THE WHOLE STORY
Payroll was one of the first processes to be automated within the Shared Services team, which had inherited many different payroll cycles as various parts of the business merged to become what BAE Systems is today. Due to the restrictive nature of the processing, only one of 10 payroll clerks could access part of the system to make data changes at any time, leading to frustration for the team. Now, a bot completes the payroll tasks, processing all the data files to a schedule defined and managed by the Payroll team. Every morning the bot reports what it has completed, and the team can now focus on more valuable work like data quality checks to ensure accuracy instead of the mechanics of uploading data. Using a bot also allows this work to be completed outside of business hours. Automation has increased payroll data uploads by 7x.
RPA has empowered back-office teams to enable change by giving them the tools to improve processes and workflows. This results in higher quality, right-first-time, consistent processing and scalability. Without RPA, adapting transactional processes is a large IT project, which could take years to complete.
To date, BAE Systems has automated 50 processes, saving more than 2,600 hours annually, and benefiting from 7X faster Payroll data upload.