SARCI: Transforming Businesses Through Focussed Technology Initiatives
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Intelligent Process Automation (IPA) can be understood as the next wave of business process automation which started with automating specific tasks such as RPA, Cognitive Intelligence, and API Automation. Today, it is expected to string together automated tasks to mirror a higher level, complex end-to-end business process. An analogy can be seen in the automobile industry, where the tremendous progress in specific areas like an automatic gear shift, GPS maps, and machine vision (e.g., rear-view cameras), are now used to transform the whole transportation experience to create self-driving cars. Similarly, as more enterprise business tasks get digitalized or varied technologies are adopted, more will be the demand to leverage IPA to bring in large-scale transformation and business value. Bengaluru-based, SARCI Automation Solutions is a leading company that understands the prowess of technology and automation solutions and leverages the same to transform businesses.“We have been doing this for a long time and it stands front and square in all that we do. The IPA concept, in fact, is part of our company name itself (SARCI itself stands for Systems to Automate & Report Company Intelligence). We believe that automated, self-managed workflows are going to be the backbone of any enterprise in a digital world”, says Ranjit Sankarasubramanian, Director, SARCI. The company focuses on the relevant technologies across areas such as Workflows, BPM, RPA, AI, NLP, and Process Mining. Much of its work is put into reusable modules that are leveraged based on project needs. Additionally, SARCI has alliances with industry leaders, and implementation partners and runs several research projects with local academic institutions to enhance its awareness of upcoming areas from a technical perspective.
“Our deep expertise of process automation across varied domains like supply-chain, financial services, retail, logistics & distribution, trade settlement, compliance and many more will be of great value to customers wanting to have that competitive edge in execution”, adds Ranjit.
From a domain angle, the company has also engaged in several digital transformation projects across industries. In India, SARCI has worked with customers in BFSI, Supply & Value Chain, Logistics, Retail, and more, and in all, it has shown results in terms of improved business health in aspects including but not limited to, better cash flow, smooth customer experience, easier compliance, and less operational risk. It owes its success to its in-depth understanding of all three success factors of technology, domain process and people user experience.
Delivering Focused Technology Initiatives
The team at SARCI follows a 3-Step automation framework to get maximum leverage from IPA. The first step is called Transactional Automation, which ensures that the record-keeping processes are handled in an automated manner not only to align with business rules but also in such a way that data is organized so as to get one source of truth. The second step of IPA referred to as Work Intelligence Automation, helps people automate processes within & between different departments or organizations. “Work Intelligence is the crux of the offering and helps the people on the ground to collaborate with each other and even with machine data avoiding the hassles of the system created boundaries”, adds Ranjit. And lastly, the third step called Cognitive Automation helps at the Decision Level by collating data from various sources, identifying or predicting the impacts based on the trends and then recommending the process steps needed to operationalize the decision.
“All work that we have done usually is done in a phased approach, starting from processes that are related to basic record keeping (e.g., invoice processing) to processes that are related to decision making (e.g., procurement) and as an aspiration, to processes that can adapt themselves to the given situation (e.g., replan shipment based on demand trends, and logistics availability)”, says Ranjit.
This 3-Step Framework is encapsulated in the company’s in-house DATADRILLS platform which gives organizations the ability to interlink disparate tasks to automate an end-to-end process and also to collaborate horizontally between departments and external partners to complete the higher-level business need. DATADRILLS does this using modern technology use cases such as in Blockchain, Process Analytics, new Cloud paradigms, MLOps and advances in User Experience flows. Much of the core technology adopted in DATADRILLS has been around for a decade, is well-evolved, and is spearheaded by global industry leaders and various research institutes.
As situations change over time, DATADRILLS ensures that the business rules, flows, user fields, and machine learning decisions are all user configurable and enable more control for the user to adapt quickly rather than wait for IT to respond or the software vendor to make the change. Furthermore, DATADRILLS provides mechanisms for the end-user to form virtual groups and connect processes that involve them. This ensures that the group knows what is their role in the process rather than just focusing on their individual tasks. In a world, where there are more teams working in different locations, this collaborative model is better suited for the business environment than relying on a hierarchical model to share priorities and communicate.
Datadrills for Finance & Operations
Finance pervades the business. It is a horizontal activity but is designed as a vertical function in most enterprises. That’s simply the historical way that companies have worked. This has created problems in business reporting, and decision making as the process and data expectations are not similar across finance and operational teams. Invariably, a lot of excel and emails are used to cover this gap which in turn,is generally more error prone and time consuming.
However, data is needed in near real time for a business to be successful, and hence it is important that the data is agreed upon in a transparent manner by all stakeholders involved in the process. Equally important is the ability for the same data to be represented or perceived in different ways as it goes through different processes.
SARCI’s DATADRILLS, therefore, focuses on the efficient management of finance and operations. Its solutions provide an automated manner in which both the Process and Data are coordinated seamlessly amongst disparate processes teams, and organizations thus saving time, reducing errors, and at the same time, gathering intelligence of the bottlenecks for further improvements and most critically having dependable insights into the health of the business.
“Specifically, for the FinOps function we have built IPA solutions for invoice processing vendor & customer engagement, various reconciliations, export import compliances, multiparty trade settlements, head office consolidations, exception handling, and more. These are automated end-to-end to ensure a timely, reliable way for getting work done and at the same time ensure a healthy financial footing for the company”, adds Ranjit.
Onward & Upward
SARCI’s strength comes from a decade long understanding of the three critical factors namely, technology, domain process, people, and the interaction among these. Additionally, the company has also invested in building its own IPA platform and tools to support the clients’ automation journeys. The advantage, therefore, for its customers is that they enjoy the leverage of an experienced team who well understand the plus and minus of choices taken, and the expected outcome of each approach taken.
With respect to technology differentiation itself, the company is now in the 4th evolution of its technology selection and implementation. “While we have done some good projects using earlier methodologies and technology including RPA, BPM tools, and more, we believe that these solve only a small problem, but the core end-to-end problem is only now solved using IPA,” adds Ranjit. The company’s current technology stack consists of some of the leading thoughts including low-code deployment, configurable & dynamic processes, user-defined MLOps, and blockchain concepts.
Looking into the future, the company’s immediate plan for this year is to bring out several of its proven automation projects into a SaaS offering that can be easily consumed by the industry, with flexible adoption strategies for clients. These would be initially focused on areas of finance, operations & service lifecycle. The company is also investing in creating low-code, self-managed modules so that the end-user is empowered and more agile. “Besides this, we are working on some interesting research projects where we are looking at synchronizing processes amongst a closed group of companies who wish to serve the same customer. This kind of collaborative group process improvement has a very large impact on the whole ecosystem and is a winwin for all”, concludes Ranjit.
Sarci’s Current Technology Stack Consists Of Some Of The Leading Thoughts Including Low code Deployment, Configurable & Dynamic Processes, User Defined Mlops And Blockchain Concepts With An Intuitive User Interface
Datadrills for Finance & Operations
Finance pervades the business. It is a horizontal activity but is designed as a vertical function in most enterprises. That’s simply the historical way that companies have worked. This has created problems in business reporting, and decision making as the process and data expectations are not similar across finance and operational teams. Invariably, a lot of excel and emails are used to cover this gap which in turn,is generally more error prone and time consuming.
However, data is needed in near real time for a business to be successful, and hence it is important that the data is agreed upon in a transparent manner by all stakeholders involved in the process. Equally important is the ability for the same data to be represented or perceived in different ways as it goes through different processes.
SARCI’s DATADRILLS, therefore, focuses on the efficient management of finance and operations. Its solutions provide an automated manner in which both the Process and Data are coordinated seamlessly amongst disparate processes teams, and organizations thus saving time, reducing errors, and at the same time, gathering intelligence of the bottlenecks for further improvements and most critically having dependable insights into the health of the business.
“Specifically, for the FinOps function we have built IPA solutions for invoice processing vendor & customer engagement, various reconciliations, export import compliances, multiparty trade settlements, head office consolidations, exception handling, and more. These are automated end-to-end to ensure a timely, reliable way for getting work done and at the same time ensure a healthy financial footing for the company”, adds Ranjit.
Onward & Upward
SARCI’s strength comes from a decade long understanding of the three critical factors namely, technology, domain process, people, and the interaction among these. Additionally, the company has also invested in building its own IPA platform and tools to support the clients’ automation journeys. The advantage, therefore, for its customers is that they enjoy the leverage of an experienced team who well understand the plus and minus of choices taken, and the expected outcome of each approach taken.
With respect to technology differentiation itself, the company is now in the 4th evolution of its technology selection and implementation. “While we have done some good projects using earlier methodologies and technology including RPA, BPM tools, and more, we believe that these solve only a small problem, but the core end-to-end problem is only now solved using IPA,” adds Ranjit. The company’s current technology stack consists of some of the leading thoughts including low-code deployment, configurable & dynamic processes, user-defined MLOps, and blockchain concepts.
Looking into the future, the company’s immediate plan for this year is to bring out several of its proven automation projects into a SaaS offering that can be easily consumed by the industry, with flexible adoption strategies for clients. These would be initially focused on areas of finance, operations & service lifecycle. The company is also investing in creating low-code, self-managed modules so that the end-user is empowered and more agile. “Besides this, we are working on some interesting research projects where we are looking at synchronizing processes amongst a closed group of companies who wish to serve the same customer. This kind of collaborative group process improvement has a very large impact on the whole ecosystem and is a winwin for all”, concludes Ranjit.