Accenture & Blue Prism Team to Provide Robotic Process Automation

Accenture and Blue Prism, a leading provider of enterprise robotic process automation (RPA) software, are working together to provide RPA solutions to help organizations across industries automate a wide range of business processes for reduced costs, improved compliance and increased productivity. More than 40 organizations have already selected Accenture and Blue Prism to help achieve this, including international retailer Circle K and Raiffeisen Bank International.

The alliance combines Accenture’s global reach and cross industry expertise with Blue Prism’s RPA software robots to provide the next generation of the “digital workforce.” As part of this, Accenture plans to certify more than 600 professionals on Blue Prism technology and implementation to provide critical advice and guidance to companies navigating a complex automation landscape.

Circle K Europe (previously Statoil Fuel and Retail) has streamlined its Finance, IT, Customer Service, Fuel and HR operations at the Riga and Warsaw Business Centres. Automation has allowed Circle K to standardize and improve services which has helped reduce processing times and make Circle K an even more attractive place to work.

“RPA has changed the way we structure and allocate work, allowing us to spend more time on improvement initiatives,” says Kristian Kjernsmo, managing director Circle K Business Centre at Circle K Europe. “By automating routine tasks, we allow our skilled people to focus on the more interesting and challenging parts of their jobs, which has the dual benefit of engaging our people and improving the customer experience. Accenture has been with us from the beginning, helping us in the exploratory phases of RPA right through to the implementation.”

As a multi-national European bank operating in 14 countries with more than 40,000 employees, Raifessen Bank International worked with Accenture to implement Blue Prism technology to automate business processes in four countries with further roll out planned in 2017.

“We had been considering RPA as a way to accelerate business results, but we needed a solution that could be housed internally, scale rapidly, and be up and running within two months,” said Markus Stanek, head of Group Efficiency of Raiffeisen Bank International. “Thanks to Accenture’s knowledge and Blue Prism’s enterprise-class RPA software, we want to create an in-house robotics Centre of Excellence within a very short time frame. We have successfully piloted our RPA program in four countries to date, and based on our early positive outcome, intend to continue RPA roll-outs in 2017."

“This relationship builds on Accenture’s history of helping organizations capture new business value through automation and complements our efforts to apply the technology quickly and at scale to ensure benefits are realised early,” said Manish Sharma, group operating officer, Accenture Operations. “The cost and productivity benefits of RPA are enabling firms to operate smarter and are offering the human workforce the opportunity to engage in more stimulating and strategic work.”

Alastair Bathgate, CEO and co-founder of Blue Prism, commented, “We are delighted to be working with Accenture to deliver the value of a digital workforce to many different types of organizations across the globe. With 40 firms already on board to benefit from this alliance, we are seeing a clear appetite for RPA as firms quickly realize the vast array of benefits to business performance and productivity.”

“RPA has the potential to deliver significant benefits to enterprises in terms of cost, efficiency and productivity,” said Sarah Burnett, vice president, Everest Group. “For RPA technology vendors, collaboration with service providers and system integrators is a powerful way to meet growing client demand for RPA technology across continents and industry verticals.”