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April 15, 2021

Webinar - WEBINAR SPOTLIGHT: Reimagining End-to-End Process Journeys in Banking & Financial Services

Courtesy of UiPath's Amit Kumar & People’s United's Ravi Vakacherla, below is a transcript of the webinar session on 'Reimagining End-to-End Process Journeys in Banking & Financial Services' to Build a Thriving Enterprise.

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Session Information:

Reimagining End-to-End Process Journeys in Banking & Financial Services

Disruption has created both opportunities and challenges for banks and financial services organizations around the world. On top of risk and regulatory compliance, these institutions must maintain financial performance while managing increased expectations from customers and investors. This has led to a surge in the adoption of transformative solutions as BFS organizations explore strategies to build resilience, up-level their operational efficiency, and drive measurable results.

Many financial services and banking institutions have been quick to embrace automation to streamline core banking processes, speed up turn-around times for market readiness, and reimagine key customer and employee journeys.

Join Amit Kumar and UiPath customers as they discuss the following:

  • Banking trends that accelerate the pace of technology
  • Organizational resiliency and risk response to potential downturns
  • Customer and employee end-to-end process journeys across banking and financial services
  • Powering customer service with AI
  • Industry use cases

Session Transcript:

I am Amit Kumar, and welcome to our panel discussion today.

I'll be your host for next 60 minutes, and we have, hopefully, have a discussion on our topic.

Let me start with a little background. Exactly. In a year, back, almost to the day, the world, as we know today, came to us.

Banks and other financial services firms were some of the worst hit industries.

Over a period of time given as the crisis unfolded, we began to see automation as one of the sponsors that these banks and financial services firms have to address these pandemic related challenges and having to get support. We at ... believe that automation is here to stay and is rated.

Play a prime role in the strategic is end of the specs which brings me to the topic of the day to day which is re-imagining some of these processes Jimmy's here some real stories and you'll hear more from our practitioners and from our customers as far as automation is concerned.

So, without further ado, let me take the privilege of welcoming our guests today, and I'll start with Ravi was EVP Chief Transformation Officer at People's Feedback Wisdom, Ravi.

So let's talk a few words about, what's about, about them.

Heading Summit.

Yeah. I just introduced to the audience a survey at the Business Transformation office at People's United back.

He know this particular theme looks at multiple facets. They look at digitization, automation, process optimization, as well as fintech partnerships. Prior to this role, it was EVP for operations, product management additional at People's United, and has also being chief architect at at the back and has been, you know, industry, with the back veteran for about 16 years. So, welcome, again. Really looking forward to hearing more from, you, know, the scaled success that you've had at the bank.

Thank you.

Glad to be here.

I move to our next guest. And it's a pleasure to actually re meet him if I may use that word, David Hernandez V P Managerial Operational Excellence. I said he asked the bank. Welcome to the panel. David.

How are you?

Doing. All right.

Let me, let me take couple of minutes. You know, for our audience to know more about it is, is a 10 plus years of financial services which are now, he is leading operational excellence for both the banking as well as investment, services, city, national bank.

And as part of that particular portfolio, he leads the Automation Center of Excellence that he has set up at the back.

Good to have both Rummy and David, and I must admit, I have the best seat, to hear, you know, these two practitioners.

So, without further ado, let me jump directly into the questions and take the liberty of maybe asking you this First. You've had tremendous success at people's United Banks, you know, from automation perspective.

Screenshot (91)-1If you could share your insight, what is the journey been like at the bank, for our audience today, I think that would be a great start with this conversation.

Sure, happy to spend half the describer journey.

in one word, I would say, amazing.

And I don't think there are many initiatives we have started from the ground up. Like our Process Automation Center of Excellence that year into it.

Then, we not just accomplished our goals, but surpass them and with flying colors.

I can probably count on one hand when I can give such a resounding endorsement of a program starting from the ground up.

Um, it's been an amazing journey and I have to say it is completely, you know, if not Graham really, do, too, the team.

Right? And the dedication of water and head of Process Automation Rasa, Militia and her team have done to set this up.

So, just a little bit of context, I mean, and we can get into the details as as applicable, but we tried automation, by the way, more than 10 years ago, with a slightly different approach. This is our second go at it.

And this time, it was successful. The primary difference is, we took the approach of citizen led development this time around.

Do you?

Do you want me to continue?

Or just sure, I think that belonged to, and how long do I have for the, for the time. I think, I think it's quite relevant to the point that you made about the second coming, so to say. So, if you could elaborate on that piece. I think, I think I'm pretty sure it'd be very interesting for our audience to know in terms of what you pay per year versus, you know, the citizen development approach that we took. For the second coming.

Yeah, so, modern background, 11 years ago, when, when I was on the IT side, we started automation before RPA was fashionable. If I may say so.

And we, we took the approach of, OK, we know what to automate. We'll go in there and we'll automate it.

It was a different approach than this time and we have some lessons learned, right, because of that and that didn't really take on as as much as we we thought it would, Right?

You can No attributed to many factors, right? But, this time, when we tried a year ago, was we did a full re-evaluation and starting with the platform that we pick, it was important to us, that the platform is as business user friendly as possible, but that was if we had 10 goals for picking the platform.

1, 2 and 3 were that, right? And then that is 4 or 5, 6, and other factors.

So that was an important one, and we did go through a full proper RFP process with the POCs and, you know, and various other analysis. And, obviously, I'm here today, so, so, I think it's a, you know, it's safe to assume that we picked UI Path, it's. Been very, very successful. Not just because UI path has been a great partner partner to us.

But, we took the approach of, again, it's more of, uh, opt in approach, Right.

We said, we took the time to create the charter, the proper operating model governance framework.

And we took the time to bring in our business line leaders.

And all of our, from zero to, in, in, in, in a year, right, we were able to scale more than 100 business, non technical, business unit people, As RPA associates, whether they play out, they all play different roles. That RPA sponsors, the program managers, the RPA, business analysts, the RPA developers, all citizen led, right.

And we do have a centralized Process Automation, Center of Excellence, that primarily owns the charter, the governance.

And basically, helping with the upskilling, the training, the evangelizing of RPA, acting as, as the Central Unit in-between our technology team.

Ah, Who has been amazing in terms of being able to provide us the support of making sure, one of the important things about automation is you need to have very stable infrastructure, right. Sometimes you tend to forget, it's not, magically, amazingly, something won't work at it.

And, again, think of it, if a human would do something five times a week, and you automate that, and you're able to get productivity of, Well, yeah, wow, the box doing it 5000 times a week.

But then for it to do that, the infrastructure has to be up and running and available.

Um, so again, primarily, I would say, to co opt in approach, that's 1.

we valued time as a currency, you know, to, to create the capacity and the interest for change.

Right, then the governance model that, I mentioned, is an integrated governance model. There.

It's, we took the participation of the business line people in creating that Communist model. we didn't sit in a, you know, in a corner where a couple of people run up everything they can about RPA and the experts now rollout this here is the mandate, right? And everybody, please, follow it. No, it was.

We brought them in upfront, there was a lot of focus on why.

Why are we doing this? What are we planning to achieve? And we lead with the why, right?

And by the way, uh, like I said, more than 100 RPA associates in a year, significant wild success in the bank.

All of this with a very small ARPI, 86 people.

That's it, right?

And the last one I would say is you have to remake re-imagine your incentives, right? The incentives have to reward collaboration.

I cannot emphasize enough on the importance of it. It's it's a team play.

RPA does not work if there is asymmetry in who is considered like a significant owner or beneficiary.

So we really took care to make sure the core RPA team, the technology team, and the business units. It's a tripod, all equal stake holders.

one team does the governance and evangelizing and everything. The business owners and the business unit people. They get the benefit and it's their program.

We do not set priorities, they set the priorities, we help execute the priorities, we help them understand the process to prioritize, but it is their priorities, we don't have our own.

It is the bank's parities, same thing with the technology team, without them, we cannot do this.

So, when we took that stand, where there is equal partnership, the technology, the RPA center of excellence, and the business units, and took this approach of citizen led development, um, huge amount of success.

For us, mean, it's a great thing that this session is being recorded because there's so many takeaways, you know, in your opening comments sheets, it's, it's, it's fascinating for our audience today, so thanks for that.

I will say one thing, if you noticed in so far, of five minutes or whatever I spoke, I have not used the word cost, and that's on purpose. Absolutely, OK. And I will wrap my session, again, with that point, again.

That should not be used, not in the beginning hundred plus. And I think the imagination of the sentence and time as a currency. I'm going to do, I mean, it might be proprietary, but I'm going to use it in my organization. So thanks, Thanks for sharing that. Opening country on that.

Oh, David.

Yeah.

You know, you guys have had amazing success as well.

And you heard from Ravi.

Happy to you know, get your perspective in terms of some of the X-ray, some of the, some of the milestones in your journey since 20 19, happy to get your opening comments as well.

Yeah, definitely. So, for CNBC, or Division, has always been around a few team tries. Really, improving our service Oles, longtime, Ms. magazine, improving our ability to meet regulatory compliance is as we grow as organization. And it really is going to be improving our longtime colleague experience.

Email Graphic Virtual Conferences-1That's how we operate as a business.

We want to make sure that our clients are are having that experience, but also re-imagine how we do our work from calling for sexual rights of moving away those mundane tasks. And really, having them do a lot more value add activities tells the first vision that we established as our ....

We want to make sure that, see. We haven't joined partially IT and business. So, one of the first things that we establish, making sure that there is a close friendship and alignment on the overall strategic goal.

Then, secondly, making sure you're thinking and also solar solution. I'm just going to partner with you and really see the revision and help execute on that. And UI path was excellent, You know, and being able to do that from just the flexibility of the capability that initially offered to us, and how we continue to grow.

It really helped us meet our more complex it. Really, some of the metrics that we use to manage our .... Remote support in the right direction are really, Roy.

Are our saved, our pipeline, healthy expansion, or delivery velocity, then overall capability adoption.

That really helps us ensure that we're continuing to evaluate ourselves against our industry, and then, as well as, make sure that our document best capabilities and using best industry practices. And, as of today, we've actually expand into seven divisions, 40 processing production in, some of those are multiple phases. So, there's some problems with match and I save roughly 50,000 hours of manual labor today.

So, thus far, our journey as we started in 20 19, with skills certificate can be synced and really this past year, the pandemic and accelerated growth. But, it's been a great journey thus far.

Don't fan. Fantastic, Thanks for David. David.

Your last comment about the Acceleration, of the, you know, use cases during pandemic is actually a good segue to my next question.

And I will again, now request rubbish plus the fact that at least in UI path, we saw a massive surge.

We, in fact, saw and heard, for the first time, CEOs and CFOs talk about automation and earnings calls last year, or other earnings calls last year.

How, what was happening behind the scenes that, because it back, you know, when the crisis unfolded. And what shape will fall when you're using automation.

Yeah, well, our CEO did mention automation in our earnings call actually, or what we did for the PPP program. I'll say this, so, March late, March timeframe, right.

Middle of March is when covert hit last year, right, so the first thing that we have to do, as a regional institution, we only have some people, I would say, might not be offered, know, colleagues who were remote enabled.

So, one of the first things we had to do, first challenges you had to overcome was worked with our technology team to send a huge number of people home, working from home and setup their remote connectivity, and there were a number of lessons learned. We were very successful. Within 2 to 3 weeks, we were able to enable a number of people, colleagues to go remote.

But, then, we had learned that it's not just enough to enable remote technology. A lot of people who are not used to working from home and we have to go through that, that kind of re-adjustment experience. So, then we were just working with the technology team, between the various operations and product teams.

And then, of course, around the same time, the government passed the Care Act to BPP.

And I still remember this Thursday evening. The SBA was still fine tuning the guidelines, and we were having a number of discussions on what people are going to do.

We were planning to use a fintech partner, but by the time we've, we're going to be ready to get the fintech partner installation everything in place for us to use it. We are going to lose a window of opportunity.

And during the first wave, I think, like most banks, we were also very of, there was this huge concern that there may not be another wave of money by the government.

And that you, the money would run up.

There was this huge concern that maybe 3 to 4 days, all the money would run out because of the number of small businesses that were So Thursday evening, we got the clarification.

And we were like, We're going to have a huge influx. We just need to help our customers.

So, I still remember bringing a small, old person team together And talking about, OK, what are some basic technologies we can use? Because there's no way we are doing this manually. And we're not going to have anybody fill out these things, Canvas stuff in an e-mail, and tried to put it all in.

So with the combination of some technologies like SharePoint and RPA, we, in 24 hours, we had a prototype ready.

Alright.

So Saturday morning, we were ready to, right. So doesn't I Friday night, we did the demo to our executive team saying, this is how the process is going to work.

And Saturday, we were training more than 350 or 400 of our employees in how to use this process.

72 hours, from the time of clarification, we had our RPA process available as well from a Backend Boding standpoint.

So, it was, again, it was, like people are surprising ourselves and, and then the team saw the bot successfully performing it, Everybody's stepped up.

But the biggest thing, if I may say so during that period, biggest reason for our success, more than RPA, I'd say, it's the colleagues, It's amazing how, I don't think, that is unique to people's United Bank. I'm sure they will go to S two the same thing.

So, any of the institutions you might ask, the pandemic created, the sense of, know, collaboration and it didn't matter whether you were in marketing, that you were an operations in IT, in RPA.

Everybody was willing to help, everybody was just telling me, what do you want me to do and I'm there, right. So, that, combined with RPA technology, it was amazing.

And the best thing I'll tell you, I'm and David is, there are people who have never heard, use a swear word who have always spoken in full proper grammatical sentences who are using all sorts of colorful language emulation of what the bot could do, right? I think, I don't know the exact numbers. I'm sure my team would have the numbers.

But I think we did more than 12 years worth of SBA loans. And just the waves with what BBB we did right.

And to onboard all those things, with out errors using the bot, they really Ah, it was mind blowing, You know, and then there is a time and place to use certain phrases, right. Some of them are hyperbolic, but I will say, 20 20 everybody would, would universally agree. The word unprecedented, obliged to 20 20, right?

And similarly, this experience, for us, what's truly mind blowing It's surreal, and I didn't want to interrupt.

But some of those metrics, you know, that you pointed to, in terms of, you know, BPP And, you know, obviously, you know, some, some really unprecedented work that happened behind the scenes of people tonight it is is is is truly legendary, I would say, Robbie and thanks for sharing the kind of details, you know, that behind the scenes blowback built Kind of and I found in terms of what happened between Friday to Sunday On in that moment this week is is truly truly inspiring.

Oh, I will skip this to David and David my senses, it's quite similar ... as well in city. national.

Screenshot (4)Second comment that everybody was just astonished at the what the boss residue, but really brought our team together. It was all hands on deck, anywhere from our frontline associates or technology team. And everybody in between us. We really caught on parole or sleeves up and really see how we can deliver for our clients. And be able to deliver. Some automation, actually Motivated some more other colleagues that still need to gather documents, do some manual work, sort of was also a motivator to the teams that are working hand in hand with automation and really driving the overall success of TPP. But, I believe the pandemic accelerated Albany for automation overall, specifically, on an enterprise level. Automation really allowed firms to be able to deliver quickly. I'm sure most banks are looking at fintech solutions that direct connections to SBA that was going to be seamlessly integrating everything intent.

Notice, it's very difficult to even get a POC done with new vendor, let alone get somebody production ready. So, we really had to be resourceful and look at the tools that we're able to deliver that.

Archie was obvious solution for us, and it really complemented somebody other tools that we had, But, really, one of the areas, obviously, that saw a huge increase in activity was lending, because the PPT we're actually able to implement one of our actual biosecurity within two days. It really continue to build out from there. We build additional subjects or processes that really supportive ... process of PPP always from the application submittal to payments for goodness, processing of that.

And really, the overall process, it allowed us to deploy 40 unintended bots, running six days a week, for 16 hours, a day.

So, we had to get through over 16,000 loans in a short period of time.

So, really, without automation, and I'm out of box being deployed to a county level, and we wouldn't have anybody that successfully.

The size of that, as well as is not only the automation that we build for GPUs, you know, had a significant impact, and it's really highlighting the benefits and value, but it also allowed us how those are re-usable components for other products as well. And that's actually one of the biggest lessons learned that we took from the pandemic and then a few experiences, making sure that we're focusing more on micro automation and building that inventory of what I'm gonna call building blocks, that we can continue to pull the plug in, as we get a different use cases. So, overall, reduces our delivery timelines and improve our efficiency overall.

Fantastic, no tax. That's, that's great, David. And again, get other metrics are quite, quite astounding, so to say. And I know we can spend another hour just talking about good stories that happen in 20 20. But, we're also at the precipice, I believe, you know, we've spent, you know, first 20 minutes, sort of looking back.

And I think the rest of the 40 minutes, I would, you know, kind of shift more, looking ahead, It doesn't sell what now.

And one of our thesis at UI Path, is that we are broadening that automation platform because we believe having capabilities like process intelligence, AI, and machine learning, are critical to get off.

it. Sort of broadening the charter of the automation program as well. But I think this is a forum where we would like to have a true voice of customer. So, I'll start with you rub a rubber you, a few played. You have been wearing many hats.

one of them being, you know, enterprise architect or enterprise architecture leader, a combination of both deeper up. You know, where do you think? What are those critical automation capabilities that, you think are going to play a very significant role, in addition to the core RPO of the platform itself? So, happy to know your thoughts. Looking ahead and a sneak preview into the future.

Ah, But that, that's a That's a pretty heavy question. Then what that, if I knew the answer to that, I am probably not be on this panel. I'd probably be, you know, at a beach somewhere, enjoying some fancy martinis.

I'll give it a shot anyway. So I think there is multiple levels, right?

At this point in time, if, you know, maturing the foundation is important before building castles in the air as they say where I come from.

So, at this point, I think we're still in what are considered automation of tasks that are still very clean, do not require too much human intelligence. Right? And we are still trying to get more people convertible, into saying, hey, the data and technologies at a place where all these things can be automated, credit decisioning, for example, there is still a bit of concern in general, at least in the financial services industry, of well, is the model, correct?

If you automate, all of the credit decisioning, because one of the key pieces, I mean, banks as a bank, right? We are in the business of risk, right? So, credit decisioning, et cetera. All of that can be is now automated. Obviously, right, various technologies out there.

And from a ground Foundation, San Fran, I would say, enhancing more process mining capabilities.

Which know that the industry has already started, Right? There is various things, even UI path providers, and there are other tools in the industry, as well.

So, maturing that process mining, and kind of making it part of the workflow, right?

There is a broader thing, with respect to automation, There's other parts, other than just the core automation, or the RPA development, that is the front end portion of it, maturing all of that, bringing that into the ecosystem, right? And the value drivers and making sure, more executive level understanding of the value of automation, right? That that's one.

Then, the next level, I would say, before going into, you know, aspirational or cognitive level.

All that is kinda like I would look at for example, right?

Way back then No, assembler was was, you know, was what was used to you know, to programs from 80 85 and 88 and there was some trans users and controllers.

And we did that. And then there was a next level of abstraction, right in the seventies, C came out, right?

And then everybody's like, Wow, procedural, amazing. Now it's going to see, is going to change the world.

And then it was C plus plus, which became more object oriented. So, in all these stages, what was happening, by the way, back in the time I used to walk around, wearing a t-shirt that said, real people do C plus plus, but anyway, that was so long ago.

And then there was Jawa, which was a further level of abstraction, right?

And if you look at it now, there is conversations about cloud native languages, right, which is further level of encapsulation.

So, I would say a bare automation would go, is similar to the cloud trajectory. That would be my projection, which is all the CI CD stuff that happened, which everything that, within deploying this automation workflow, what is manual will be automated. Right. And similar to the CI CD, similar to the data center technology going from first.

We just rent the data center, right, And then, oh, we don't have to rent the data center, we have, we can rent the servers to, till now, when you're talking about fully cloud native, everything, including the network aspect, are part of the cloud native language now, right? That's where technology and programming has gone to.

I think that is where automation would go, as well.

And I think this building of machine learning and AI into the ecosystem and not it, it's not required to be, well, we'll automate this part. then, we'll hand it off to the team, who will do the ML stuff. And then give us an output. And then the output will come back into the automation platform. I think it will become integrated.

I'm not like that.

You can consider this that, you know, perception of somebody who's smoking something, but I think that's where it would go.

Um.

Earlier. We were talking about C plus plus and you know, it brought me at 88 if I draw a pleasant and not so pleasant memories of my introduction to Microprocessor, ... . So I think I'll be betraying my eyes. But yeah, it's going up, but I think jokes about actually, if, you, know, I would say your commentary Saturday, it's Art Citizen, when you talked about process intelligence, you know, that thing or doubling down on cloud.

And, you know, obviously the whole cognitive plus cold RPA as a, as, as here's the next milestone. So, obviously, it is so broad above because I think that's a very well articulated, I must say. And I'm sure people will be taking notes on that. David, you have been dabbling with some of these technologies as a national bank. Well, what's your perspective? What's your take on? You know, the next one, next, as far as the core automation platform is concerned.

Bank was something, is really going to continuing the direction of automation, right? And those technologies, such as the process mining, accident, I wanted to say, I can be the key focus. On the fact that they're all, in one platform, company, my automation, is gonna make things a lot easier to implement.

Ravi's Point, I think, is really going on, ... platform. But in addition to that, I think those obviously really.

Really critical tools are really gonna help those databases, and allow you to tackle those more complex use cases, and gender, and an automation. But also things a lot of value in some of the other capabilities, drive, like automation, that allows you to manage your pipeline, help, allows you to grow as well. So, it's not necessarily a suitability biopsies function within the platform as well, because obviously, you having to clean a good pipeline of use case that they can build an options that you would actually find necessary, right. To be able to accommodate, as you say. So. I think that's another capability to watch out for in addition to that insights, right? We can automate everything under the sun, but we need to know what benefits the national performance or seeing wants to actually deploy the right.

So really having those that intend tool to be able to see what we've identified as potential automation candidate, being able to accomplish that automation ... unintended bots, advanced analytics, process, my, and things of that nature. And then still being able to quantify, actually qualify to see. you initially thought you can actually be receiving the production.

And that'll just continues to further expand your automation by your organization and really champions RP overall.

But in terms of the operating model, I really see a shift from centralization and try to read model to model hybrid offering or communist democratize, right. And leveraging tools such as ... to really empower the business users to do their own development. And Robin gave a great example of how you got 100 users scale up, you know, flow should be quickly, And, obviously, having different roles. I'm assuming that you don't have to Really accelerate your implementation. Torpy over all right. I think that's what the industry or the models will continue to shift. And we're empowering business. Users are still having a partnership with IT, really accelerating the overall implementation of automation.

Absolutely, and I do agree with your part, right? Because while we are primarily Insignificantly, citizen led development, we do have a couple of real expert developers in our core RPA team, for a really complicated enterprise automation. It is directly and fully handled by.

in addition to upscaling and helping the democratization of RPA, there is some core stuff that the will, you call it Enterprise Automation, if you will. That is still handled by this. So there is place for that. I don't deny that. But I think the value is in in the democratization and how much we can do, right?

And one last point, if I may say, I'm into what I said, All of what he said would only work if it can be abstracted away from from the user.

That is, you can have the fanciest technology as they say. The best feature is not the one who knows the most stuff, but you can abstract all of it and still convey it to the lay people.

Similarly, the best technologies will only be successful if you can abstracted away and and allowed the business user to get value quickly without having to get a PHD in something.

Screenshot (91)-1That's what supports the wisdom. And I think, in a sense, we also thought, you know, your perspective on the operating model, because of that whole business lead and collaborative and citizen led effort that you have done that.

People say, like, it seems like a, you know, appears to be something that people should take note of, perhaps try to replicate it there, you know, in their financial services institutions as well.

So, you know what to, you know?

It is good to understand the contours of that particular program so that people have design considerations and those principles laid out, and of course, your institution is different. So they will I'm sure there was enough to put personal answers into, into practices. Thanks, thanks every four, and then, David, for that, for those responses.

I didn't move to NIJ. And, you know, I've been, I was thinking about the topics I was thinking about, also, the fact that you wear many hats in your respective institutions, and one of the hat is the process excellence process optimization.

Uh, and, you know, this is more of a zoomed out view of, if we see automation playing Role, given, given the trajectory, it is moving towards, what could fit those practical example. And say that, you think, you know, in conjunction with the capabilities that obtain automation platform would have one of those end to end processes.

Like, the example of eventually positioning, which is already automated, what are those practical scenarios that you see, that you're already dabbling with? Or have a Target or cross-hairs? Where do you think automation will make a positive impact?

Some real real life scenarios are really useful here.

Yeah, so can you hear me?

Yes.

OK, so, just making sure I was unmuted, so, I would say a couple of things, Right. one, is, it has to be on a use case, by use case basis, right. That's important to know and not read RPA like the hammer everything. Looks like a nail. Right, so it's gotta be careful. The second thing, I would say is, the way we set it up, we have a process optimization group, and a process automation group, Right. We have both those working very closely with each other.

The idea was, we would go to a level of scale after this initial, low hanging fruit, OK? Just to create the enthusiasm, and you scale the smaller ones, then the maturity of the program was going to be when one of the citizen led.

No use cases or an automation candidate is, brought forward by the process optimization group looks at it, and says, First of all, this even be automated. Right.

one of the things we like to say here is, you know, if you automate a crappy process, all you get is a crappy automated process. And that's not the goal.

Right, And so first you optimize, then you automate. Right, and in some cases, you'll find that it is something as simple as actually a process change, and you don't need to do any technology.

In other cases, the right decision would be actually to work with the Technology integration team, build some APIs, which could be on the roadmap. We just need to enhance it.

So if you, as long as you don't go in with RPA, is your universal band-aid for all wounds, then, you know, it would be good in terms of end to end.

It depends on having holistic goals, right?

If you look at automation or RPA as you know, buying fast band-aids for every small thing, then you're looking at it The wrong way. There is other holistic automations. It has to be the way I would say it would be.

The primary purpose of automation should be improving employee expedients, if I may go in order.

Everybody talks about customer experience, but I would say, if you improve employee experience, you will result in improving customer experience, right? There is the Mobile UX Teams, online teams. There is so much focus on customer experience. I'd like to know how many banks have done a journey mapping of their employees experience.

Right, and you improve that, and that is where automation will help, which is, we in I fought for our top three goals for automation.

Improving employee experience is one, improving process quality is, too. That's why. Why do we do RPA in the bank?

We want to enhance employee experience. And correspondingly, customer experience, right?

If you improve your loan payoff process from seven days to 24 hours using RPA, then you're not only made your employees happy. You also meet. The customer is happy, because it's not taking seven days. So that is the inherent indirect relationship, improving process quality, right.

And then number three, would be improving operational efficiency in that order.

So looking at it holistically and almost looking at it as RPA is my last resort, in the end, all of us are working in an institution, which has responsibility to multiple stakeholders, right?

The shareholders, the employees, the customers.

And take an end to end view of the processes. What are you trying to improve and take that holistic view, even if it spans multiple departments? one of the keys is each department.

Making a huge amount of focus in automating their piece of the value chain, and not looking at all 12 pieces. That's one of the mistakes. Everybody's for automation, right?

Sometimes what we found is, each unit is automating their piece, they know, input A, coming into them.

An output see going out, and they are automating the piece in the middle, but if you step back and take a holistic view, you find there unpack these wasn't even necessary in the first place.

So what are you automating? Automating something that is not even necessary is really not a good use of time is it?

So that taking a holistic view is very important.

And that's where I think this kind of overall governance and creating the importance of RPA.

And creating those drivers and stating your values and why you are trying to do, would it become, I think, really thanks, thanks for sharing that. I think journey mapping that goes beyond just our digital front end is something of a rarity and ... from you know, from your vantage point, it's it's quite refreshing.

You know, it, because, I think, to your point, artificial front end with a bullet employee experience at the backend is, is not exactly serving the purpose, that it is supposed to do, which is to give you an enhanced customer experience. And so I think that's, you know, that's, that's, that's very refreshing to hear.

Second, second, then, I would like to, earlier, I was listening to your RV as a last resort, is, again, a re-evaluation, you know, again, selfishly or a Selfish plug in from UI Path, would be like for example, you know we have done an acquisition of Cloud elements, which is to basically do exactly that. Which is can we have an API. You know, as as an integration point, the only use RPA as a character or a declaration of philosophers are so large that resonates with our philosophy as well.

Ravi, thanks again for sharing, sharing your perspective on that.

Oh, David, I think, I, you know, you'd agree with most of what. We said, like, I was nodding my head, recklessly what was happening.

Yeah. I second.

All the bus routes that are really specifically when you're looking at A&M process is extremely critical. Similarly, because if you started, the most intense process will span multiple teams. And if you're not looking at them, it's kind of listing manner, it's going to be siloed. And the one processing be taken to be very efficient and cost.

And then we should be broken And only going to automate price point, back review, process faster, slip eating the bottleneck potentially within your own. Or L plus, or altogether. So, very, very important to ensure that you're reviewing the processes end to end, and ensuring that they're ready for automation, right? Because you're only going to get to that same bad result much quicker by automating it. To give you an example, highlighted earlier by Peter ... was a really good example, or an end to end journey, where we were able to provide a lot of value, look holistically across multiple groups, however, provide value.

So, combining our existing Salesforce solution and UI path lucky or Salesforce, and you're gonna make it much easier as well, So, that it really helped us in our social role. So, that's one of the reasons why we, we actually chose them, But we were actually ... loans with automated loans to middle, our doc generation, funding of the loans, ordering of the loans, doing any reconciliation on the backend, systems needed. Some of our clients were new onboarding clients, I'm sure that their accounts or ... nature. And then lastly, the newness, a process that as well. So, that obviously takes the reviews and determine if there's any partial for pavements or having all that, and then automated and reducing your overall timelines as driver drove and soon driven significant impacts to the business.

Just give you kind of some details on the improvements that we also, within each sub process that I mentioned, we saw about a 50% increase, some improvement in the SLAs. So, for example, with our loan morning, actually took us about an hour per loan to board. With a buy, it actually does in less than 20 minutes.

We actually get a faster, but this process runs on a Citrix environment, so slows down a bit, but you can see how significantly impact full automation is to end to end process.

So, process level, now you look at the ...

shapes, the process is now significantly, so overall it's really allowed us to, automation has really brought the conversation. I'm looking at our process end to end and giving us into the solutions for addressing drops 20 RPM may not be the answer. It can be, don't want you to make some adjustments and just update the process. You know, take out some value and really do some value stream mapping to understand what the pain points are and you don't drive transformation in other ways outside of automation.

Absolutely. No, I think that's an excellent, by the way, example, David, and thanks for sharing, and actually I think, again, re-evaluate wardrobe.

Holistic employee experience, value stream, journey mapping, for, for us to, you know, really drive more value for all your stakeholders, not merely. A strong operational efficiency perspective. I go a little off script and would like to, you know, we've been talking about laughs and there's a question that came in. So you know, I just want to force, you know, in that order. And to David, one other question that has come in.

You know, this looks great, but how did you guys go about communicating to the employees?

And I think the reason this question is very pertinent is because, uh, you know, when you use the word, Well, I don't want, I typically don't use the word robot, but when you use the word even automation, it has asserted recall in the minds of employees.

What, what was that, all, at People's United, in terms of how did they, how do we communicate?

Clearly, you've been very successful, how did you, you know, do that effectively, you know, at that people survive in terms of communicating their employees about automation adoption.

Email Graphic Virtual Conferences-1Yeah, so that's a very important piece. Right, because when we first started talking about, hey, in the next year, we want to do more RPA, or something like that.

Meant, was just a vague concept, right? People, Googled automation. And one of the big questions that everybody had was, are you automating the obsolete?

And so it did take some effort, and I think that is where, again, not to come back to the end and keep talking about citizen led development and integrated governance, which are what, what I call it, right there.

What we did was, like, again, we said, what is the purpose of RPA. So it's, everybody understand RPA essentially means you're automating stuff, right.

But if you do not lead of it saying the purpose of our RPA is so that we will then have only 70% of staffing or 60%, if you don't lead with that. That is so much other value, right.

And that's a very, in my mind, that's a very narrow lens.

Right.

And the short-term lengths of of actually not even seeing the full potential of RPA. Right. Would that be plausible? Yes, there is some level of task automation that that makes for most of the drudgery kinda automated. So you don't have to. Right, so is there a possibility in a certain scope of saying, we don't need X number of people doing the tasks with the bot.

Right. But by this is why I'm saying the value proposition is in taking a business user friendly automation tool, which is. so many.

people have learned the tool now. And they've learned.

And they feel like they're actually making their jobs better.

They're making their life when they come in, What they're doing is more intellectually stimulating for them.

All right, can everybody do that? Not really.

So one A We were straight up and transparent to say that in the end, would there be a possibility of some impacts there could be. But, again, like I said, we lead with, by saying, our primary purpose of RPA introduction in the bank.

It was going to be about staff productivity.

We are going to help you become more productive, right?

We're going to, no, help you improve your processing times, reduce your errors, etcetera.

And Upskilling, we inaudible universe here.

The automation program is considered an opportunity to learn new stuff and upskill yourself. That's how it is looked at rather than, oh, here you go, They're automating some jobs away.

There are people in, almost universally all of our areas, including the contact center operations everywhere, saying, can I get more automation, please.

And again, that's also the concept of cost avoidance, especially if you're a company that is thinking of growing.

You don't have to displace the employees, right? You don't have to look at it from that lens.

You can create scale, right? And when you're creating scale, you're inserting loyalty. The same employees can now, with the help of, you know, digital assistant, we call them. We have digital workers. We have assisted robots where the person is going up.

Clicks on that during, on, while being on the call. For a certain level of automation, right, I want to do the mortgage way of calculation, OK? Good, so, he's on the call, he or she is on the call talking to the customer, then the bot does the calculation for them, so it's an assistant. It's like a digital assistant.

So, I don't, I think there are ways, too, explain, And as long as we are straight up width, here is the potential minor impact.

But the primary purpose of automation is this, we've actually found a huge amount of embracing of RPA by, by our operational users, wildlife. What I've heard stories where in other organizations, it was seen as, I don't need to come in here and tell me, we already know, everything is fine, go away, we don't see it that way. They embrace our RPA team.

I think of the cornerstone of employee productivity, and the fact that, you know, it's doing more with less, or doing more with existing businesses. I think it definitely resonates.

I'm sure it resonates And I'll also, you asked, David, David, I mean, you must have been asked this question as well, when you were setting up the Center of Excellence, what was your response as he didn't answer? Yes or exactly right?

I think most organizations have to have this conversation about some of our H Theta two things I really saw made those conversations and overall implementation of our faith must seamless and much more sincere and got the moment from our colleagues, is having a sound approach.

So, and whatsapp approach, so top-down we're having already start to sponsor, really sharing division right. It's not that we're just placing orders and replacing them with boss right now. We're really trying to enable our growth and create capacity. So, we're also doing our colleagues, and they're able to do more value tasks, and as our volumes are increasing, or able to handle those without any additional resources.

So we're more, having deep collies, think of this as an opportunity to grow and learn new skill sets, whether you're going to be replaced, right? Wanting secondly is having a lunch and learns, and actually sitting with those who are sitting with those operational leaders. And educating them on what RPA is, what it can do, what it cannot do. And really showing how they can work hand in hand with automation. And getting you excited for what that future operating model looks like. That's really helped us disseminate RPA and educated people across international aid.

And help us really have that partnership, because initially, there were some conversations are going to have stakeholders not wanting to dive or some of the process information. And then, rightfully so, because they had the recession they were going to replace, but having those conversations and outward towards m-and-m. actually seemed automation in production and worthy Danielle. Same questions, Ravi's point, can we get more automation? Can we get more Boston into our operations?

It's really allowed us to build partnerships and educate everybody. And now, have more people tell me that they've gone on your traffic time.

You have to interface order, can get them excited about it. And one of the thing that's actually worked well for us is now leveraging automation of having that .... You submit, how many in production. That's also how some other core groups have their own little internal competition between and making sure that they're actually actively involved with, in our series.

So, I really think it's, it's all around communication and sharing the vision, and being clear on really what the intentions of automation is really going to help you adoption and overall, absolutely, no, I mean.

David makes a good point. Right? The whole showing the dashboard. It's important to, one of the things I've talked a lot about. All the things we can do with all the employees.

But executive buy in is something I probably, was a little light on talking about. I will say that that is important.

And having, like something like your path insights there, we were able to show the dashboard very cleanly and like all of the entire RPA team has the elevator elevator pitch ready. I'm comfortable. For example, in our case that any one of them if they happen to ride the elevator or pre coded or postcode, I'd say, with our CEO, they can explain the value of the RPA program in two minutes.

Alright, in terms that, that. The executive management, when the? Oh, yeah, OK.

All right. So, dashboards. And showing what you're doing isn't important. But, I do agree with David.

No, I think Balanced Scorecard. You know, is it is an executive facing.

It's a great, great tool for us to convey the Roi.

We are ending up, you know, whole stretch of this dividend conversation and I was, you know, I was thinking of how the way these raise this question. And one way to rephrase this question, Robin, and start with you is what is a true not know? You spoke about capabilities painted as a picture in terms of what is going to be critical. But what is also going to be that it's Near or Midtown and stays that you really think that, you know, automation would achieve an enterprise like people's, right? What will that do not look like in your in your mind?

Screenshot (4)Wow. I'd probably say this is the most difficult question of all the ones that you've asked me so far.

Um.

So the first answer, I would say very fairly is, I don't know.

The biggest thing is.

I'm reading what's on the screen. It says, How would a fully automated enterprise look like?

I don't know, would probably be a fair the right way to answer that question, but I can see so many things, though, that, that currently are done manually, um, that can be automated.

And the other part of maybe not a fully automated enterprise would look like That's probably a good question for Elon Musk, Maybe. He has division to answer those kinds of things. But with my limited knowledge, I will say more data.

Things that we could do by, for example, what we have done here at people says, it started off as the RPA center of excellence, Now we call it the process automation, groups, right.

And we have now a process optimization group, working very closely with the process automation, and in our view, process, automation includes low code, no code technology.

So I would view this more as more and more democratization of technology as more and more abstraction and ease of use gets there. Right?

I would look at automation and use of technology in general, in banking to become like driving, right? I'll tell you why, none of us learn how to drive.

Because we want to become a truck driver or a taxi cab driver. It's not a functional.

I want to make my money driving kind of, you learn, we all learn how to drive, because it is needed as part of our lives.

So, using technology and automation will become like driving, which is, it is still use of technology. It's still use of new things.

And there is evolution in that, but it becomes just how we operate. It's just like, if you go back 30, 40 years, general, ledger meant, big green books that people wrote in.

And now, nobody talks about gender leger being a big green book. Right.

And similarly, let's take GPS. I'm going to date myself, but way back then, when I want to travel somewhere in the US, I went to AAA, got my tip, pick highlighter stuff and I had a navigator will sit next to me and tell me you're not gonna get. no, no, no, no, not yet. Not yet. Next one, Next one, right?

Now what do we do? You all just turn our GPS.

And one other thing, I will say, our backup, the GPS is still not replay. It's just the other guy cell phone in the car. Right. So, automation will be part of, kind of like driving.

And the backup to automation will be more resilient automation.

Not manuals.

Fascinating, fascinating parallels between now, you know, driving and what future of an automated enterprise would look like, I mean. Right, thanks for connecting the dots for the audience today.

I know, I quickly ask, David, and I know we are almost half of the time.

David, if you had NaN, how would, how would you respond to this? I'm sorry to put you in a spot here.

Yeah, yeah, I really think the direction of hydro automation is what an enterprise affiliate enterprise looks like. So really, it's leveraging tools like process and testimony to accelerate the process ovary and documentation as well as studio X to. really democratize the moment accelerating expansion on it.

But really, more than anything, everything changing the way we work. So we are working hand in hand with automation. Is a work that fully automated enterprise, those sites.

And for example, I really think that, years ago, we always will not, everybody use Excel and re-use your e-mail, those type of tools. And now you can get through your day your work dir. Without using one of those. Alright. I really feel like automation having resources. A robot is going to be not that point, I'm sure, Sure. So I really feel like we're going to change the way you work, and not just rely on an automation, and having a background working hand in hand is helping us change that. We're working on a daily basis, and be more efficient.

Don't fantastic. Fantastic, like most good things. Unfortunately, it always come to the end. I'm going to make a recommendation to my team and extended team that next step. We have Ravi and David. 60 Minutes is not enough.

Absolutely riveting of in Saudi.

Some of the articulation that happened in the last example, this made it highly relevant, You know, for us and for our audience.

So on behalf of, you know, an audience as well as from your iPad WI, and David, I really thank you for your, for your insights today.

I have learned a lot and hopefully this recording may go a long way in, you know, enriching our audiences as well.

So, thank you, again, for joining us today, David, And thank you for having me on the panel. It was great. David, wonderful talking to you again. I met you too, as great.

Absolutely appreciate it.

Thank you, Robin.

Thank you.

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About the Author

more (21)-1Amit Kumar,
Global Banking Practice Lead,
UiPath

Amit leads the Banking and Capital Markets Industry Practice and leads global efforts to enable UiPath's Financial Services clients to automate their operations using both RPA and AI. Additionally, he is responsible for building industry solutions for process automation for large banks leveraging both UiPath and alliance ecosystem with vertical AI/ML partners

An Ex-Big 4 consulting leader, Amit has nearly 20 years of Process and Technology transformation focused on Banking and Capital markets firms across lines of business – retail, wholesale, wealth, markets.

Prior to UiPath, Amit built and led large consulting practices at several advisory firms – Infosys, PwC, and Sapient. He is regarded as a thought leader in Robotics Process Automation, Machine Learning, Regulatory Reporting, Finance Transformation, and Enterprise Risk and Compliance.

During this period, he delivered marquee client programs in all the major financial hubs across the globe – NY, London, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Dubai.

Amit holds an MBA and Bachelor of Engineering from the University of Delhi, India.

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About the Author

Ravi HeadshotRavi Vakacherla,
Executive Vice President, Chief Transformation Officer,
People’s United.

Ravi leads the Business Transformation Office (BTO) at People’s United Bank. The BTO is focused on Digitization, Automation, Process Optimization, and Fintech partnerships. Prior to this role, he was EVP of Operations, Product Management, and Digital for People’s United. Before moving into Operations and Product Management, he was the Chief Architect for People’s in the Information Technology Division for 4 years where he established the enterprise architecture function and managed all areas of architecture. Ravi has been with the bank for 16 years.

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About the Author

more-Nov-24-2020-01-06-22-75-PM,
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