business automation

State Health Agency Says Goodbye to Manual Paperwork

Our client is a health services division (HSD) of a large city health network. HSD provides health services at the city’s correctional institutions. We began working with them in 2018.

Our Client

Challenge 

HSD maintained a comprehensive record of the actions taken with their employees, including hirings, salary adjustments, terminations, paid time off (PTO) and promotions. Unfortunately, most of that data was documented on paper, and the data that was digitized was scattered across multiple data collection systems, making it highly inefficient and costly to run.

An HR representative who’d worked with Prolifics while at a previous organization, reached out to Prolifics to discuss how we could eliminate their manual processes by implementing a solution to digitize and centralize their data.

Action

We introduced the HSD team to PATS, our Personnel Actions Tracking System, designed to keep completely digitized employee records. They were immediately sold on the software and trusted Prolifics’ modernization experts to implement it. Our modernization experts developed the front-end to allow HSD to log in and enter employee data, and back-end where that data gets transferred to a Microsoft SQL Server database. PATS is a repeatable solution for Prolifics, which allowed us to implement it quickly. We customized it for HSD’s unique environment and integrated it with their existing data systems.

We also entered into a managed services arrangement with HSD, providing them with ongoing support, regular enhancements and new-version upgrades for integration with new databases or operating systems.

Result

With PATS, HSD’s manual paperwork and spreadsheets are history. Andrew Blank, Vice President of Technical Sales with Prolifics, said, “The client’s employee information is now completely digitized in a web accessible format and can be seen in one place.” It’s revolutionary software that contains the full history of HSD’s actions with their employees and can even communicate with their other data systems to update employee information as needed.

PATS enables HSD to easily access and share the most accurate data and gives them the ability to automate many of their processes going forward. It is also cloud-ready software.

About Prolifics 

Prolifics is a global 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 across multiple industries — at any point our clients need them. Visit prolifics.com to learn more.

Automation reduces costs and increases medical licensing efficiency

Our client is a government organization based in the Middle East. As a smart licensing, inspections and medical complaints agency, they deliver gold standards in licensing and foster successful medical practices to position Dubai as a leading healthcare hub. We began working with them in 2017.

Our Client

Challenge 

To provide healthcare services in the Middle East, medical professionals must be registered with an active license and renew it on an annual basis. Our client issues two types – professional licenses for doctors, healthcare staff and nurses, and facility licenses for those looking to open a healthcare facility.

Our client had a 200-page rule book that specified license eligibility for a medical professional or facility, the types of licenses available and the criteria needed to qualify. They also depended on an older, SharePoint-based system to issue these licenses. This system required a lot of in-house, custom development, so issuing a license took a lot of time. Additionally, our client’s licensing and inspection services were spread across multiple platforms and locations.

To solve these issues, our client wanted to build a new intelligent licensing system that would:

• Make all services available online, including renewals, cancellations, transfers, upgrades and facility inspections
• Convert their 200-page eligibility rule book to an online format within the licensing system
• Keep all data from their previous system to have a complete record of their work

We’ve had a successful relationship with our client since 2017, so they were confident that our experts could develop an efficient system that would fulfill these needs using integration, modernization, data analytics and automation.

Action

Our experts collaborated to build our client’s new licensing system with:

• A Citizen Portal, so people can submit their required qualification information for medical licensing digitally using a secure browser on their computers, mobile devices and tablets. People using the portal can also receive additional services and benefits, including medical leave certification and medication management
• A decision metrics framework, to convert our client’s 200-page rule book to a digital format within the licensing system to provide qualification services for medical and facility licensing online based on those rules
• A data analytics framework for current and past data, so users can conduct data management, analytics, updates, removals and reporting, using dashboards.

Result

Our client’s new licensing system made all their services available online and completely digitized their medical licensing journey. It reduced operating costs and increased the efficiency of their medical and facility licensing. It is now considered one of the highest rated applications in the Dubai government.

Following the success of this initiative, the client awarded us a managed services contract to provide Service Level Agreement (SLA) production support. We provide 24/7 support and maintenance for the entire application which is running with 99.99% availability.

About Prolifics 

Prolifics is a global 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 across multiple industries — at any point our clients need them. Visit prolifics.com to learn more.

Our client is a health insurance company (HIC) that has operated in New York State for more than 80 years, evolving with our nation’s healthcare system along the way.

Challenge

HIC was experiencing issues and limitations with its current electronic data interchange (EDI) set-up – the computer-to-computer exchange of insurance documents in a standard electronic format. First and foremost, HIC analysts were plagued by the fact that many health claims files simply never arrived – there was no exchange at all.

When HIC did receive files successfully, they were difficult to monitor and track, and were often subsequently lost in HIC’s systems. Files were prone to errors, with data quality obviously suffering as a result. HIC suffered wasted time and resources.

HIC originally met with other EDI solution vendors. However, based on an IBM referral and our mix of quality, cost-efficient onshore and offshore developers, HIC chose Prolifics.

Action

We initially engaged with HIC through workshops and demos. Based on those results, we introduced HIC to our Healthcare Integration Kit, which leverages the technologies needed for a configurable integration platform. This solution armed HIC with the EDI processing and monitoring features it needed.

HIC already had most of the solution infrastructure in place. Prolifics only needed to add IBM Transformation Extender Advanced (ITXA), a document transformation software.
The final part was a nine-week QA and user acceptance testing (UAT) phase, where our resources worked side-by-side with HIC’s QA division to carry out testing.

As no additional training was needed, the Prolifics solution proved to be a quick and easy fix for HIC’s issues.

Result

In total, the solution will save HIC an estimated $1M in software and services costs. The solution is expected to reduce the turnaround time for issue resolution. It will create more visibility into the insurer’s systems and improve the quality of its data. HIC’s analysts can be more proactive, addressing issues before they can snowball into much larger problems. Previously wasted analyst time can be reallocated to higher level work.

The Global Transaction Monitoring (GTM) component of the Healthcare Integration Kit proved to be one of the biggest upsides to the solution. It provides the real-time monitoring of messages, event processes, and transaction completion throughout the transaction lifecycle. Additionally, when an error is identified in a file, it can be corrected directly from the GTM dashboard rather than having to open up the entire claim file.

Technology

We used the following technologies to help fix HIC’s issues and help them reach their goals:

• The Prolifics Healthcare Integration Kit – deploys five component assets in any combination as needed: Delivery templates; Foundational Frameworks; Continuous Delivery; One-Click Ready-2-Run; and Global Transaction Monitoring (GTM)
• IBM Integration Bus (IIB)) – connects applications together, regardless of the message formats or protocols that they support
• IBM DataPower – helps organizations meet the security and integration needs of a digital business in a single multichannel gateway
• IBM MQ – allows application programs to use a message-queuing technique to participate in message-driven processing
• IBM Transformation Extender Advanced (ITXA) – a document transformation software, with the Extender Pack for Healthcare

Our client

Our client is a global technology company (GTC) in the payments industry. The company’s principal business is to process credit card transactions and payments safely and accurately in the 4-party model, composed of the card holder, the card-issuing bank, the merchant, and the merchant’s bank. Our client must be able to authorize a transaction – approve a card tap, chip or swipe – from any one of millions of acceptance locations, against tens of thousands of processing and fraud prevention rules in a matter of milliseconds.

Prolifics worked extensively with GTC to modernize and upgrade its systems to improve processing times and enhance security. This included upgrading its Decision Management Platform (DMP) and related programs. We handled the volume, complexity and time sensitivity of this project without any interruption in the performance of GTC’s mission critical functions. This has led to additional engagements, including the subject of this success story.

Challenge

GTC has previously run its DMP within a US-located datacenter. To say the platform is “mission critical” would be a gross understatement, as the DMP:

• Powers more than 20 decision, safety and fraud products
• Processes more than 1.2 billion transactions per day
• Authorizes transactions against more than 70,000 processing and fraud prevention rules

GTC has a strategic initiative to deploy parts of the DMP platform to other locations outside of the US. The first target in this initiative was India, partly due to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) requirements that India domestic payment information only be stored in India. GTC’s first milestone in this initiative was the automatic deployment of approximately 35 percent of the DMP platform within three locations in India in 2022 – named “India on Soil” or IOS.

Action

As noted above in the “Our client” section, Prolifics has worked extensively with GTC in the past, upgrading its DMP and related programs on the IBM Operational Decision Manager (ODM) system – its business rule management system. Since that time, our involvement has grown to actually managing the DMP. There is a full team of nine to 10 Prolifics personnel who are managing the entire platform – business as usual (BAU) activities as well as ODM releases. We built on this group to help GTC set up the DMP in India.

Prolifics started by onboarding a DevOps Lead and a DevOps Engineer to augment the DMP team.

We then provided a capacity-based team of DevOps resources to augment the GTC teams. The main role of the DevOps Lead was the design and architecture of the required automation, while the main role of the DevOps Engineer was to create, update and execute the automation pipelines for the DMP datacenter move.

The Prolifics team is configuring the entire infrastructure automation for the new data center using Chef (an automation software) and Habitat (an application automation framework) technologies.

So, once the infrastructure and the infrastructure automation is completed, we will step in to become responsible for all of the IOS DevOps activities, from deploying to different environments to managing the releases.

Result

The IOS project will be completed in fall, 2022. GTC is meeting its strategic goals for deploying parts of the DMP platform outside of the US, as well as meeting RBI payment information requirements.

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About Prolifics 

Prolifics is a global 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 across multiple industries — at any point our clients need them.

Our Client 

Our client is a leading producer and distributer (LPD) of chemical fertilizer products for the agricultural industry. Prolifics has provided LPD test automation services for years; this story represents the first expansion of our offerings to them related to process mining and automation.  

Challenge 

LPD had become aware of process mining as a way to uncover inefficiencies for potential automation in different areas, and we engaged with LPD to run a pilot program to demonstrate opportunities and benefits.  

Process mining uses a company’s own data to find a better way of doing things. Customers, vendors, and the workforce generate data – “digital footprints” – any time they use company systems. Process mining follows this digital trail and automatically creates a map of the process – visualizing and diagraming the actual flow, including variations, exceptions, gaps and siloes.  

Action 

Prolifics’ Arup Datta is a Senior Consultant and line-of-business Lead for our business process management (BPM) practice. “We did an initial workshop with LPD to help them select a candidate scenario or candidate use case, or what you might say, a candidate process. In the workshop we asked them a bunch of questions; we spoke with their business segments and together we selected these three processes within procure to pay: requisition, purchase order, and vendor invoice. 

“We helped them prepare and gather the input data necessary for the process mining analysis. After performing the analysis, we came up with business-level dashboards, analysis reports, different types of analytics and some recommendations for the three processes.” 

Salem Hadim is Prolifics’ Head of Digital Solution and Cloud Solutions Consulting Segment. “With the first set of process mining data, we were able to narrow things down and find potential improvement opportunities, areas that we really wanted to explore and find those sweet spots for automation. We were able to show opportunities well beyond what we wanted to prove in the pilot.” 

The business-level dashboard Prolifics provided information on any kind of inconsistency the three LPD processes: inefficiencies and any type of compliance, execution, or data quality issues. It looked for any type of deviation from what Hadim and Datta call “the happy path” – the way the processes were meant to work. 

Results 

Through the process mining exercise, Hadim, Datta and their Prolifics team found about 6,000 different deviations in LPD’s happy path flow. “This kind of analysis was a sticker shock to them,” said Datta. “Their business users said, ‘We had no idea about this.’ Execution inconsistency was one big thing.” 

For example, Prolifics found multiple different redundant and duplicate activities – 27 percent of the tasks were rework. Datta explains, “When we spoke initially with the business users, they said, ‘Well, everything is happy path. I do this task. He does that task.’ But when we actually looked into the data, it’s like one group does a task, then another does the same task. Let’s say I perform a task. I closed it. It’s finished. Then, I come back to it after a week, I have to do this again, and then maybe this alarm comes back to it. Someone else has to do this again, and so on.” 

What process mining provides you is that it lets your C-level people know what’s going right and what’s going wrong. It gives them the tool and the view of what is happening on the ground with their processes. Now, the next step after process mining is telling the client where and how we can help them – and that usually means automation. 

Our Client

This large shipping company (LSC) provides domestic freight and import/export services in six U.S. states. They became our client based the successful solutions and services we provided to their sister company throughout a continuing long-term relationship.

Challenge- Who Remembers Visual Basic?

LSC’s business and tech challenges are rooted in what happened before they were “large” – that is, as a small freight company operating in one state, more than 10 years ago. This small company’s operational books and records were all run on one application, written in Visual Basic (VB), a programming language built by Microsoft. The company housed the application on a local, on-prem computer connected to a local Microsoft SQL database server – as a desktop tower system.

When the company expanded into a new state, the application was merely copied over to the new office’s local, on-prem computer connected to a local Microsoft SQL database server. The copied application was tweaked for the new location’s specific considerations, like tax rates and freight regulations. This scenario repeated itself as LSC grew, until it found itself in six states with six separate applications on siloed, unconnected hardware. 

The problems this created are, unfortunately, both common and obvious:

• Management could not get a whole company view – each office had to run reports or copy data and send it back and forth
• Security, stability and scalability of six siloed systems was suspect. A power-outage or computer crash meant lost business
• Data back-up had to be done manually

When LSC first came to us, their main concern was bullet point one above – a way to centralize their databases. We made LSC a two-stage proposal.

Action & Result – A Simple Solution Make a World of Difference

Our stage one action was to take the six databases that were in the separate states and repost them onto Microsoft’s Azure cloud. This was LSC’s first foray into cloud platforms. We made sure the security in the cloud was set up appropriately for them, so database access was restricted as needed. We helped them set up their connectivity so that their local VB applications, running on their local desktops, would connect through secure tunnels through the cloud and get the data they needed. That is, the VB application still ran locally in each of the six branches, but instead of talking to a local database, they all talked to their own database running in Azure cloud.

This simple “lift and drop” of the databases from the offices to the Azure cloud gave LSC a number of immediate, important benefits. Andy Blank is Prolifics’ Head of Technical Sales, North America, and works with LSC. “All of their data was backed up. It was centrally accessible,” said Blank. “They could run reports across all of it and get a consistent view of their database – knowing their data was secure in the cloud. This first phase was very successful and LSC loved the results of that. It was simple, but it was simply the right first thing to do from a modern IT perspective.”

Next Steps- Proposed Stage Two

Stage two is to modernize the VB application and merge all of the databases. The result would be a single centralized application, using a single database, applying logic to help run the state offices. This will include:

• Implementing a holistic approach with cloud-native design patterns
• Implementing Azure DevOps dashboards and pipelines for day-to-day work
• Creating a reporting operational data store
• Using Microsoft Azure Data Factory for ETL (extract, transfer, load) processes
• Integrating with Microsoft Power BI (business intelligence)

This next phase will help LSC provide faster quotes, more accurate invoicing, and data-informed marketing decisions.

Our Client

This company is a European leading provider of value-added logistics solutions, e-fulfilment and returns management services, carried on through a large network of warehouses /distribution centers. We’ll refer our client as ELS (European logistics solutions).

Our Technology Partner

MuleSoft provides the most widely used integration platform for connecting applications, data, and devices in the cloud and on-premises.

Empowering ELS, One Project at a Time

This success story features a multi-faceted project, in which where Prolifics UK was closely aligned with ELS to effectively manage, implement, and provide business transformation consultancy at each step. As projects were completed, new opportunities arose to engage Prolifics and propel ELS forward.

Integration with 3rd Party Carriers

ELS’ first big challenge was integrating its warehouse management system with various dispatch carriers that took product from the warehouses for delivery. For this early-stage opportunity, MuleSoft recommended us and another MuleSoft partner (a Prolific UK competitor) to talk to ELS. ELS was also looking at other options.

Prolifics UK worked with MuleSoft to build the business case to ELS as a problem-solving combination of MuleSoft software with Prolifics’ assets and consultants. The tipping point in favor of Prolifics/MuleSoft was Prolifics UK’s cost-efficient ability to implement the MuleSoft software.

Prolifics UK offered the reference architecture work at a fixed price with an outcome-based delivery. This, coupled with MuleSoft software, meant ELS knew exactly what they were receiving and exactly what they were paying – which was very attractive to the client.

Standardizing For Warehouse Users

After the success of the integration project, Prolifics and MuleSoft started working with ELS on another challenge: standardizing ELS’ onboarding and ingestion of warehouse users and customer data. ELS required a seamless flow of data from warehouse users to retailers, ensuring that the correct products are stored on-site with ELS. For example, if a customer purchases something from a retailer, that very same information must be passed onto ELS to pick and send the retailer’s product to the end-client. This two-way stream ensures visibility and accuracy through the supply chain.

The key to the standardization, and the continuing value that comes from it, is the use of application programming interfaces, or APIs. Information messaging like “Place Order” or “Deliver Item” are APIs that, once created, can be used over and over again, reducing the overall cost of standardization per warehouse user. Even if a new user coming on board can’t conform or connect to ELS’ standard for some reason, it’s just a matter of customizing one user’s APIs, which will then allow for everything to integrate correctly.  

Adding Robots and Scanners

With the success of MuleSoft and the reusable APIs, ELS has asked Prolifics for help with more advanced technology – beyond classic integration issues. ELS approached Prolifics regarding the use of intelligent robots within their warehouse and distribution centers. These were to automate a series of processes, moving and managing goods through a unified and centralized system. We created a standard integration across all robotic workers to ensure that orders are processed correctly, with order information being distributed to both ELS and the retailer using the distribution center.  

The Results

• Saved £1.4k per error
• Removed over 200+ integrations to manage
• Saved 3100 hours in development time
• Saved £176k for each new customer onboarded (or 800 hours)

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