Case Study – Redlands

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Thinking Big, But Starting Small.How Redlands Private School, Sydney, leveraged RPA

The Challenge

Redlands is a coed, K to 11, private school in Sydney, Australia, with a history of academic excellence dating back to 1884. Managing accounts, payroll, school uniforms and canteen services mired the Finance Department in high volume transactions. This hampered the Finance team’s ability to focus on strategic and value adding activities including investigations, problem-solving and partnering with the business units to support faculty, students and parents.

CLIENT : Redlands

REGION : AUSTRALIA

INDUSTRY : Finance

Shining A Light On Integrative RPA

Spotlight

Industry
Education

Location
Sydney, Australia

Key Demographics
1700 Students, 200 Employees (180 Faculty)

The Challenge
Free-up time for the team to deliver strategic services

Achievements

  • Transfer of over 30 processes to RPA capability
  • Daily time savings of 5 hours across all processes
  • Increased processing speed
  • Error free processing

    • RPA Becomes a Driver Toward a Positive Future for Redlands School

    Download Case Study
    The small AR and AP teams were easily spending 90-95 percent of their time on transactions that were no sooner done when they cycled again.A similar frustration was felt by the Canteen team. Two staff managed 2 canteens taking online lunch orders that closed at 8:30am each morning, recess volumes peaked at 10:30am, while collating orders for 12.30pm meal fulfilment.Data captured by one system was extracted, converted by the team input into other systems. The avalanche of excel files produced to stitch together disparate data sources was overwhelming.The team felt that there had to be a more efficient way to manage these repetitive, high-volume transactions to make time for high value activities.

    In Search of a Solution

    Recognizing that there could be a more efficient way to do transactional, repeatable work, the team started to investigate the potential to build an in-house solution, basically, ‘excel on steroids’. The discovery journey took 9 – 12 months with significant financial and human investments. In investigating options, team Valenta surfaced as a strong partner who could help Redlands Finance Department rethink small tasks, enhancing speed and efficiency through automation of repeatable rules-based processes. As a managed service provider Valenta offered technology, capability and support infrastructure that was reliable, cost effective and provided a better return on investment

    The Approach

    Finding Value Opportunities: Valenta’s on and off shore teams set out to better understand the pain points, opportunities and objectives. Processes across the organization were reviewed to understand what people did, how much data they were interacting with and how much time they spent on these activities Process documentation were reviewed and pain points discussed to find those candidates that were rules-based and repeatable. High impact and efficient outcomes were identified. Focusing first on small processes within the Finance Department, Valenta developed a Robotic Process Automation (RPA) Bot that would mimic a series of human interactions (key strokes) across multiple applications to enter data, deliver reports and produce curated content.

    RPA Becomes a Driver Toward a Positive Future for Redlands School

     

    The Bot efficiently supported these Finance functions, error free

     

    Accounts Receivables

    Receipting and updating payment profile

    Accounts Payables

    Posting account details, establishing supplier accounts and reporting

    Budgeting

    Completing annual data entry and monthly accruals

    Fixed Assets

    Income allocation and recognition

    Billings

    Extracting and collating reoccurring bills

    Canteen Order Management

    Extracting, collating and dispatching orders

    Testimonial

    “We have not only come to appreciate the efficiency benefits RPA has brought to our team, we have also developed an appreciation for our Bot – Maize. It is our intelligent digital worker and a member of the team.”
    Brad Weatherstone Chief Financial Officer Redlands School

    Business Outcomes

    discovery phaseWe have been able to automate over 30 processes, with an additional 10-15 processes in discovery phase.
    discovery phaseThe Bot processes data and executes 5 to 20 times more transactions per minute than the human team, running as scheduled and often 24/7 days, and without errors.
    without errors The Bot achieves a total daily time saving of 5 hours across all processes, without the additional need to audit and verify data or to correct errors or to do rework.
    without errors The starting small approach allowed Redlands to speed up many high volume, accuracy-dependent tasks. It embedded a level of process integrity and auditability not previously achievable.
    without errors Team morale improved as time was freed up to focus on business relationships and opportunities to support business growth.

    Looking Ahead

    We are committed to supporting Redlands tackle more sophisticated process challenges, particularly around supporting their 180 faculty to reduce administrative tasks, giving them more time for greater student and parent interactions or professional development.
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