The challenge

Avec was approached by a leading shared services provider facing mounting operational pressures within its payroll department. The client recognised the need to enhance efficiency and redeploy existing staff to more strategic tasks. The existing processes involved complex administrative tasks on paper and business applications, resulting in high error rats and significant paperwork. Additionally, employee transfers between business units triggered time-consuming processes, with some cases taking 40-60 minutes and others up to a week to complete, due to the manual nature of the processes.

The solution

Avec addressed these challenges by automating processes, which involved enhancing and standardising inputs, extracting and validating data from multiple eForms into a structured format. Complex business rules were configured across multiple systems, and best practices were employed to ensure the robustness of the processes and prevent unexpected failures. Scheduled robots were deployed to handle released processes at specific times, and information management was utilised to generate performance reports for supervisors overseeing the automated processes.

The result

Within 6 weeks, Avec successfully automated three key processes within the payroll department, transitioning from paper-based documentation to e-forms, simplifying data sharing and retention. This initiative resulted in potential annual savings of approximately $180,000, alongside increased efficiency, reduced turnaround times, improved accuracy, and the establishment of a robust infrastructure for an ongoing RPA program. Furthermore, fortnightly superannuation reviews were transformed into weekly processes, reducing the average turnaround time by 80%, from five business days to one. The automated processes enabled at least 60% of the transcribing effort to be performed automatically, with a 0% error rate, allowing staff capacity to be reallocated to higher-value activities.