London School of Economics Releases Second in Series of RPA Case Studies

Business Wire

Working paper sponsored by Blue Prism highlights eight key findings from the use of RPA within Xchanging

LONDON & CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Blue Prism, the pioneering developer of enterprise Robotic Process Automation (RPA) software, in collaboration with the Outsourcing Unit of the London School of Economics, today announced the results of an academic research paper into business technology and services provider Xchanging’s current and long-term use of the company’s industry-defining Robotic Process Automation (RPA) technology. This is the second in a five-part series of research papers on RPA and both can be downloaded here.

At present Xchanging’s Insurance business has 14 core processes automated, using 27 robots (as of June 2015) and processes 120,000 cases a month. With Xchanging’s stress on ‘technology at our core,’ Adrian Guttridge, Executive Director of Insurance, introduced RPA into Xchanging in early 2014. The technology fitted well with Xchanging’s core values of customer focus, innovation and speed.

The Outsourcing Unit (OU) of the LSE undertook the research into Xchanging’s RPA technology over the month of May 2015. Academic researchers met with RPA ‘champions’ from within Xchanging to learn more about the organization’s approach and its implementation of RPA technology. The paper referred to Xchanging's implementation of robotics as provisionally challenging four 'myths' in RPA. A myth is not necessarily false but will not be true in all circumstances:

The first ‘myth’ being that RPA is only used to replace humans with technology. However the paper found RPA at Xchanging was used to do more work with the same number of people.
Secondly the perception that operations staff feel threatened by RPA was also displaced as Xchanging welcomed the robots as valued ‘new hires.’
Thirdly RPA has not brought back many jobs from offshore as Xchanging has automated many offshore processes and kept them offshore.
The fourth ‘myth’ was around cost savings and the fact that cost was not the primary reason for bringing RPA to Xchanging as the company already had an understanding of multiple operational benefits and strategic payoffs.

The OU paper details the multiple benefits Xchanging has gained from its deployment of Blue Prism’s enterprise-strength RPA platform to date. The business is looking to extend its RPA capability across the Group, bringing long term ‘strategic and competitive edge payoffs.’

“The paper outlined eight ‘lessons’ for organizations looking to implement an RPA strategy from Xchanging’s experience,” said LSE Professor of Technology Work and Globalization Leslie Willcocks. “These included: the need for an internal RPA sponsor or champion; a culture of business innovation and technology which accelerates adoption; and the ability for RPA to comply with the technology function’s governance and architecture policies.”

The paper also highlighted the other benefits to Xchanging, including: improved service quality, high accuracy, low error rates, faster turnaround times, increased compliance and strategic positioning. “I think RPA helps us hugely around error rates, consistency, volumes, speed and price point,” said Adrian Guttridge, executive director of Xchanging Insurance. “For our existing contracts we will end up wrapping a service around it to our clients who can buy a service that includes robotics, but robotics is also something we can take to market stand-alone. Robots also give us an option beyond pure offshore labor arbitrage. The other thing it does is demonstrate a level of innovation to our clients.”

Alastair Bathgate, CEO and co-founder of Blue Prism, added, "It’s very exciting to see how Xchanging have adopted Blue Prism's enterprise Robotic Process Automation technology and created such innovative and differentiated offerings. They have demonstrated how software robots can be a virtual workforce that complements their existing work force and tirelessly perform the tasks and processes for which automation is most suited."

More information about Blue Prism and the LSE case study series can be found here http://www.blueprism.com/knowledge/knowledge.php?cat=3.

About Blue Prism
Formed by process automation experts, with offices in London, Manchester, Miami and Chicago, Blue Prism has pioneered the development of robotic process automation software for clerical and administrative automation. The company currently operates in the BPO, Government, Financial Services, Energy, Telco and Healthcare sectors and was named a Gartner cool vendor in 2013. More information is available at http://www.blueprism.com/.