“Citizen development” and internal upskilling sees digital workers now process over five million tasks a year across 120+ different processes
To support growing customer demands for its services and to deliver both greater employee and customer satisfaction, Western Union has successfully rolled out a strategic intelligent automation program from SS&C Blue Prism and its certified partner ISG. The move has empowered Western Union’s existing workforce to optimize processes and outcomes by providing re-skilling opportunities to technologically-savvy employees and making them integral to the success of digital workers.
As the operator of a global retail agent network consisting of hundreds of thousands of locations, serving millions of customers around the globe every day, Western Union realized the potential of SS&C Blue Prism’s intelligent automation to improve productivity and increase operational efficiency across the entire business.
Western Union also sought the support of ISG Automation, the pure-play automation business of Information Services Group (ISG), a leading global technology research and advisory firm and trusted intelligent automation partner to SS&C Blue Prism.
As part of the project, ISG provided a range of services, starting with an initial automation assessment and strategic plan, followed by developing proof-of-concept automations. The team then established a robotic process automation (RPA) center of excellence (CoE) and implemented RPA and optical character recognition technologies across multiple engagements over a four-year period.
To grow its automation efforts at scale, Western Union has re-imagined and re-engineered its processes, optimizing them for digital workers. To do this, the business turned to a strategic intelligent automation program which used its own employees to effect the change. A “citizen developer” is an intelligent automation builder, usually a company employee and process subject matter expert who creates new business solutions using low-code digital worker development. The business embraced this approach, with employees across the business coming forward to take on the role.
Having dedicated itself to re-skilling its employees, as opposed to hiring from other companies, Western Union’s CoE developer workforce is now made up of 70% internal and re-skilled staff. Each year, digital workers now process more than five million tasks, across more than 120 different processes, in multiple areas such as finance, accounting, compliance and operations. Without citizen development, this could not have been achieved on the same scale, or at the same pace.
John Dyer, SVP & Head of Global Operations, Western Union, said: “Taking people who are tech-savvy and re-skilling them into intelligent automation developers has proven to be an extremely effective way of scaling enterprise-wide automation. As a result, we have the right people creating the right automations – and we’re giving them the opportunity to create a new career path within the company.”
Patrick Finn, President and GM, Americas, SS&C Blue Prism, commented: “Western Union has demonstrated what can be achieved when employees are put at the heart of their automation efforts. This approach will undoubtedly help them continue scaling their use of intelligent automation across the enterprise, delivering greater employee satisfaction, higher quality and improved customer experience.”
Read more about how to embrace citizen development as part of your intelligent automation program, or simply get in touch with SS&C Blue Prism to learn more.