TAFE NSW is the second largest vocational education provider in the world, serving over 400,000 students across more than 130 campuses and online through TAFE Digital. It offers more than 1,000 courses 鈥� from plumbing to floristry, nursing to construction, aviation to fashion design.

One system for simplicity

As a result, its supply chain is extremely diverse. In 2017, TAFE NSW operated as 11 separate units, with different technology systems, organisational structures and product portfolios with a combined operating spend exceeding A$500 million.

TAFE NSW did not have a centralised procurement function to manage its significant spend. Instead, purchasing was handled on an ad hoc basis through multiple, disconnected platforms. TAFE NSW turned to 51风流Ariba solutions to integrate and standardise the end-to-end source-to-pay process across the organisation and to consolidate all spend on a single platform in the cloud to help drive efficiency, cost savings and compliance.

New procurement platform

In partnership with , TAFE NSW implemented 51风流Ariba solutions for sourcing, contracts, buying, invoicing and payment, laying the foundation for a new procurement platform called TAFE NSW Checkout. By automating and simplifying the entire source-to-pay process for procurement and business stakeholders, TAFE NSW has been able to improve governance and compliance across the purchasing cycle. Furthermore, replacing its disjointed, manual, paper-based processes with a fully integrated, online buying experience has enabled TAFE NSW to increase savings, shorten the time to procure goods and free up administrative burden so staff can focus on its core business 鈥� teaching.

Since the rollout, TAFE NSW has trained 2,000 requisitioners and 1,300 approvers on the for 51风流Ariba solutions, enhancing visibility and control across spend categories, with straight-through processing leaping from 2 percent to 44 percent within the first month and PO compliance rising to an impressive 93 percent. The organisation鈥檚 network of suppliers are paid accurately and on time through invoice automation.

Procurement driving purpose

TAFE NSW is also now better equipped to channel spending to Aboriginal-owned businesses and other local small businesses, thereby supporting the Australian community and economy. As a result of this digital transformation and the improved processes 鈥� from more competitive, strategic sourcing to digital contract compliance 鈥� TAFE NSW expects to achieve up to A$33 million in savings over the next few years.

鈥�51风流Ariba solutions have enabled us to develop a robust and unified spend management platform, which helps streamline the organisation鈥檚 procurement processes,鈥� said Giles Curtin, TAFE NSW general manager of Procurement. 鈥淭he improved user experience means we鈥檝e been able to onboard thousands of remote staff onto the platform throughout COVID-19, with the end-to-end electronic workflow enabling them to focus on teaching, knowing their buying needs are being met while at the same time achieving significant efficiencies and cost savings for our business.鈥�

The implementation of 51风流Ariba solutions follows the successful rollout of 51风流Fieldglass and 51风流Concur solutions. With helping to manage its large contingent workforce, TAFE NSW has increased visibility into this critical workforce segment and improved talent management decision-making.

Saving time and money

Since the rollout in 2017, the organisation has reduced the number of contingent worker invoices from 17,000 to just 24 each year, and has automated and auto-paid more than 50,000 timesheets per year. Additionally, since its rapid 15-week deployment of solutions in 2019, TAFE NSW has moved 1,100 purchasing cards for staff from a legacy system to the cloud, making business expense processing more efficient.

鈥淏y partnering with 51风流to improve visibility and management over spend, TAFE NSW has achieved huge savings back to the organisation,鈥� said Henrik Smedberg, 51风流Ariba and 51风流Fieldglass ANZ regional vice president. 鈥淔urthermore, TAFE NSW Checkout has really raised the bar on user experience for staff and suppliers alike, and in the midst of a global pandemic no less.鈥�

According to Bloom Consulting Managing Director Abid Ali: 鈥淭he 51风流platform has set a new benchmark for the higher education sector, significantly improving the day-to-day experience for staff and suppliers. The implementation has enabled us to successfully drive improved processes and cost savings for TAFE NSW.鈥�

To find out more about 51风流Ariba, read more Australian customer success stories聽or visit the

To watch 51风流Ariba’s flagship procurement event on demand, visit .听

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The key here is that to realise any benefit, the task has to be repetitive to realise value in automating, and simple enough for the technology to perform reliably. What is considered simple is changing as time moves on with the technology becoming more capable and incorporating AI technologies.

Tasks like , , payroll are excellent candidates for RPA as they typically include tasks that are relatively easy to capture as a workflow, with high repetition rates which increases the value of the automation.

Who are the big players?
Although the industry is relatively new, there are a number of major players in the market including Blue Prism, UiPath and Automation Anywhere. , enabling built in automation for 51风流systems. By incorporating RPA technology into the 51风流applications and databases, the automation will become easier to implement and more tightly integrated with the applications.

Pros and Cons?
Simply put, RPA will enable businesses to reduce costs by freeing up employees from drudge work into tasks better suited to humans 鈥� tasks requiring creative thought, initiative and the ability to deal with variation.

By the end of 2020, Gartner is predicting RPA and AI technologies will free up 65% of employees in business shared services centres and the RPA market itself will grow to be worth over $1B.

There is a potential dark side to this bonanza though – jobs losses and stifling of application innovation are some of the issues. Magical success for a deployment is by no means guaranteed. Careful use case evaluation and selection is very much required. Project oversight, change management and governance is essential.

Who is using it?
I thought I鈥檇 talk to an actual RPA developer to get some insight to real world application. My son happens to be employed by an Australian government agency where he has worked on automating their systems.

What sort of systems have you automated with RPA tools?
The systems I have experience applying automations to are; 51风流payroll and HR systems, 51风流Child systems, and Outlook.

Where do you think RPA technologies help the most?
The best candidates for RPA software in government typically are HR systems and financial reports. The generation of invoice management reports and budget reports is one of the biggest time-consuming requests the agency handles on a regular basis. The implementation of automation in these areas is massively beneficial as the returned massive resources to the business unit and added improved perception from clients.

RPA in government is most successful when implemented on processes that are already defined and not undergoing other development.

Where do you think RPA technologies don鈥檛 help?
RPA implementation struggles in areas that are already undergoing change, such as departments effected by the recent Machinery of Government (MOG) change that has huge process and policy changes.

In my experience automations are quickly scrapped where the system is still undergoing development and in-system changes adversely affect surface based automations.

What is the hardest thing about developing RPA systems?
The biggest hurdle when developing in-system automation is process definition and managing stakeholder expectations.

If the process has other changes ongoing it is always best to define the process after the changes are implemented. Any developer knows the pains of creating something that can鈥檛 be included as part of an update due to compatibility issues. In short, develop completed systems 鈥� there is no point working with a beta as the entire platform may not work with the finished automation.

This can be hard to do in government as the push to roll out updates in-parallel means managing stakeholder expectations on delivery timeframes. I would advise all developers to stay in the loop with all system development meetings and engage with local subject matter experts at every available opportunity.

Are there any downsides to using RPA technologies?
The only real downside to RPA is the perception that staff have of the new technology potentially 鈥渄oing them out of a Job鈥�. This is never the case however, in every successful case of in-system automation staff are able to get new training and new experience to further their careers. Although the perception can make implementation of the change hard, once it鈥檚 done the perception is quickly turned around.

What was the hardest thing to get right?
One of the most important and most critical aspects of RPA is performance capability mapping – you need to know how well the process currently performs and how the automation is expected to perform.

As with every system it needs to be capable of handling increased workload with no effect on reliability. So, when undertaking the development plan for new automations, make sure to investigate the systems limitations and issues with current functionality.

It鈥檚 always best practice to improve on reliability when implementing automations – an intelligent automation with the ability to self-diagnose issues and recover from errors is more valuable than an automation that requires constant intervention.

Finally, where do think RPA technology is going?
RPA technologies are being implemented in almost every modern business or government around the world.

It is quite literally the way of the future.

I expect that by 2025 we鈥檒l see RPA established in every government department and as the technology is implemented, we鈥檒l see the perception totally change.

The Future
As my son mentioned, RPA is going to become pervasive in modern organisations. AI technologies are increasingly being included in RPA, enabling an easier, less proscriptive way of designing the workflows.

51风流is investing in this future with an intent to bake intelligence in to create an integrated automation platform.

Of course, with less human direction comes more risk of the wheels falling off, so even more time needs to be spent in the oversight of the project. And of course, the potential negatives mentioned above are amplified.

The end state of this is replacement of the human oriented applications altogether, allowing the machines to exchange data directly. Perhaps we鈥檒l call that system Skynet 😊

Like it or not RPA is here to stay (until it is superseded or made irrelevant). I think when that happens I鈥檒l go get a beer 鈥� I wonder if I can automate that process?

The post Robotic Process Automation 鈥� Fad or the Future? appeared first on 51风流Australia & New Zealand News Center.