Tel: 208-914-1248
TASK AUTOMATION SYSTEM
Project Category:
Company Type:
Process Improvement / Development
Private Equity Backed
Operating Cost Savings:
Increased Valuation:
$450,000 per year
$3.6 million
THE BACKGROUND
This is a private equity backed company that had recently gone to market but did not receive any qualifying offers. Prospective buyers cited low barriers to entry, lack of a clear competitive advantage, and extensive reliance on manual processes as a few reasons why they declined to make an offer.
They essentially act as an outsourced compliance department for their clients. Among other things, they: (1) create and uploade documents to various third-party web portals, (2) work with their clients' insurance companies to update and maintain various insurance certificates, (3) log in to third-party portals semi-monthly to retrieve latest updates, and (4) communicate their activities and findings with their clients.
We were initially retained to design an "activity report" to visually demonstrate to clients the amount of work they are doing in their behalf behind the scenes each month. They hoped this report would give them a bit of a competitive advantage and serve as a powerful sales tool.
THE PROBLEM
After interviewing the staff and reviewing their current processes, we:
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Identified the key information for the report
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Designed the report, and
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Created a webform (and database) to enter the data necessary
The Board of Directors and executive team were thrilled with everything and anxious to get it implemented. That is when the bigger problem was identified.
As we met with the manager and supervisors over the service team, they also were really impressed by the design and information in the report. But their enthusiasm quickly dispersed when they learned they would be responsible for entering the data and sending the reports.
Although it only added about 3 to 5 minutes per account review, it was time they simply did not have. They shared that their team of 20 was already working unbudgeted overtime in an attempt to stay current with their 3,000 plus account reviews--and they were still falling further and further behind. In an effort to keep up, they began cutting corners on their reviews. Adding even more work to their team would not only set them further behind, it would destroy the morale of the team.
We then asked them to demo a typical account review for us. It took about 30 minutes to complete--and was very tedious. They literally copied and pasted information between multiple accounts and emails the entire time.
We then suggested automating the entire process. They were incredulous but excited. The executive team and the BOD was thrilled.
THE SOLUTION
We ended up using a recorder that is traditionally used to perform automated testing for web apps. We ran into several complications along the way (i.e. various issues with browsers, ensuring the latest scripts would be used, switching between browser screens all day, training all employees, etc.), but in the end we over-delivered.
Instead of creating a macro button to be installed on each users computer, we ended up automating the entire process to run autonomously via a server farm. Here are some highlights of the system:
KEY SYSTEM FEATURES:
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Identifies which accounts are due for review
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Determines the capacity of each service representative for load balancing
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Queues up the accounts to be run
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Accounts are run between 10 crawlers on five servers on AWS
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New servers and crawlers can be spun up as needed to handle capacity
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API is used to grab information from the CRM system
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Data is stored in a proprietary database to create the Activity Reports
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Reports are dynamically generated
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All client emails are dynamically generated
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The CRM is updated with current data
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All accounts run each night are stored in a status queue
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Account representatives simply filter the queue, review and click send.
THE RESULT
These processes and systems we developed and deployed helped to address the very issues prospective buyers brought up. Namely, it gave the company a competitive advantage, it increased the barriers to entry (as this would become the new standard to live up to), and it turned past manual processes into a proprietary piece of technology.
Among other advantages, these improvements decreased operating costs by over $450,000 per year--which increased company value by about $3.6 million (given their 8x multiple on EBITDA).