Automation Potential in: Reporting
today's Challenges
Project reports, whether they be daily, weekly or monthly are often used as key metric tools to evaluate and track performances of projects, teams and individuals.
Often reporting is reliant on individuals inputting information from several different sources and combining them together. These sources could be other spreadsheets, other systems or online. In many cases the information for one report may need to come from several staff members. Where shared documentation is not present, only one staff member may input data at one time, slowing down the process.
Projects with multiple stakeholders will often have to display the same information in a variety of different ways to suit the audiences. For example, a monthly progress report may need to include a high level of detail to suit the project manager but only a top-level overview to suit board members.
Automation Impact Evaluation
No matter how useful metrics and data can be in guiding business decisions, time spent on reporting is ultimately time not spent on core activity. Therefore, expediting some of this process through the use of automation can save valuable time to use more effectively.The beauty of RPA is that it is not tied into a specific software and can work across multiple systems. This means it can be used to retrieve information from multiple sources. RPA is well suited to the update of standard management reports and also the aggregation of reports.
case Study
Construction Company
Proservartner worked alongside a construction company whose facility managers were responsible for a large volume of project emails – over 500 per day. On average it took around twelve minutes to read each email, extract relevant data and update project schedules/task lists. This data entry was a massive use of time that the facility managers could otherwise be spending on high-value projects.Three departments were reliant on using two different applications on their desktop in order to fulfil project reports. We implemented a bot that extracted data from various SAP tables, personalised the information for every facility manager and sent personalised lists via email, which included current and future tasks, as well as open items to employees. The company saw a return on their investment in six months and the ‘bot was able to carry out this operation with 100% accuracy. There was an 80% reduction in processing time.