Adaptive excellence: Symantec experiences exponential growth with RPA

ABOUT

Symantec is a leader in global cyber security providing companies, governments, and humans with piece of mind in the digital era. With more than 11,000 employees across more than 35 countries.

THE CHALLENGE

Symantec was seeking a solution to reduce the amount of manual processes while maintaining strict security and compliance controls. A customizable solution was essential, since some departments wanted to automate a few steps while others wanted a complete automation of end-to-end workflows. Symantec wanted more than just a stop-gap measure to replacing another system, but rather a solid governance solution to seamlessly integrate all workflows and improve operations.

4,500

hours saved in less than a year

20% ‍

Increase in auto booking of renewals

26

processes automated

“It just took 3 weeks for small and medium-sized processes to be automated. The heaviest processes took only 9 weeks. The results were delivered fast, giving us the opportunity to assess the fast pace.”

-Ravi Konda, Sr. Manager, IT Automation, Symantec quote

THE SOLUTION

Symantec identified three factors in their drive for operational excellence. The first, suitability, was an internal analysis for process design to measure potential constraints, or control benefits to the process–the goal being to “score” a process that’s a good candidate for automation. The second, complexity, measured what type of bot would be required to automate the process and to understand how many screens and systems would interact with it. The third, value, such that automation brought value–through cost savings, time savings, and ROI.

Processes Automated

Order management

UAT test cases

Renewals quote
SVA Program

Renewals batch quoting

Payroll accrual

In-flight projects

THE WHOLE STORY

Symantec started their RPA journey slowly by going with medium priority processes that would deliver the highest ROI. Establishing the right foundation, with the right infrastructure was very important. Symantec set up the governance and center of excellence up front, streamlined criteria for processes selection, and enabled different verticals—including sales, marketing, and IT—to easily build bots with one hour of training.

Symantec selected Automation Anywhere as their automation partner due to their platform’s user-friendliness, system agnosticism and their enterprise-grade security grade. Automation Anywhere RPA and AI- powered IQ Bot were deployed to automate their order management process. With incoming orders from different systems RPA was key in filling 17 holes with 40 bots working around the clock to analyze, edit, or book orders. RPA bots played an integral role in sending notifications back to the customers informing them their orders were processed.

Symantec leveraged automation to streamline many of their new processes and were able to quickly experience the value of each of the bots they deployed to each business unit in key performance areas.

LOOKING INTO THE FUTURE

Today, Symantec leverages RPA to help grow top-line drivers. Bots serve the mid-market segment nurturing leads and conduct pre- processing for sales teams saving employees hours of time on a weekly basis. This time is used to enhance customer experience through direct engagement. The security giant is planning on deploying RPA bots in other business units to enhance their workflows and automate more end-to-end processes across the entire enterprise using both attended and unattended bots.