On 31 October over a third of London’s local authorities joined London Ventures to hear from our venture partner, Blue Prism.
Blue Prism is the leading provider of Robotic Process Automation, robots which act as a digital workforce, able to take on the repetitive elements of tasks done by employees. This allows staff to focus on more interesting and value adding work which requires human judgement.
The senior officers, mostly from transformation teams, heard from Blue Prism, Renfrewshire Council, and their delivery partner EY who have been implementing Blue Prism’s robots into their working practices. The robots can handle parts of the debt recovery process, and even interact with customers providing information on things like bin collection. One robot was demonstrated handling the data entry parts of onboarding new staff, which it was taught to do using ‘Lego bricks’ of individual activities. These bricks, such as opening an email, are linked together to create a process map, teaching the robot how to complete the task step by step.
Renfrewshire Council shared their experience of automating processes, and the importance of selecting the right processes. They also provided a video recording the experiences of their team who do the necessary research, and support and ‘manage’ the robots. With the right team and preparation, the Renfrewshire team were able to automate two processes in just 11 weeks.
If you are interested in learning more about Blue Prism, check our website, or get in touch London.Ventures@londoncouncils.gov.uk. Take a look at out our ‘news and events’ pages for more details on our other London Ventures hosted events!