May 2022

Retail marketing channels E-commerce Shopping automation concept on blurred supermarket background.

Prolifics Announced as MuleSoft Go-to-Market Retail Champion

London Software Engineering and digital integration company, Prolifics has been named as a MuleSoft Go-To-Market (GTM) Champion, demonstrating their expert knowledge and experience in solving digital integration challenges for the retail industry.

GTM Champions bring experience and insight across the technology landscape. They work with a cross-functional team to develop a joint go-to-market strategy and spend several weeks establishing this joint approach to help clients understand how MuleSoft, provider of the leading integration, API, and automation platform, can accelerate their digital transformation.

Prolifics created an API-led strategy, enabled by MuleSoft, that addresses the growing need to integrate non-traditional order fulfilment channels and provide a ‘single view of stock’ as an enabler to improved order conversion and customer satisfaction. The unique case study successfully enabled Prolifics to be named as a GTM Champion for the retail industry in the first MuleSoft GTM cohort.

The credential was awarded after a stringent process which saw Prolifics meet strict criterion, including skill in applying the MuleSoft for a real-world, digital business use case. The award was backed up by internal recommendations from the larger MuleSoft team, based on innovation, experience and positive outcomes from MuleSoft engagements.

Frank Mulligan, Prolifics UK General Manager commented:

“We are incredibly proud of Marc receiving this credential from the MuleSoft team; it is a testament to our commitment of providing innovative, market-leading solutions for the retail industry.

Prolifics have decades of experience within both integration and retail, working with the UK’s largest retailers as a trusted partner to their business goals, through our global commitment to innovation and digital engineering proficiency.”

Prolifics UK Head of Technology, Marc Edwards, formally Head of Technology at The Very Group, was chosen to represent the London digital integration specialists and provide key insight into some of the retail innovation conducted by the Prolifics Global Innovation Centre, while demonstrating a deep understanding of the retail landscape, helping cement Prolifics’ retail-specialist GTM status. 

Mr Edwards commented:

“I’m thrilled to be named as a MuleSoft GTM Retail Champion. Our proposed solution demonstrates a small segment of Prolifics ability to solve serious industry problems, that are often rooted in poor integrations.

By using MuleSoft, we help our clients to build reusable APIs and services, enabling them to become a composable business through reuse, agility and flexibility.”

The GTM credential means that Prolifics will be closely partnered with MuleSoft and their new and existing retail clients, to realise business value through best practice, accelerators, consultancy and innovative solutions using the MuleSoft platform. The partnership offers a shared goal of removing bottlenecks and allowing retailers to leverage technology as an enabler, giving way for reuse on future projects and phased developments, all while increasing return on investment and a faster time to market in a highly competitive industry.

Prolifics is committed to helping mutual customers quickly connect their apps and data to deliver digital projects and innovation faster, reaching out to both new and existing MuleSoft clients, with a series of events, content and targeted solutions.  

MuleSoft is a registered trademark of MuleSoft, Inc., a Salesforce company. All other marks are those of respective owners.

People in casino

Workshop Delivers Winning Data Strategy for Gaming Company

This large, national gaming corporation (NGC) based in the Southwest comprises more than 25 properties in multiple states. Prolifics is working with NGC to modernize its systems, many of which are older legacies that don’t communicate well. We’re also providing managed services to ensure NGC does not experience technology gaps as it continues to grow.

Our client

Challenge

NGC struggled over time to have the necessary data in place to make intelligent decisions from a customer reinvestment perspective. As an example, knowing what an NGC customer likes to eat, and providing a gift certificate for that meal, will help keep that customer gaming on NGC property. That points directly to a successful business outcome.

One of the reasons for the struggle has been NGC’s legacy, on-prem data warehouse appliance, which will no longer be supported by the vendor. In response, NGC decided to move to a cloud computing-based data warehousing environment, but needed guidance. Prolifics introduced the client to our data strategy workshop that includes a large, in-depth assessment of cloud migration for data, SaaS offerings, infrastructures and platforms.

Action

Prolifics’ data SME Greg Kordelski works with NGC and picks up the rest of this customer’s story:

“We decided that it made more sense to do workshop sessions on a grand scheme of what a true data and cloud journey should look like and how it should be represented.

Over a period of five weeks, we engaged over 130 NGC folks in 17 working sessions. We used Mural, the online collaboration platform, to run the sessions. I believe we had over 2,000 Mural cards filled out during those 17 sessions. Mural cards are basically digital sticky notes on which participants wrote down what their concerns were; where they thought they have data, knowledge, or technology gaps – or just any gap in general; and where they would like to see their specific department or division go on this data and cloud journey.

We broke the cards out into different technologies and verticals based on what NGC does. We took about two weeks to aggregate all the information. We created two readouts – one for the senior level sponsors and one for technology level. Both talk about where this data journey will take them.”

Result

Greg continues:

“NGC leadership told us they have confidence in what they’re going to need to do for this data and cloud journey. What they really need to do, how they need to fund it, how they need to staff it, and how they need to run with it.

The workshop sessions were so successful that NGC people on several occasions said, ‘We loved it. We had a great time doing it. We absolutely enjoyed it this way. We’ve never done anything like it before, and we really like what Prolifics brought to the table.”

Our workshop approach provided NGC the guidance they needed, and delivered a plan for future implementation to help ensure that decision-making data is timely, correct and available.

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

Woman With Keys Standing Outside New Home

BOTs Help Mortgage Lender Keep Customers and Employees Happy

A Midwest credit union (MWCU) providing a full line of financial service offerings to its members. Prolifics has worked with MWCU since 2014.

Our Client

Challenge

The pandemic and subsequent shut down in March 2020 sent mortgage rates tumbling. This gave homeowners with mortgages the opportunity to refinance at a lower rate. Financial services companies, including MWCU, were inundated with “refi” applications. This influx exposed and exacerbated weaknesses in MWCU’s loan processes. Many of MWCU’s workflows involved manual processes, which were nearly impossible to scale for volume.

In many situations a set process didn’t exist for a task, it was accomplished based on an employee’s own knowledge and experience. Data verification, for example, required MWCU personnel to go and log into multiple systems manually. They had to send multiple emails, and they had to scan and fax multiple documents to different agencies. It got to the point that MWCU was not completing mortgages on time. The situation negatively affected employee moral as well as key performance indicators (KPIs).

Action

Prolifics started with a process discovery workshop and process mapping. We engaged MWCU personnel and created a process model for them, focusing on their major pain points and challenges. Based on those findings, we recommended an implementation to robotic process automation (RPA), better known as bots, and produced the “to-be” process model showing what it would look like after RPA. This raised a challenge in itself – overcoming the concerns of MWCU. The credit union had two main bot issues, which we helped them overcome:

(1) MWCU was concerned whether the automated bots could actually perform what their employees were doing. The concern was partially in response to many of the tasks not being documented. How could we automate a person’s work without involving the person. Once we implemented our workshop and subsequent process mapping, and they were able to see the bots in operation and the improvements that started, the client was on board.

2) MWCU was concerned about the reaction of their employees to bots – would it generate the fear of being completely replaced by automation? We demonstrated that when we automate a business operation or a business process, we are actually augmenting your knowledge worker or your business worker with the automation bots. The automation bots aren’t performing everything in a process from end to end. They’re developed to perform the tasks which are mundane and repetitive in nature, so that now your business workers can focus on much more intelligent work.

Based on the segmentation of our process mapping, we created seven primary bots (larger applications) and 18 helper bots (smaller applications). These unattended bots go through the application packages in the loan origination system and perform various validating and verification tasks, as well as generating certain documents.

To help MWCU further, we added hyperautomation (or intelligent automation) on top of the RPA, which means a layer of artificial intelligence / machine learning (AI/ML). AI/ML techniques look at large amounts of data, make connections, and generate insights better and quicker than a knowledge worker ever could. AI/ML can analyze the entire historical mortgage portfolio on an ongoing basis, and recognize, for example, that a certain combination of factors led to a much higher risk of default. If a current, otherwise qualified loan application has those factors, the AI-powered bot will flag – if not outright deny – the loan application.

Results

When MWCU saw the results, the return on investment (ROI), and what they could now do with their freed-up workers, they were very happy. According to MWCU, the bots:

  • Saved 1600 minutes of daily processing effort
  • Improved data quality by consistently checking all application types based on business rules
  • Increased the speed of processing, providing quicker responses to customers and creating a better customer conversion ratio
  • Reduced operational cost with their ability to process quickly and continually
  • Ensured better auditing and tracking for compliance
  • Generated an overall better workforce experience

Learn more

Prolifics Business Automation webpage 

Your Guide to Automation Types 

Prolifics Guide to Business Process Automation 

Three Reasons a Digital Loan Coworker Makes Sense 

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