, just to handle exceptions and approval of all the times and people, all those people.

of the, of the scheduling neighbors, scheduling activities and that's another bot that we created.

I think the last one that I would like to share is about HR and that's, that's kind of one of the bus that we created to make sure that we smoothly link the candidates that we want to hire from the minute that. they submit an application all the way the quizzing quizzes acquisition all the way to the offer and placement. So we created the box, because we have, again, like, when we have multiple legacy systems, the bot works perfectly. And they just need to make sure the process, as perfect as data, is clean. The whoever that who designed the process has to be like a subject matter. Experts understand the linkage and all of this. Because garbage in garbage out, The bot will not function very well if you don't have it, right. So this is where we have like the layer. We have the human resources, that we have political, ever.

So we have all of those systems, and HR, that's where also Islands and fragmented and the RP has helped us streamline and validate the information of employees.

And not to mention that some of the information or sensitive. They have to be careful of what you show and how it goes.

So those are some of the examples that that I wanted to share with you The, there were several, several, of you, who mentioned, or some of the presenters who mentioned the control aspects of above and this is extremely important. The controls, support, maintenance, All of those are extremely important. Those are some of the items that I, just listed for, support that we implement and the maintenance Stephanie, So the support that you may that you may have is, OK, monitoring the, the, the, the the, the boss, whether it's the process itself, or the environment, the platform. So, anyway, And make sure that this has been modest. And then once it's monitors anything, it has to be triggered or any anomalies have to be triggered. Whether it's an automated system system. Automated alerts. Maybe just a dashboard of the performance, whatever, or, is, just, could be a custom Alerts?

It could be a manual or something like this. That team thought, this process was perfect, but they found that this new element is very critical to the process. So, they raised concerns about, how will you need to add this? So, this is, Amanda Will support a business need or maybe an issue, but we had some critical issue, and we need to fix it.

And so on, and so forth. Not to mention the change request, So people may also have functional changes. People know, deeper design, maybe non functional changes, like the capacity of the Bob. We run into this, where we needed to increase the capacity, because the bot is handling millions and millions of transactions per second, so we needed to change the capacity of the Bob, and maybe some setting about.

So, it's not always perfect, many, times, the bus and not really do the work, or the deemed unnecessary, or successful. So, you need to make sure that, you have a criteria to sunset.

From a maintenance perspective, again, there's some, like environment changes. It happens a lot.

Windows, version changes, Microsoft, version changes, antivirus, whatever, everything. That changes may impact your boss almost always. So you have to kind of be vigilant about that. The business application itself. It may impact. It may impact, or may not, in fact, the code. So, you also have to have a proper maintenance, and, and of course, the maintenance for the server, or the database, or the visual machines that may have.

OK, so, to summarize, what I was trying to say in this, in this presentation, is that RTI is our task. I love it. If they are done right. If the processes, right? If the partners, you're working with our rights, and if you have people who are designing and helping you develop those. Internal and external resources are also right.

So if all the items are clicked, is fantastic. I have saved millions. I may, I may probably tens of millions of dollars in RPA are using opiates.

The other thing that I have here is, you know, the monitoring and validation and support for the RBS may be expensive.

So don't be shocked if you, if you are caught in this cost element of, wait a second, it's costing more than I thought. Or, there's a lot of maintenance and support, Oh my God, I have to have like five full-time people just to monitor the RPA and validate everything at RPA. Yes, but you are saving 60 people, so so, but also, there's always room for improvement.

So, this is what I wanted to talk about today. And, again, I talk a little bit about this in my, in my book, so feel free to, to check it out sometime in late September, early October. And I'm opening the floor now for questions.

Outstanding, re-assess, and as we have a discussion here, please, all of you keep sending your questions. I'll take a look at the Question panel, and I'll keep grabbing questions from there.

Do me a favor, if you can, please stop sharing your presentation, so that they can see as the biggest change, OK, second.

It's, it's right here. Yeah, hey, go.

Now you've got a fantastic presentation, thanks for sharing all those great insights. I'm gonna ask if there are a number of questions here, and I'm going to ask right at the top, Candidate was asking you, if you could share your experience, where you had to redesign the process or the metrics. so that you can actually use RPA in that process. Do you have any experience of that?

Oh, absolutely, I don't wanna say, almost every single time, But it happens quite often. I think the process redesign should all this precede the RPA implementation almost always.

Because the process mean me may be good for human Bucks a month Think differently. You need to make it like foolproof for the for the bot and the bot continues to learn.

Screenshot (22)There are many bots that, actually, it's an artificial intelligence the, we had a boss that helped us with a chatbot and, and, the chatbot, the questions that we got, we had the bus to help us reshuffled those questions and add questions that, that means we may want to kick out. So, for example, one of the bus that we have for the chatbot was, was to validate those offensive offense an offensive question. Believe it or not, we are in the casino indices and people get drunk sometime. And, then, there was a chat with a chatbot. And, they think that chatbot is a real person. And If I can get the, I want to go on a date, and you come to my room, whatever, and then like, wait a second. Just so. So, again, sometimes you just need to redesign the system processes.

I'm sorry, I'll just give that example. Puzzle, it's funny. but but there you almost always have to redesign the process. And if not read the whole redesigns that's presented.

Know that, that's very interesting. You said it all on me as a true excellence and innovation leader: You always start with understanding what your processes and eliminate and reduce C and automating the bank at the backend. Well, said. Now, the other question I have here is from ..., and he asked about your challenges with RPA implementation. The more technical standpoint, and more from a cultural and, and, you know, change management standpoint, and introducing new technology in the process owners and players in your industry, who may not even know what a robotic process automation is. They may think it's some hardware robot that's coming to the casino now. Right. And so, how did that go in that environment? What type of particles you had to overcome?

Yeah, great question. Hey, listen, change management is, is role based practice and it applies not only to bots or RPS everything. And every time you have to change people's process technology data, you have to engage in and the adoption change adoption It is very hard and tier points, Jose.

I mean, I have people coming, it's like, Are you bringing like a physical, the robot and like, No, it's just, I used to call it a macro, all, federally, This is how I explain it to them. It was just a macro was like a lot of thyroid because it's so powerful. So, so, and then the next question is like, what does mackerel Michael? All right. Now, I have to extend. What does a Macro, Right, So so believe it, or not, it is, it is not as easy as you had. Asked, change, management, is a big deal.

My recommendation is bar, with a small bot that would trigger the interest.

And, and, and a bot that is, based on a process that is re validated and clear, You don't want to be failing the first one, the first month or two. If you fail, you're doomed. Nobody will believe you. And nobody will adopt.

Email Graphic Virtual Conferences (4)-1But when, when you, for example, the marketing, Buck, when we created this, oh, boy, I'm telling you, you know, almost every single VP of the company started calling. It's like, well, we heard you doing this for that person or for that person and you save What? You eliminate the whole department. Well, sometimes we did, sometimes we just repurpose that people so sometimes people are afraid of losing graph.

And probably this is the most difficult piece of change management is because people do not want to lose their grip on, on their job, on their process, on the job security or whatever and deaf people. So you may it depends on the circumstances of your company.

You may say OK, well, we are going to repurpose, retrain those people to be more effective in certain other items because the machine can now do this. Just imagine if you have like a policeman instead at every single intersection, instead of a traffic light.

Can you imagine the labor? Right, so so same thing here. I mean, like, OK, well there's just a simple traffic light to say what if.
39:15
Right. But just imagine this by being a bot. So what do you think? It's very logical now. It's going to be extremely manual five years from today or three years from today. And if you do not change fast and I talk about this in my book if you don't change fast with competitors and they will They will.

There will be fast forward light-years ahead of you if you don't.

That's right. It's either disrupt yourself or you're gonna get disrupted, and it's a lot more painful when it comes from outside, right?

And that, similar, has a very specific question here around the Salesforce instances. In the end, I don't know if you can comment about this. I will try. And because it's pretty specific. He asks, Is there a Salesforce instances use for the group sales team? What issues in specific limitations you have or is there any positives associated with that? Salesforce instance is an integration.

Yeah, I, I'm, I'm not sure, if, I recall there was a specific issue with the connection between the bots and Salesforce, the bus or just simple. They go through the system. The log in using a certain credentials, They grab information as they go on. Connected with others.

So it's not because not as complicated as you think, and I'm not doing a bot to go and re and and and refactor Salesforce code. Right, it's not.

This is not the purpose of Salesforce as a whole system. That is perfect, not perfect, but like very strong, and an important. The boss are just a tool to grab certain information from Salesforce and other systems. So, I have not seen any major issues.

Because the Salesforce system just doesn't exactly how you tell it to do. And the boss would just do that.

Make sure it makes sense. Roi calculations. Understanding value creation, strong RPA, Know, just kind of kind of an overall view of how you're calculating the ROI, you know, redirects the labor, and, you know, what is, what does the approach they use.

So so, so it depends on the RPA. Some of those RPA can be just cost avoidance.

And then some of them are cost savings. Some of them are revenue generating, like, the Offer page, and the Rate the offers, or the, the **** generating revenue. But the, the Box itself, or there's themselves, are, very, are not cheap, by the way.

So if you want to do it, right, you have to invest, and the boss, and you have to invest with the partners, If I have to do it differently in the future, I would probably hire, you know, the best in class partners.

To build those RPA, is not only to understand they understand the technical elements. But they actually can help facilitate the process re-engineering.

Screenshot (4)Are you there?

Yeah, we can. OK, sorry, so, So those partners, I think that they should, again, not only help with the technical elements, but also with the process element. And then, I recommend that you, that you start build your internal capabilities. Because, again, I mean, as you start, year to year three, the management, we'd look at other areas of cost savings. So, you may want to go back. It's like, OK, you know what, this button has been great, unless we can generate incremental savings in certain boss or find new ideas. We may want to, you know, educate, and invest in our internal resources. So, if I want to do this differently, I would probably add more investment in our internal capabilities to carry on those like support and maintenance while you as our partners to develop those complicated. But the RPA summer come from a return on investment.

I'm telling you how many of those RPS were like no brainers no-brainer. I mean you may shed some costs through certain triggers. You may need to replace people with bots. You may need, you know, unfortunately, to let go some people.

And sometimes you just repurpose those people to more value, add work instead of just validating numbers. That data.

That's a really, that's a very interesting site, the radios, to have a partner, who can actually help you redesign the processes. So implicit in that statement is, seems that there are certain process optimization, then make RPA easier to apply to creates more value from the RPA application itself. So very, very interesting, very interesting perspective. OK, I have to make a comment here from George Corbyn, who has spent, which is fantastic. He has said, it's not a question. He's a statement, he has said that you have created a new quality standard for RPA, and the quality standards, quote, may your bots so human, that customers want to date them. A piece in your book, yes.

Very, very good. one, we're on time here. So. As a final takeaways for all of us, with the experience that you have accumulated in the 12 months, I'm sure those of us who are implementing RFP or scaling RPA in our organizations, what is the best advice you'd give to them on doing that?

Don't, don't delay it. Just go ahead and do it. It's a no-brainer. Seriously, no-brainer. It's a, again, like, remember that traffic light example I told you about?

Probably. I mean, it's just a simple, simpler, simpler example just is the amount of money you have to put in, the maintenance to put a seat, a single police, police officer and every single intersection. and in the country and the cost. So might as well put the bug and then repurpose those people to fight. Crime.

Which is more important It's just a simple example, but it's almost almost the same analogy here. I mean, when we talk about the business, it's there's some people who are just used to it used to this process. And they don't want to change. And, again, remind them, and I talk about this in my book, remind them, that if you will not change, you will die. I mean, the dinosaurs. They were big and strong, and you think that your biggest song, but they're the first to die, because they could not change with the changing environment.



And the competitors are actually doing everything they could to outsmart, to, to, to to grab market share to offer something that is amazing.

Like, I'm just going to give you one example, I noticed as I'm launching my new website, I engage this, this SEO optimization company, So apparently, I give them the access of my social media and everything and the content. And every week, twice or three times a week, they go and they post automatically those, those social media posts in every single one of them. And if it's not the same as different.

So they created a box to literally very simply, just to go there. And all they have to do is just to program it once, and it Automatically happens. It goes to every single social media. It post a certain, you know, message or something that we pre design, and that's it.

So just imagine having somebody physically doing this for thousands of customers, every single week, 4 or 5 times a week, or three times a week. Can you imagine the cost? You have just one bar that does it all. And if perfect, like no error in the language, no error, in the posting, nothing, all they have to do is make sure that the past what does not change, the, the, the link is working again, like the support and maintenance.

So my advice do it.

Very good. It's a great way of finishing our sessions, RPA and intelligent automation. Reyes thank you so much for sharing your expertise, your practical experience with us. It's a real privilege and honor, so thank you very much for that. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This brings us to the end of RPA and intelligent automation lives. You will be receiving an e-mail after the conference, and this e-mail will have a link, so that you can access all the recorded sessions and the and the and the interactions that we have had here. I hope that you had an enjoyable experience. I certainly did. I always learn a lot when I host these events, and I want to remind you that our next event will be the Business Transformation and Operational Excellence Summit live events on I, BPM.

So we're going to talk about business process management, and evolution of business process management. You do not want to miss that. And that You will receive probably should register for this session. You will probably receive an e-mail that talks about that event.

But I will tell you that you can go look at it and see the agenda, see the speakers, register for it. It's going to take place live virtually, as well. June 23rd through 20 says, And it's I BPM, lies, dot online. I BPM, livestock online, It's been an honor and a pleasure and a privilege to be here with you. Will continue our discussion on LinkedIn. If you have comments, you know, kudos to the presenters, I sent you on the chat, and you should have seen a link to the conversational LinkedIn. Unfortunately, I'm unable to accept connections on LinkedIn. Because I'm over the limited connection limits, but if you follow me on LinkedIn, I'll follow you back, and we should be able to communicate that way. And I look forward to seeing you in future events and hopefully on June 23rd. Thank you, everybody. And have a good rest of your day. Bye, Bye.

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About the Author

more (11)Rias Attar,
Vice President – Enterprise Project Management Office & Strategic Initiatives,
Caesars.

Rias Attar is an accomplished operational excellence and project management professional. He is recognized for his ability to help strategize business architecture, identify areas to improve processes and outcomes, turn around businesses from deficient to profitability, champion continuous improvement efforts, deliver challenging cross-functional programs while working collaboratively with diverse types of stakeholders, lead and coach winning teams, and inspire staff to deliver ambitious results.

Mr. Attar has planned and executed transformational projects (Business and Technology) that contributed over $500M of combined EBITDA impact and is managing a portfolio of initiatives that adds between $200 and $300M of EBITDA annually. He established PMOs, led Lean and Six Sigma efforts, championed Change Management, ensured proper Governance while reducing Bureaucracy, and has set proper business directions while staying focused on motivating staff, inspiring trust and confidence, developing people’s skills, and generating enthusiasm.

Mr. Attar worked for different companies at a variety of industries such as: Michelin (Tires), Friede Goldman Halter (Oil & Gas) , DHL Express (Courier), and General Electric/Genworth (Mortgage Insurance), and Maple Leaf Foods (Food Processing and Supply Chain). Prior to working at Caesars (Entertainment/Hospitality), he spent a few years in the consulting business working with companies such as Danone Dairy (Food Processing), Steel Tech (Steel Manufacturing/Rolling Mill), Sport Master (Clothing/Retail), and dipndip (Chocolate F&B). 

Mr. Attar started his professional career in Finance as an FP&A analyst then moved to project management and operational excellence about 18 years ago. During that time, he worked/lived in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, Connecticut, New York, The Middle East, Toronto-Canada, and now in Las Vegas. 

Mr. Attar has a bachelor degree in Finance, got his MBA from University of Texas, and have a few certifications in project management such as (PMP) Project Management Professional, (ACP) Agile Certified Practitioner, and (CSM) Certified Scrum Master. He is also a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt (LSSBB).

Outside of work, Rias is a devoted family man with a wife and 3 kids. His best time is when he spends it with his kids playing board games, riding bikes, swimming, or just watching movies. Rias loves sport, tries to work out often, practiced Jiu Jitsu and Kick Boxing for years, and enjoys lap swimming every once and a while. He also loves music and plays the classical guitar.

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