Hold on tight… this article is going to be quite the humblebrag (!). We don’t normally like to talk about ourselves – and we’re really not good with boasting – but working on our weaknesses is important so we’re going to blow our own trumpet for the next 400 words or so.

With that said, it’s for a good reason as today we’re covering what it means to be a Hot Vendor, a title given to us by the excellent researchers over at HFS.

The Experts

HFS is an independent research and analysis firm that produces reports on industry trends, technology adoption and conducts large surveys of professionals as part of their information gathering. They produce over 300 detailed reports per year and have particular expertise within automation and AI – which is handy for us.

HFS shortlisted a group of Hot Vendors which are companies that offer particular value for firms focusing on digital business models. They assess competency by working to criteria scoring in areas such as client impact and financial position.

Pride Isn’t a Sin

What’s really important for us – and what we’re extra proud of – is that because HFS are independent, their verdict on our quality can be seen by new and existing customers as a genuine review.

They came to the conclusions about the quality of our work on their own: which means we’re doing things right. You can find out more about their process here, but in short they spoke with us. and our customers/ to understand our offerings.

Working On Ourselves

We’re an ambitious company. We’ve more than doubled in size over the past year. Part of what makes us who we are, and good for our customers, is our commitment to improvement. That means working with new technologies. It also means working with new models and process design methodologies. And yes, that even means writing articles like this where we talk about how great we are. But this time you literally don’t have to take our word for it.

The Right Choice

Whether it’s potential customers who are doing their due diligence, new customers who we’ve just started working with, or our longstanding partner – they all like to know they’ve made the right choice.

For the old guard, we’re confident they’ve stuck around for more than just our winning conversation (!). But to be recognised by a trusted brand such as HFS just confirms to us that what we do for our customers works and it can work for you too.

To steal a quote from HFS’ report that encapsulates what we are about and how we know they did the research the right way

“HFS has designated PAteam an HFS OneOffice™ Hot Vendor for its refreshingly hype-free approach to creating value with RPA and a NICE leaning offering that brings some genuine differentiation to a market alive with the sound of marketing buzz”.

Want to find out more about our Hot Vendor status and what that means for you? Drop PAteam an email or give us a call today.

Although still challenging, as with 2020, the past year has been one of real positivity. The pandemic has changed the outlook that companies and people have and how they want to work.

Part of that has been about taking the boring jobs away from remote workers – to keep their spirits high and to give them work where they really add value.

This is all in a day’s work for automation. But what will next year look like? We’re not making any promises but we’ve got a few ideas.

Machine Will Get Smarter

Starting with an easy one, we’re confident that the software needed to develop AI and ML will improve. That’s not much of a prediction – more of an inevitability – but it is worth noting. Packages like Citizen AI are only going to get more powerful. Right now, you need a data scientist just to churn through a lot of the groundwork and they are in short supply. That means that people are going to push software which will do more of the work for us.

I’m Sorry Dave

Alright, a less obvious one now: an increase in quality awareness of automation. Each year that passes the general public thinks of robots less like the Terminator and more like HAL 9000 (only less evil). In 2022 people will see more robots supporting them – not just doing work for them. In call centres. bots can guide and back up human operators to make the two of them more than the sum of their parts. That’s true integration.

Read Me

Back to AI and it’s clear that its application in RPA, as well as pretty much everything else, is going to grow. We can already see signs that next year will yield big pushes using AI in IDP (Intelligent Document Processing). This will be a breakout year for companies like Hyperscience who have their own unique approach to IDP. Their work on reinforcement learning is going to help accelerate RPA uptake for businesses.

The Smart Search

One thing we’re really excited about is the surge in process and task mining. 2021 has already seen growth in this area, but we predict a massive jump in 2022.

Imagine AI that can understand the processes of your business, mapping out each step. Or task mining where the most common tasks of your teams are noted and ordered – so that automation can be easily built to support them. We’re not embarrassed to say this really gets us excited. Using AI to understand when and how to automate: that’s genius.

A lot of our customers use RPA. but the number which have actual bots deployed is a lot lower. Technology that can scale is something every company wants as they look to invest in things which keep pace with them – to avoid bottlenecks. Part of what we call our Automation Factory focuses on continuous improvement. You might recognise that idea from SixSigma, but we use it to help projects scale and work for our customers as they grow. This is a big part of what we’re dedicating ourselves to next year. Not so much a New Year’s Resolution as a New Year’s Automation.

Got any plans for next year? We’d love to hear your ideas. So contact PAteam today.

We’re not going to gloss over it. We really hate buzzwords. Nothing grinds our gears more than overused words. But (and it’s a big but) we cannot lie (!), customer success is a real thing. In fact, it’s our focus.

We care a great deal about our customers and honestly believe that this separates us from the rest of the market. And today, we’re going to talk all about what customer success really means for us.

Lost in Automation

We’ve found that new customers can get lost easily. Between all the technical lingo and the wide range of implementation choices, they often get overwhelmed. Worse still, they sometimes lose focus on the actual goal they had in the first place.

It’s understandable when they’re trying to push a technology they aren’t experienced in, but it’s always sad to see. That’s where we come in – a real guide in the journey of RPA.

Every Detail

We can’t say it enough, understanding is key. What does our customer want to accomplish through automation? What does their company structure look like? How does this process fit into that structure?

We look at how the details come together to form the dynamic of that working environment. Once we understand those things, we can put a build plan together and deliver exactly what our customer needs.

Well Oiled Machine

Let’s talk about a real example of how we guide a customer. We recently worked with a company in the credit sector. After a lengthy discovery process with them, we could see that Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) could save them a lot of time working through their customer forms. We could have left it at that.

The extra spice we added to bring out the best in that technology was to build it with the support of Machine Learning. Now, there is a solution in place which actually gets more efficient with time – learning as it goes. We couldn’t help ourselves, we really do want to deliver the best and that’s why we’re a trusted advisor in the industry.

We don’t build exactly what you want, we build exactly what you need.

Buy Cheap, Buy Twice

The truth is that sometimes a client’s idea just isn’t going to work. That’s only because they only have a high level understanding of how the tech works. At this stage, how successful automation is going to be in that business is going to come down to the vendor. Some would be happy to implement a slapdash, half-arsed, barely-fit-for-purpose solution. That’s not us.

We want you to get great ROI from RPA. You might want to dip your toe in with a slightly cheaper option – but you get what you pay for. And it won’t be cheaper when you have to buy it right the second time.

Being genuine is key for us. We’re going to be genuine with all our customers and encourage them to do the same. Being honest about concerns at any stage creates a space for honest dialogue and that serves our customers perfectly.

Everything for us comes down to making the customer successful. We genuinely care. We genuinely want our customers to succeed. People can tell when you’re faking it. Customer success leads to our success – and that joint prosperity is what we’re in it for.

Your success is our focus. Contact PAteam to take the next step in your automation journey.

RPA is too often an afterthought for businesses trying to improve processes. Why? Because most businesses aren’t looking to implement RPA – they just want the outcome. And, more often than not, those businesses that are looking for RPA are looking for solutions rather than thinking about the problems they’re trying to solve.

To know you need RPA you need to know what RPA is and understand exactly how your business processes work. If you’re reading this then you’re on the right path, so let us show you how to know you need RPA.

A Vested Interest

Like any technology new or old, it all begins with awareness. Whether that is at the top level of a business, within the IT team, or just someone in the business who has heard about something. Now if you’ve made it to this paragraph, congratulations, you have an awareness. This should be nurtured because it’s this curiosity which is going to lead to the improvements you want in your business.

Knowledge is Power

Now, you’ll need to pair that awareness with a tutor, guide, expert whatever you want to call them. That’s because RPA isn’t easy. Robots by their very nature are dumb. That’s not us being mean, it’s just a fact. Basic bots do as they’re told and no more. They have the ability to read documents, listen to calls, and detect customer moods. They can be brilliant. But they are only ever as good as the processes they’re built for and the people building them.

Read Into

Luckily, as tech progresses, we see RPA’s buddies lend a helping hand. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). Robots are great at handling structured data at scale – i.e. when there are given parameters. Thinking about document recognition we can see IDP, Intelligent Document Processing, has taken a number of technologies and made something even better from. Now, handwritten documents can be read, converted to text, translated – you name it. This is a great example of what we don’t think about when we consider RPA’s capabilities. We seem preoccupied with what we should and shouldn’t do – but it’s an important distinction to highlight.

How Much?

ROI is of course the primary factor in building RPA technologies. While there are other metrics like employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction at work, they ultimately all roll into ROI. For example, in post-Brexit Britain, logistics companies are having to review huge numbers of commercial invoices to check tariff codes are correct. Now this is RPA territory, at least for some of it. A bot can be built relatively cheaply and tackle say 80% of the invoice traffic. That last 20% is made up of errors or anomalies and so a human is required. Further investment into ML could help bring that 20% down a good way into the grasp of the bot.

First, Understand

Whenever we visit a customer or talk to businesses we don’t really talk about tech. First, and always, it is about what the business problems are. How can we understand them better, then, and only then, can we consider if RPA is up to the task. Our most important product is our expertise – not the tech. As they say. don’t believe the hype. We will use whatever technology is right for the job, not necessarily the one that is springing up in your news feeds.

Still not sure if you need RPA? Contact PAteam today, we’re here to help.

PAteam was short-listed by HFS Research as designated HFS Hot Vendor based on rigorous five-step assessment during Q3 2021!

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At the time of writing, people are queuing up outside petrol stations across the UK — waiting impatiently, for gas.

A purchase which usually takes no more than a few minutes has even begun to disrupt, not just consumers, but entire logistics networks, with couriers struggling to find fuel. Who’s to blame? Brexit? A global oil shortage? (Well, yes, but…) Or bottlenecks? Even when systems are that well optimised, if one part of the chain has a critical failure, it all fails.

Bottlenecks are our focus here and now – so let’s look at how automation can help us to overcome them.

Add Fuel to The Fire

While current backlogs in the UK relate to physical queues for fuel, we can also think of backlogs in a digital sense: people backed up on your website trying to raise support tickets.

What’s the impact? Customer agents in your call centre are stuck on the phone dealing with an influx of problems created by a bottleneck – unable to offer anything more than an apology. All of this is lost revenue; not just because of downtime, but because you’re taking away chances for new customers to make contact with your business.

Discovery Channel

To get around issues like these, you need to start identifying the key parts of your processes which could be susceptible to failure. At PAteam, whenever we engage with a new customer we always start with a discovery phase. Making sure the scope of the project is understood means the end result will meet their requirement and won’t go over budget.

If something is missed during discovery it can have a big impact down the line. Think about the UK right now, the government didn’t pay enough attention to the number of haulage drivers available following Brexit and now they’re short-staffed.

Taxation Complication

Let’s take another real world scenario where identifying the stress points of processes helps to deal with bottlenecks: the dreaded filing of tax returns. Many people leave it till the last minute to complete their tax returns – meaning that tax departments everywhere have to deal with a tidal wave of submissions.

Knowing that this is going to happen gives the tax office a chance to brace themselves. Or at least it should. If it’s clear that a particular task will be impossible with just people, the ability to deploy automation at the busiest times, on-demand, to handle capacity is worth looking at ahead of time.

Any Time, Any Place

RPA can help at a tactical as well as a strategic level. There are problems you know will occur at some point. Just like tax returns, many businesses know their busiest periods – think Christmas for retail. But when it comes to dealing with unforeseen issues – such as rail strikes – it’s great to be able to quickly build and deploy a bot that takes care of messaging customers to keep them updated. No one likes being kept in the dark.

For all businesses technology should never be the focus. It should always be all about the customer. Bottlenecks hurt customers which hurts businesses. Understanding processes and using well built bots can aid customer satisfaction and that’s always the end goal.

If you’re interested in the benefits of RPA and have a challenge that needs tackling, contact PAteam today.