Australia Post is a government-owned corporation that provides postal services across Australia. The company operates within a vast network of 4,356 post offices countrywide and distributes packages to more than 190 countries worldwide. As one of Australia’s oldest government services, Australia Post has expanded its service offerings to embrace e-commerce and new forms of digital communication.
Australia Post’s accounting services department oversees huge volumes of back-office processes that update and maintain a multitude of accounts and service offerings. The team at Australia Post sought new pathways to manage the many accounting tasks and improve efficiencies within the department. Specifically, the team aimed to automate repetitive manual tasks to bolster the workflow across accounting services and offer employees the opportunity to develop their skillsets.
— Adam Jeffress, Robotic Automation & Transformation Manager
Australia Post’s accounting team identified RPA as the ideal solution to improve business efficiencies and redirect employees towards more value-driven work. Australia Post kicked off their digital transformation journey with a free trial of Automation Anywhere RPA and a pilot project. After the initial success, Australia Post partnered with Automation Anywhere to automate 25 additional processes, including maintaining financial journals, managing credit uploads, facilitating automatic agency set up and pricing, as well as material maintenance, which involves creating and changing the details of all items sold at different postal outlets across Australia.
The accounting services team at Australia Post is an integral part of the organization supporting the busy workflow of Australia’s national postal service. With a vast network and a broad range of services, the accounting team must deliver efficient processes and maintain accounts in a timely manner. Many of the processes were comprised of manual tasks, resulting in inefficiencies that impacted workflows across the department. By introducing RPA, Australia Post’s accounting services team was able to restructure workflows and foster a culture of innovation and efficiency.
When considering automation across several processes, the team at Australia Post engaged Automation Anywhere to assist with the development of a framework for integration of this new technology. After a successful proof of concept, 25 additional core processes were automated. For instance, maintaining financial journals was historically a manual and time-consuming task. With RPA, this process was fully automated, and the team members were able to reinvest their time towards improving the experiences of their customers. Another process that benefitted from the Digital Workforce included credit uploads, where automation has helped Australia Post apply credit to customer accounts quickly and efficiently.
Critical to implementing automation was the education of staff members at the start of their journey. Approximately 90 Australia Post team members completed self-learning modules on the Automation Anywhere University platform, and a number of staff have taken their education further and became RPA-certified. Excited by the opportunities automation presented, some of the members at Australia Post have even begun developing their own automation processes and are suggesting new ideas for scaling RPA in the office.
— Steven Morris, Head of Accounting Services
Australia Post plans to scale its current infrastructure by integrating more assisted automation and exploring new services such as chat bots. The team is also looking to leverage AI capabilities and machine learning technology offered by Automation Anywhere’s IQ Bot to further optimize their workflows. Accounting Services hopes to continue supporting their team in automation development and education, and to arm employees with the skills to prepare for the future of work.