Intelligent automation clears the way for innovation

This FORTUNE 100 company has a large, diversified healthcare product portfolio. Manual processes and redundant work along with inconsistent data and reporting pushed costs up and stressed effective communication and decision-making.

For this company to continue delivering the innovative products healthcare professionals and families expect, it needed to add intelligent automation as part of its transformation. Based on a long relationship, the company called on KPMG to use intelligent automation to boost process efficiency, functional excellence, and employee experience.

For this client, KPMG built, deployed, and supported 10 Blue Prism-based RPA pilots to assist with the back-office transformation in global services. We also created and deployed a series of Appian-based digital transformations, including the company’s worldwide medical device regulatory information management that unified processes and data for new filings, renewals, and changes with health authorities across the approximately 30 million registered devices in 160 countries. This work:

• enabled employees to move away from manual, transactional tasks to more valuable analytical work

• proved robotic process automation (RPA) worked across the company’s applications suite and could sustain longer term

• reduced cycle time by 75 percent to improve efficiency and lower costs by $1.2 million in the first year with an Appian-based system to track information technology projects across 5,000 IT developers and contractors

• increased visibility into processes to decrease errors and improve abilities to forecast

• created consistent employee experiences with the transparency to monitor them

• spawned new opportunities across business units based on project successes.

As technology evolved, KPMG's ongoing work for this client expanded from business process management to include sophisticated intelligent automation to further improve back-office processes, make work more efficient, and enhance the employee experience. The expansion included using intelligent automation to help transform IT, IT finance, research and development, manufacturing, and regulatory affairs across worldwide locations. These are just a few project examples:

• We built, deployed, and supported 10 Blue Prism-based RPA pilots across finance, human resources, and procurement to assist with the back-office transformation in global services. Helped build a thorough RPA operating model and governance structure to help along the journey.

• We added automation to an existing procurement system that creates a consistent look, feel, and workflow for employees around the world—from request through approval and delivery. The automation cut a 30-day procurement process down to about 10 days.

• We used an Appian Cloud-based system to replace 20-plus disconnected SharePoint sites with a unified view to track $800 million worth of IT projects across 5,000 IT developers and contractors. The system eliminated manual data re-entry, aligned data fields across subsystems, and integrated pricing information into the statement of work process.

• We created and deployed an Appian platform-based digital transformation series to address numerous business problems, including automating the company’s worldwide medical device regulatory information management. To help the company meet varying regulations for medical devices around the world, KPMG created a global repository for reusable regulatory data and automated a largely manual and labor-intensive medical device license renewal process that depended on multiple regions’ and franchises’ processes, systems, filing cabinets, and individual employees. The result is unified process and data for new filings, renewals, and changes with health authorities across the approximately 30 million registered devices and 150,000 active licenses in 160 countries for 1,200 users. The transformed process provides visibility into ongoing and historic data, eliminates human error, provides a full audit trail, improves the company’s speed to market and forecasting abilities, and accelerates innovation.

When digital transformation was not optional, this company counted on the KPMG team’s experience, knowledge, and tools to continue the company’s ongoing success. 

• A long relationship built on trust and commitment set the path for adding intelligent automation to the company’s transformation. 

• Our partner ecosystem included strong relationships along with deep skills and experience implementing Appian, Blue Prism, and other intelligent automation leaders’ technology to solve business problems.

• The onshore and offshore model delivered high-quality work for a competitive price.

• Current successes created the foundation for adding artificial intelligence to other parts of the business.

• Our experience allowed us to move past eliminating manual work and operational efficiencies to identify priority automation opportunities that can achieve growth and transformation.