10x Productivity Gains in 12 Months: Experian’s Success Using Digital Workforce

How long does it take to realize productivity benefits and cost savings from a Robotic Process Automation (RPA) implementation? This is the number one question for many looking to deploy RPA and its Digital Workforce. To answer this and other critical RPA related questions, the Everest Group studied 52 enterprises and compiled their findings into the Enterprise RPA Adoption Pinnacle Model Assessment report.

While most enterprises are still in the early stages of adoption, the Everest Group finds that the benefits of RPA are quite real. 85% of the participating organizations in the research were less than 18 months into their RPA journeys, yet they had already experienced real operational and financial benefits. Experian, one of the companies in their study, is a good case in point.

The Experian RPA story

As a leading global information services company, Experian set out to accomplish several goals by adopting RPA:

• 1. Increase productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness of processes in a scalable model
• 2. Enrich employee effectiveness by creating time for creative, customer-centric, and judgement-intensive areas of work
• 3. Enhance customer experience by providing a consistent and superior engagement
• 4. Generate cost savings

This echoes one of the key implications that Everest Group defines as a key driver for RPA adoption: People drive the success of RPA. As Jim Fick, managing director and executive sponsor at Experian says, “We are leveraging RPA to help automate work that our team have to do to create capacity for the work we want to do.”

Experian’s RPA program

Experian started their program by implementing Lean Six Sigma to eliminate inefficiencies within their processes before automating them.

Next, they established a center of excellence (CoE). IT worked in partnership with the other business units from day one, with a 50:50 funding model between IT and BUs. The CoE ensured an integrated and consistent approach to driving adoption, managing employee training and tracking performance with real-time dashboards.

• 12 months since the automation journey was deployed.
• 35 bots across the globe to automate 500,000+ tasks with an average duration of four months to scale up from pilots.
• 3 million potential transactions to be automated

Getting from point A to point B — creating cultural change

Experian deployed our Automation Anywhere Enterprise RPA solution with a real-time performance monitoring dashboard to measure and track productivity gains, automated full-time equivalents (FTEs), economic quantification of productivity lift, and transaction success rate.

Successful RPA requires both speed and scale of adoption; quick decision-making and collaboration are key to keeping employees engaged. Experian placed significant focus on balancing the man/machine dynamic and creating grass-roots level automation adoption. The company ensured a successful deployment by implementing rich training resources, including hackathons, project of the year, newsletters, lunch and learns, workshops, Kaizen events, and fit-for-purpose trainings to coach and guide employees.

Defining success

The momentum from this cultural change fueled adoption. From inception to scale, Experian was up and running within four months and were able to report dramatic results after 12 months:

• Significant positive impact on employee enablement and retention
• 6x growth in cost savings
• 98% average transaction success rate
• 100% extent of reskilling and upskilling of impacted employees

The most dramatic result, however, can be seen in Experian’s productivity levels. Experian was able to assess the average productivity improvement (over baseline) and the results of RPA deployment are undeniable. That’s the 10x difference.