As part of its strategy to stay at the leading edge of innovation, South Africa Rand Merchant Bank (RMB) is focusing on robotics as one of the ways
in which to improve the bank’s overall performance and help digitise
operations.
Because robots can master repetitive tasks currently performed
manually, they are suitable for many of the processes conducted by
employees, particularly in back offices. Robotic process automation
(RPA)
is the software technology that automates manual, repetitive and
mature processes, making them faster, more cost effective, and often
with a return on investment on the software and systems within about a
year. Robotics is also easily adopted to automate high-risk and
compliance-focused processes due to the robot’s ability to process at
zero defect.
Being a non-integrated software system, robots are also easy to
introduce to the bank’s existing IT systems. As they are “code free”,
robots service the businesses in the bank rather than trying to comply
with an IT system. Coded technology is complicated and costly and takes
far more time to implement. Robots are “a virtual workforce” that
operate 24 hours a day, with 100% efficiency, and can reduce costs by
between 25% and 40%.
Introduced a year ago, the RMB Robotics Centre of Excellence manages
RMB’s capability to introduce robotics into its various business units.
It has 20 employees who ensure that the correct processes for automation
are selected and implemented. Fourteen projects have already gone live
with a number of others in the pipeline.
“We’re finding great applications for robots within the bank,
especially for automating inefficiencies between different systems,”
says RMB chief executive James Formby.
The first bot, known as Mr Robert Bot (Rob for short)
joined RMB on Feb 1 2016 with his own employee number. So far 10 bots
have been introduced to 14 projects that include four processes
capturing new client information and performing maintenance of that
information. Others have taken over some of the repetitive tasks of
compliance, manual billing, financial data consolidation and reporting.
“We believe that one robot can effectively augment between three and
four people, allowing staff to focus on the more complicated,
analytical, client-facing and value-adding aspects of their functions,”
says Reshnie Naidoo, who manages the RMB Robotics Centre of Excellence.
“The desire and demand in RMB for robotics is present as people will be
able to focus on a greater breadth of knowledge rather than the depth
and detail necessary in more admin-related processes.”
It is projected that one of the robotics projects introduced in RMB’s
Corporate Banking division’s finance department will save about 4,000
hours per year. And this is just the estimate for the initial processes
reviewed, which are only about 10% of all processes.
“We have redefined multiple processes and introduced the robots to do
the jobs within minutes, compared with people who previously completed
these manual tasks over days,” says Naidoo.
In the future, more intelligent robots, known as
artificial intelligence (AI), will be introduced. AI mimics human
thoughts whereas robotics mimic actions. AI automates processes, which
require judgment and where the outcome is not always standard, such as
Know Your Customer, some compliance-type functions, supporting credit
analysts and dealmakers in their functions, and query management.
Intelligent robots will also be able to conduct tasks such as speech
recognition in call centres and document scanning for handling of paper.
Voice assistants will be able to answer specific questions, process
complex requests, understand natural language and teach themselves to
update their own algorithms.
“We are very excited about the future possibilities that technology
can offer our people and business,” says Formby. Having successfully
introduced robotics to the bank, RMB is examining how far it can take
the technology, as well as AI, to improve the bank’s overall efficiency
and performance, while staff become familiar with a new way of
operating.
by Rand Merchant Bank.
No comments:
Post a Comment