People First, Process Next, Service Excellence Always
Learning to walk before we run
Automation Feasibility and Implementation at Tarmac SSC
22 November 2017
23People First, Process Next, Service Excellence Always
People First, Process Next, Service Excellence Always
Background & Context
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● CRH
● Tarmac
● Tarmac SSC
● Our Automation Journey … so far ...
25
CRH at a Glance
● FTSE 100 company
● #3 global building materials player
● Globally balanced across 34 countries
● www.crh.com
● €27bn sales
● >90,000 people
● 300m tonnes of product
● Diversified product portfolio from heavy building materials to builders’ merchants
People First, Process Next, Service Excellence Always
CRH HQBelgard Castle, Dublin, Ireland
29People First, Process Next, Service Excellence Always
● People First
● Process Next
● Service Excellence Always
Tarmac SSC Mission Statement
30People First, Process Next, Service Excellence Always
● What’s all the noise about?
● The study
● Project Apollo
● What next?
Automation @ Tarmac
Automation31
RobotsRPA Robotic Process
Automation
Automation Anywhereblue prism
UI PathNLG
Natural Language Generation Artificial Intelligence
AI
Cognitive Computing
SAPRedwood
Lexmark
Infosys Datamatics
Accenture
Deloitte
Readsoft
Basware
People First, Process Next, Service Excellence Always
What’s all the noise about?
People First, Process Next, Service Excellence Always
The study
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● Size of the prize
● Proof of concept
● Automation roadmap
People First, Process Next, Service Excellence Always 33
The studyThe Challenge
Most of the process improvements/efficiencies within the SSC that are feasible in the short term will depend on automation. Whether:
1. An end to end automation of a process with an integrated solution (eg P2P) or2. "Point" solutions based on Robotic Process Automation (eg data entry in SAP)
or 3. Leveraging existing systems more fully (eg BlackLine or ServiceNow)
……. automation is the common theme.
People First, Process Next, Service Excellence Always 34
The study
Conducted initial
process workshops
Developedroadmap
Developed value
proposition
Conducted workshops with process area leads to build an initial understanding of the activities in each area and potential opportunities
Developed long list of workshop outputs
Developed a long list of activities in each process area and assessed each activity for its opportunity potential, including consideration of additional functionality in additional applications e.g. ServiceNow, BlackLine
Validatedsummary of
opportunities
Produced a summary document of opportunities
and validated these with process area leads
Developed an outline roadmap based on our conversations and information collected
Developed and
reviewed value
proposition
Developed a POC
Considered future finance
ambition
Developed the POC for credit limit change
requests, demonstrating the
value of RPA and its ability to function
within Tarmac’s environment
Developed ambition for 2018 and beyond
In six weeks, we completed our Feasibility Study (incl PoC Build)
People First, Process Next, Service Excellence Always 35
The studyConducted
initial process
workshops
One-to-ones were held with SMEs from O2C, P2P, R2R, Logistics Services and MDM in order to assess processes based on common criteria.
Repetitive Time consuming Input No. of exceptionsLevel of documentation
Current FTE effort Growth expectations
High repetition of task
Tasks that consume a significant amount of time Structured, electronic data
Low number of exceptions / variations to the process
Process is very well documented High
Expected growth e.g. new regulations, expanded scope
Little repetition of task Tasks that are quick
Unstructured text, scanned or handwritten pdf documents
High number of exceptions / variations to the process
Process is not fully documented Low
Little growth expected
Each process was assessed to consider its potential for automation and categorised as a high, medium or low opportunity across all available tools.
Developed long list of workshop outputs
Validatedsummary of
opportunities
People First, Process Next, Service Excellence Always 36
The studyDeveloped
a POCDeveloped the POC demonstrating the value of RPA and
its ability to function within Tarmac’s environment
People First, Process Next, Service Excellence Always
The implementation (Project Apollo)
37
● How does it relate to our Strategy?
● What was the plan?
● How are we moving from project to BaU?
People First, Process Next, Service Excellence Always
As part of the CRH vision to be Making Business Better, the Shared Service Centre (SSC) are implementing Robotic Process Automation software to handle a number of process activities across the function.
We also looked at opportunities to improve our SSC SOx Key Controls by moving them from manual and retrospective, to automated and preventative.
The combined result for these formed our roadmap for Robotic Process Automation in 2017 and following an ‘RFP’ process in Quarter 1, we have selected UiPath as our software vendor.
Project Apollo is a combination of all the automation opportunities and the resulting efficiencies will mean we will no longer need all of the temporary resource we currently have in place across the SSC. We will also have a number of new opportunities relating to the implementation and running of the RPA software.
Strategic Fit
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Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec Jan
MDM
R2R
P2P
Customer master data changes
Vendor create process
Enable ServiceNow for Customer Changes
Enable ServiceNow for Vendor Create
Enable ServiceNow for Fixed Asset Addition, Transfers and Disposals
Fixed assets - Asset creation, transfer and disposal
Fixed asset verification
FA - project creation
Royalties calcs and postings
Payroll processing
BlackLine Opportunity UiPath - RPA ServiceNow
development
Banking reconciliations
JV & Intercompany reconciliations
Manual Journal Reengineering
Automatic Journal Reengineering
SOx Blackout
Payroll posting account reconciliations
BS Accounts for third party rent receivable
Apollo Roadmap
People First, Process Next, Service Excellence Always 39
Sundry Payments processes
Supplier statement recs (subject to digitising input)
PR to PO conversion
Invoice Matching Error handlingExtend Sundry One Time
Vendor Pyt requests
Contracting Payment Certificates
UiPath contract signed
People First, Process Next, Service Excellence Always 40
Define process requirements
Build process in UiPath Studio
User Acceptance Testing
Observed Go Live and fixes for LIVE
Publish process and link to Robot in UiPath Orchestrator
Define schedule for full Go Live
UiPath Process Development
41People First, Process Next, Service Excellence Always
Meet our virtual workforce
Here we can see Delilah in action
Jonny5DelilahSamson Daryl
MatildaIan HollyKryten
As a contributing factor to success, we believe it is important to ‘humanise’ the robots and help make them part of the existing team - each team working with a robot was given the opportunity to name them…....with some interesting results!
People First, Process Next, Service Excellence Always
Automation Centre of Excellence
Automation Leader
Process Analyst *Automation Controller *
Automation Developer
Process SME’s *Assigned by Process Owner
Process Ownerin SSC function/wider business
* Potential to source from freed up FTE’s in SSC Number of heads in each role would be driven by the number of automated processes and tools
IT Apps, Security, Infrastructure and Change
SOx Compliance
From Project to BaU
People First, Process Next, Service Excellence Always
Benefits Case
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23 opportunities
identified
8 robots 17% cost taken out of
SSC
£900k development
cost
Potential saving of
>15% FTEs
1 year payback
12 opportunities
identified
8 robots 8% cost taken out of
SSC
£700k development
cost
Potential saving of
>8% FTEs
Less than 2 year
payback
All Automation in 2017
RPA in 2017
People First, Process Next, Service Excellence Always
What Next?
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● Key lessons
● What next for Tarmac?
People First, Process Next, Service Excellence Always
Key Lessons Learned so far
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● Don’t just jump in
● Feasibility can be done quickly and (relatively) cheaply
● Think holistically
● Collaboration is key
● Move quickly once you have momentum
● Ensure you have dedicated SME resource availability
● Ways of working will change
People First, Process Next, Service Excellence Always
What next?
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● Automate a further [X] processes● Increase our virtual workforce by [Y]● Establish consistent / reusable coding
framework● Develop in-house capability and
multi-skill