CUSTOMER CASE | FINANCIAL SERVICES
Administer Group streamlines their digital services with automation
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Specialized in digital financial and payroll services, consulting and software, the Administer Group has been using automation for several years to improve productivity and increase customer and employee satisfaction. Sisua Digital and Administer Group started their co-operation when the group was looking for a maintenance service for their automation production. Automation and software robots will continue to be seen as an important part of their overall business in the future too.
The Administer Group is already an experienced user of automation technology: the organisation has a long history of using RPA to improve productivity and save working hours.
The Administer Group consists of five specialist companies: Administer Plc offers modern digital financial management services, Adner Oy focuses on financial processes for large customers, Kuntalaskenta Oy serves municipalities and communities in particular, EmCe Solution Partner Oy provides financial and payroll management software services, and Silta Oy offers payroll and HR management services. The group employs more than 600 financial professionals.
"We have been systematically using automation for several years. It all started when we began to think about how to save employees’ time and experimented with timing our work to look for solutions to make work more efficient. We wanted to use robotics to eliminate manual work," says Jukka Iivonen, CIO of Administer Group.
"There are a lot of tasks in finance and HR processes that involve manual document handling. If this kind of work is repetitive and done by many people, it’s very time-consuming for the employees. In those cases, you need to think about how to eliminate or automate this kind of work," Iivonen continues.
Automation is used throughout the organisation in several functions, for example in finance, payroll and customer service. There are currently several automations in production.
"Automation is used to process documents: when documents are retrieved from location A and moved to location B. Or if, for example, payment documents have to be made by combining data from several different locations and stored in another process. Documents are also transferred to the archiving system using a robot," explains Jari Korpela, System Manager at Silta Oy.
"Automation also saves time used in reporting: the standardised monthly reporting has been automated for some customers. We can define the parameters for reporting and the robot puts the necessary data into csv files," Korpela continues.
"The robots also process data that comes to us, which can be sent by e-mail, for example, and classify what the data relates to and where it will be forwarded," adds Iivonen.
"In the customer interface robots receive certificates that arrive on our web service or by email. However, customers don't see the robot receiving the certificates and working its magic. The robot speeds up customer service by working non-stop, while humans only work 8 hours a day. With the robot working relentlessly around the clock, employees have things on their desks ready be worked on in the morning," Iivonen continues.
Robots take care of mundane routine tasks, increase operational reliability and speed up customer service
Automation makes work more meaningful when employees don’t have to do the monotonous, robot-like tasks.
"Our automations process large amounts of data, so the volumes are high. Robots make everyday life easier and remove a lot of manual work from many people's to-do lists," states Iivonen.
"RPA also allows us to get the right information at the right time. When the reports come in during the night, the employees can have the reports ready for processing first thing in the morning," says Korpela.
Automation also increases operational reliability.
"When there are a lot of repetitive standard routines, there is a high risk of human error. Or if a person is on sick leave, for example, the work may not get done. Manual work involves humane risks," Iivonen explains.
"The automations will send alarms if they are not working. When a person doesn't do a task or makes a mistake, there are no alarms. When an automation makes a mistake, there will be a notification," adds Iivonen.
Robotics is an integral part of the Administer Group’s business and its development.
"It's part of our whole business: automation improves our productivity and the efficiency of specialist work. It eliminates the need to hire more people to do repetitive routines, produces the same results and allows people to focus on more value-added work. In terms of profitability, automation has a significant effect," says Iivonen.
"Customer service is also faster and smoother, and in the long run this has an impact on how satisfied our customers are and how we get new customers," Iivonen continues.
Sisua's responsibility is to ensure that the robots work as well as possible for the purpose they were made for
Sisua Digital and Administer Group started working together at the end of 2021.
"We needed to change our service partner and came across Sisua as a tip through our contact. Sisua now maintains our automations and provides us with troubleshooting and development for existing automations and new automations. Sisua's job is to ensure that the robots work as well as possible," says Iivonen.
"The takeover has gone really smoothly. Sisua has been proactive in pointing out things we should pay attention to or fix and in presenting alternative options. They have also pointed out problems with the robots, why they don't work as well as intended and how they could be further developed," Iivonen continues.
Sisua Digital suggested changing Administer’s OCR technology because the existing technology was not performing well enough.
"We had challenges with our OCR technology. We found in the monthly reports that the robot could not process all the documents and they would go into error, i.e. the technology failed to interpret the document as text. Then Sisua suggested that we switch from ABBY to Google vision and that has improved the situation," says Iivonen.
With the maintenance service provided by Sisua Digital, the automation monitoring has improved and maintenance has become more harmonised. Sisua has migrated the automations to the UiPath Orchestrator platform, which makes monitoring easier. Switching to the new platform also enables errors to be caught in real time.
"For example, compared to a year ago, we know better how the robots perform. Reporting has improved a lot and is constantly being improved - we were just discussing how we could take it even further," confirms Iivonen.
"Examinations are carried out on an ongoing basis and if any challenges are identified, we actively look at how we can improve," adds Korpela.
"The service package is also more cost-effective than the previous solution," states Iivonen.
The co-operation has been successful and robotics is seen as a critical part of Administer Group's operations also in the future
"Day-to-day co-operation goes really well. The tickets are quickly cleared and investigated. We have been pleased with the monthly service meetings. They give us an overview of what happened in the previous month and show us in what level the processes are running. Sisua also presents us their own ideas on what we could develop," says Korpela.
"Cooperation has been straightforward and easy – it works well on every level," agrees Iivonen.
"One of the things that stands out is that we have had some changes of contact people. But every time a new person has jumped on board, we have been able to continue cooperation directly from where we left off with the previous person," Korpela states.
Automation is seen as an important part of Administer Group’s business development and digital transformation in the future as well.
"We are constantly evaluating whether there are new targets where robotics could be used," says Iivonen.
"Automation will certainly continue to play an important role in improving profitability, employee satisfaction and customer service," concludes Iivonen.
Author: Paiju Koivula
What was achieved
Benefits of the maintenance service
- Optimized automation performance and reliability
- Harmonised maintenance of robots
- Improved maintenance monitoring
- Sisua support and best practices for development
- Cost-effective service package
- Real-time error tracking
About the company
Administer Group
The Administer Group is a Finnish company established in 1985 that provides financial and payroll services, consulting and software services. Their clients include organisations of all sizes, from SMEs to large corporations and municipalities. The group’s goal is to reform the financial management services market by developing new technology and new solutions. In terms of turnover, they are one of the largest providers of financial management services and HR and payroll services in Finland. In 2021, the Group’s turnover was EUR 42 million and it employed around 600 financial professionals.
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