Our modern workflow infrastructure benefits employees as it’s automated, agile, and seamless. For example, enterprise hardened tools such as Blue Prism are crucial in ensuring that files are secure, facilitating collaboration with internal stakeholders across risk, compliance, and audit to ensure that stringent industry regulations and audit requirements are met. This allows our employees to focus and collaborate more effectively on strategic tasks while making key decisions, hence, increasing overall productivity.
With an intelligent digital workforce, we can ensure that the right workflow and process are triggered and automated when needed. Powered with the latest AI algorithms to identify and extract information held within files from external parties, we eliminated the need for our workforce to manually gather data and information from local files.
For instance, data was intelligently generated for an estimated 40 monthly reports for 30 clients across Singapore and Hong Kong for Schroders’ Equity Reporting. With an average of over 300 number of pages with more than 40 lines of information automatically extracted per page, our workforce could reprioritize valuable man hours to focus on other tasks to deliver insight-driven outcomes. Today, our infrastructure can support the consolidation and generation of eight reports across 120 portfolios from multiple applications.
By harnessing the power of IA and empowering our human workforce to concentrate on outcomes that require human attention, we were able to remain laser focused on our aim to drive long-term value in an increasingly environmental, social and governance (ESG)-centric and fast-changing world. We were awarded the “Most Innovative ESG Product” at the ESG Investment Awards 2021 in Singapore and were also crowned the leader for Impact Reporting in the Environmental Finance IMPACT Awards 2020 globally.
We believe the modernized workflow infrastructure needs to best support our employees in continuously delivering quality business outcomes for our clients and portfolio of investments. Only by empowering employees with a future-proof workflow infrastructure, are they able to deliver innovative business counsel and solutions that adhere to strict industry guidelines for clients, while capitalizing on emerging opportunities to navigate any forthcoming challenges.
Worker displacement and retraining are often quoted as hurdles to adoption of automation and a hybrid workforce. What are your thoughts on this?
Chua: Having workers displaced is a common misconception about automation and related technologies. I believe that implementing RPA and IA enhances and augments the human workforce in terms of productivity, efficiency and risk mitigation. More importantly, it provides a more fulfilling experience and sense of purpose for employees who often spend valuable hours working on mundane, tedious, and repetitive tasks.
The onus is on organizational leaders to ensure that employees are kept informed of the possible implications during the early planning and implementation stages of an automation strategy, as well as possible developments within the organization. This is a key step in building trust amongst the workforce, as well as agility and resiliency within the work environment that adapts to the use of technology to positively impact business operations and performance.
When it comes to retraining and upskilling, some employees may lament that there’s not enough time in daily work to allow for such activities. However, it’s necessary to safeguard their futures as it provides essential insights to the development of the organization, as well as the industry.
In fact, when implementing Blue Prism’s automation tools, we planned on-the-job trainings for employees to collaborate effectively with their digital counterparts. During the three-week training, trainees had the opportunity to solidify their understanding of the automation and process management roles.
These talents can now prioritize automation in their individual workflows, focus on higher value tasks and better collaborate with their digital counterparts. As the hybrid/remote working arrangements become more prevalent, this is also beneficial for the organization’s business returns as the digital workers can continue to work with the software in the office while the human workers work remotely.
Getting leadership buy-in for RPA and IA solutions can be a major challenge. How do you overcome that, and what advice would you have for others facing such challenges?
Chua: At Schroders, we have top-down vision and push for better efficiencies and scalable capacities through the use of new technologies.
Specific to getting the leadership buy-in for RPA and IA solutions, our solutions are measured on delivered benefits. This allows the management team to realize and appreciate the value of automation as a business accelerator. Having impactful results during the early stages of adoption of RPA and IA also served as the bedrock to our leadership’s further buy-in for wider implementation.
Additionally, having a clear strategy that outlines 5W’s and 1H’s (What, Who, Where, When, Why and How) during the scaling stage can demonstrate how further implementation of RPA and IA remains to be highly effective at an organizational level.
Automation has been long embedded in Schroders, but it’s time that we look beyond productivity and performance, and into transformation – real change that improves operational resilience, excellence, innovates, and augments the workforce.
Organizations must realize that the value of RPA and IA is not only derived from their problem-solving efficiencies, but also the ability to shape business processes to improve auditability, enhance client experiences, and boost organizational resilience. My best advice would thus be to keep abreast of industry trends and emerging technologies – especially since they are changing the way we live and work – and ensure that organizational leaders are updated at a regular basis too, so they know to prepare for it when the time is right.
