February 2022

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PROLIFICS NEWS – Prolifics Takes First Place in Build a Bot Challenge

ORLANDO, FLA., Feb. 17, 2022 – Prolifics, a global digital transformation leader, is pleased to announce that the Prolifics’ robotic process automation (RPA) and intelligent document processing (IDP) solution “IntelliDocs for Healthcare” won the grand prize at the prestigious IBM Build a Bot Challenge for best RPA solution.

This IBM Build a Bot event, held between Dec. 15 and Jan. 31, was subtitled “Automation for the Common Good,” and challenged participants to broaden the vision of what RPA can do, specifically in collaboration with data sources, artificial intelligence (AI), and systems like business rules, document processing and workflow. The event drew more than 2,100 sign-ups, 70 envisioned projects, and 35 IBM robotic process automation applications submitted. IBM saw participation from 116 countries and engagement from business partners, customers, other technology firms, and academia. Prolifics is an IBM Platinum Business Partner.

Our grand prize-winning entry, “IntelliDocs,” is a digital worker solution that automates the healthcare prior authorization process. Prior authorization is normally a time-consuming, inefficient, and error-prone process that often leaves physicians and patients in limbo. IntelliDocs extracts and classifies data from authorization forms, checking for accuracy; enters the information into the payer’s electronic health records system; provides status updates and hotline support via chat and phone. The result is less data-entry time, less manual work, fewer errors, and lower administrative costs, with patients getting the treatments they need, faster.

Salem Hadim is Prolifics’ Head of Intelligent Automation Consulting Practice. “We’re very proud of this achievement, and it reflects Prolifics’ leadership in the AI Powered Business Automation and Intelligent Automation space,” said Hadim. “Many thanks go to our digital engineering teams that brought our ideas and designs to life with this winning solution”

A second Prolifics submission, called “Hope,” won the third-place prize. Hope is an AI powered, automated mental health assessment tool. Companies use Hope to collect survey data through forms or chat sessions. The program analyzes the data and uses a scientifically proven scoring system to identify and contact those who could use assistance – with early detection being the key to better outcomes.

Prolifics’ third submission, “ResuMan,” made the finalist list. ResuMan is an AI powered candidate screening tool that automates the application review process. It collects applicant and job posting data, applies machine learning to filter the information, and then matches the right candidate with the right job.

All three submissions show the expertise of our digital engineers in addressing real-world issues with advanced automation and AI applications. You can see the IntelliDocs entry video, the Hope entry video, and the ResuMan entry video. Learn more about our business automation capabilities.

About Prolifics

Prolifics is a digital engineering and consulting firm helping clients navigate and accelerate their digital transformation journeys. We deliver relevant outcomes using our systematic approach to rapid, enterprise-grade continuous innovation. We treat our digital deliverables like a customized product – using agile practices to deliver immediate and ongoing increases in value. We provide consulting, engineering and managed services for all our practice areas – Data & AI, Integration & Applications, Business Automation, DevXOps, Test Automation, and Cybersecurity – at any point our clients need them. Email  solutions@prolifics.com or visit us at prolifics.com.

Media contact: Pamela Roman at pamela.roman@prolifics.com or 1-818.877.0073

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Modern Integration Means Better Data Flow for Distributor

About our client – and an ongoing journey

Our client, a medical and dental supplies company (MDSC), is based in New York State. With more than 25 distribution centers, it ships products around the world.

Our original MDSC article involved outdated systems being handled expertly by older, but retiring, employees. MDSC could not attract younger workers for the old systems.

Prolifics helped solve that immediate issue by implementing LegaSuite – a tool that acted as a bridge between a MDSC’s existing applications and a user-friendly, web-based interface.

It was this initial work that impressed MDSC and secured for Prolifics the integration projects of this next success story.

Challenge – getting systems to talk to each other

While LegaSuite solved an immediate, pressing issue for specific systems, MDSC still had:

  • Systems like SAP
  • Various websites and databases
  • A number of different Windows applications

These systems didn’t necessarily speak to one another – they needed integration.

MDSC was doing a lot of integration already, but these efforts usually involved passing files or reading and writing directly from databases.

This type of integration is known as point-to-point integration, where individual pieces of data flow from system to system.

For every business use case where data needs to flow from one system to another, someone would have to handwrite code that:

  • Extracts that specific data from one system
  • Pushes it into another system
  • Repeats this for every single integration

This could reach hundreds or even thousands of point-to-point integrations – all of which would have to be maintained.

The company wanted a more modern approach to their integration platform so data would be more readily available, and their business would be more flexible, dynamic, and faster.

What we did – the modern world of APIs

The modern approach uses application programming interfaces (APIs).
The API-led approach has each system create its own interface that offers its data for any other system to access.

MDSC chose MuleSoft to provide the integration software (middleware) for building APIs to connect systems, applications, data, devices, and other platforms.

Many clients choose MuleSoft because it is:

  • Cloud-based and centralized
  • All-inclusive and scalable
  • Quick and easy to start with

They can run it as software as a service (SaaS) or even integration platform as a service (PaaS) – simply paying a monthly fee while MuleSoft manages the infrastructure.

Our implementation

  • Prolifics first brought in architects to discuss our integration expertise and MuleSoft capabilities.
  • We then built a series of APIs to integrate two core systems – SAP and JD Edwards – with other systems, along with other MuleSoft implementations.
  • A testing team built a number of automated test cases to test the new APIs.
  • The automated testing was left in place so MDSC could rerun test scripts whenever they made changes or added new APIs.

Result

We started MDSC on their API-integration journey, making MuleSoft the standard within their company.

The automated testing saves MDSC considerable time and money over their previous manual testing provider.

Now, data is more readily available, and MDSC’s business is more flexible, dynamic, and faster.

Example: Faster order processing

Field reps taking orders no longer have to send them via email or for batch processing.
Now, the reps’ order-taking application automatically calls an API that places the order into the sales system immediately – wirelessly from the laptop in the field.

This enables real-time visibility:

  • Reps can tell clients exact inventory availability and shipping times
  • Instead of saying, “I’ve put in your order and I’ll let you know what’s going to happen.”

By getting real-time data through modern integration, information flows faster – helping speed up business and increase revenue.

If you’d like to know more about our MuleSoft expertise and integrating your systems, email us at solutions@prolifics.com.

To find out more about MDSC’s success, download the full case study.

About Prolifics

Prolifics is a digital engineering and consulting firm helping clients navigate and accelerate their digital transformation journeys.

We deliver relevant outcomes using our systematic approach to rapid, enterprise-grade continuous innovation. We treat our digital deliverables like a customized product – using agile practices to deliver immediate and ongoing increases in value.

We provide consulting, engineering, and managed services for all our practice areas:

  • Data & AI
  • Integration & Applications
  • Business Automation
  • DevXOps
  • Test Automation

At any point our clients need them.

Email: solutions@prolifics.com

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Visible, Observable, Auditable – What Integrated Data Should Be

Integration is a necessary and ongoing goal for all organizations. You can’t effectively compete if your own internal systems are siloed and don’t communicate well. 

So, while integration is key, there are different integration methods that provide great benefits and opportunities to an organization, outside of the integration itself. At Prolifics, we don’t believe that integration should just be a “black box” connecting A to B to C. The company should be able to see, collect and work with data and information anywhere along the integration pathways.  

Honda Bhyat is Prolifics Sr Advisor, Integration and Digital Transformation (DX) Practice. “In the context of integration, businesses need the integrated data to have visibility, observability and auditability. This is not about the performance of the integration applications themselves, it’s about answering business questions with the integrated data. That’s why Prolifics developed the Global Transaction Monitor (GTM) solution.”  

Prolifics’ GTM minimizes data changes while still providing end-to-end integration. It offers a customized, document-centric, end-to-end transaction tracking framework and automated managed file transfer. GTM captures, records, and exposes events, made visible via customized dashboards and tracked in accordance with user-defined performance indicators. In addition, it offers reporting and filtering to help with self-service requests to track transactions and documents. 

“We believe that the integration and storage processes should ‘match the data,’” said Bhyat. “This means that data retains its business terminology and document-centricity, so that everyone who works with the data is already familiar with it and understands it. This is true visibility that comes out of integration, and that’s the real value to business operations people.” 

The GTM solution is built with the latest and newest technologies: IBM MQ Advanced, Mongo document-centric database, Python programming language, and IBM Transformation Extender Advanced (ITXA) when HIPAA or other compliance is needed. Prolifics provides its unique implementation expertise to build custom data transformation maps and orchestration for the customer process workflows. 

Bhyat said, “Instead of data being dispersed into relational databases, we create ‘electronic filing cabinets’ that layer complete histories. For example, data for a healthcare insurance claim will show the original claim, the payment history, dates, places and any related issues or problems, all together – the complete digital trail in just a few clicks. Businesspeople can readily access this, and no longer need to rely on IT queries and reports. Our clients are amazed by the views and drill downs they can do from a dashboard format. It’s a dream for compliance and auditing. Clients refer to it as their own ‘portal’ into their organization’s data.”

You can reach Honda by email or through LinkedIn. 

Pick me up, mobile smart phone in hand using application for intelligent car park with digital hologram on blurred parking car background, mobile auto parking, network and online technology concept

“Wow” – A Spot-On Solution for a Parking Facility Management Company

Our Customer

This parking facility management (PFM) company is a leading provider of professional parking management services throughout the United States.

Challenge

Parking management organizations generate significant revenue if they’re able to offer on-demand parking services to daily commuters and occasional parkers. For our customer, a parking facility management (PFM) company, “marooned” parking data posed a significant challenge. It had the capability to collect real-time data from monitoring devices, but the data was siloed at satellite server locations.

This challenge is especially relevant to retailers who benefit from dynamic pricing. For instance, a retailer could sensibly raise the cost of parking to $40 the night of an event (e.g. a concert). Whereas on a typical weekday, it would make sense for them to offer parking at $5. This is the “wow” factor of dynamic pricing.

How Prolifics met PFM’s challenge

With data siloed across multiple locations and only updated on a preconfigured schedule, PFM could not participate in real-time pricing initiatives. This was the first priority for the Prolifics teams: creating a way to centralize key data without the need to wait on specific update scheduling. 

Next, our teams deployed a hybrid cloud solution that allowed the company to store real-time data in the public cloud without compromising security or control.

With this in place, the data could now be used for pricing optimization. Prolifics created analytical models that provided insight into times and events that generated higher demand.  As a client adjusts their pricing based on those factors, they can also see how their capacity (e.g. number of available parking spaces) reacts to the changes.

A large part of the “wow” factor for this dynamic pricing process is the speed of the AI/ML automated tools utilized in this project. Taking something that someone might need weeks and months to do manually and bring it down to hours. You’re making your organization tremendously more productive.

Prolifics also built a new front-end interface for the company. It included application programming interfaces (APIs) to connect multiple services across disparate data channels and facilitate data integration with popular web and mobile reservation apps. Finally, our teams created a new administrative user experience to improve facility, partner, and price management across the organization. 

Results

By partnering with Prolifics, PFM was able to combine real-time data about current parking capacity and combine it with relevant information about local traffic and events. By leveraging robust APIs to connect tools such as Google Maps to parking databases and mobile reservation apps, it was possible to deliver end-to-end parking information and pricing that responded dynamically to user demand – instead of being updated after the fact. 

To find out how Prolifics can help your organization optimize pricing and operations, connect with one of our experts today.

To find out more about PFM’s success, download the full case study.

Download Full Case Study

About Prolifics

Prolifics is a global digital transformation leader with expertise in Data & AI, Integration & Applications, Business Automation, DevXOps, Test Automation, and Cybersecurity across multiple industries. We provide consulting, engineering and managed services for all our practice areas at any point our clients need them. Vision to Value. Faster. It’s not just the Prolifics’ tagline, it’s what drives us. Reach out to learn more – solutions@prolifics.com.

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