Streamlined Efficiency for Ukrtelecom: Automation Routine Business Processes

Executive Summary  

Goals:  

1) Optimize connectivity change log to avoid overtime and reduce human error, speeding up reporting 

2) Enhance ticket processing with a partial CRM update, refining customer support 

Solution: Two-fold RPA that targets the following: 

1) The existing process of email reporting to reduce the number of human errors and delays when sending daily summaries.

2) CRM requests based on customer tickets and emails received through the website, lowering manually processed tasks to free up human capital. 

Benefits: No overtimes, flawless reporting, and seamless email dispatch 

Services delivered: Robotic process automation to optimize reporting and mail processing.

Client Background 

Joint-stock company Ukrtelecom is one of the largest telecommunications companies in Ukraine, which offers its customers in all regions of the country almost every type of modern telecommunications service under a single account.

Ukrtelecom is a provider of high-speed fixed Internet with the widest coverage. The operator implements large-scale network development and modernization projects, which involve replacing copper cables with optical ones and expanding the geographical coverage of its services, as it lays thousands of kilometers of optical lines every year. 

Ukrtelecom is the sole participant and founder of TryMob LLC, a provider of mobile communication services in the UMTS/WCDMA standard under the "TryMob" trademark. Since 2013, Ukrtelecom has become a part of the SCM business group.

Business Challenge 

Earlier, Ukrtelecom had started its RPA journey with a niche automation tool. However, the outcomes were below the set expectations. Hence, the client had to put the project on hold to reconsider its business goals and requirements. After, Ukrtelecom reached out to us to explore the automation possibilities with Microsoft Power Automate for its two routine processes. Thus, we were tasked with demonstrating the value of RPA technology for business for the second time. The processes selected for the PoC were a really good example to demonstrate technology benefits since they took a lot of time and required countless hours of personnel to perform repetitive work. 

Done daily twice a day by Ukrtelecom specialists, the first process in the pipeline for RPA was the connectivity change reporting. Another area for improvement was ticket logging in CRM: customer request processing involved a lot of manual work and time for qualified employees who could have otherwise focused on more strategic assignments.

Solution & Business Value 

• First, we were tasked to optimize the reporting. With no regard to the day of the week (holiday or not), at 9 am and 9 pm, a report had to be sent to external stakeholders. We decided to lower personnel involvement and reduce the time spent on manual processes. The message sent with the report had a standard structure and included a subject line and a mail body with up-to-date stats attached to it. Our engineers turned this correspondence into a standardized format, lowering the cost of development and simplifying automation.  

• Next, we worked on the support part of the operations for Ukrtelecom’s connectivity department, which is responsible for registering tickets in the in-house CRM system. Ukrtelecom’s website had a separate functionality for customer requests – an assigned dispatcher would read the claims, process them, cluster, and log the tickets into the CRM system. All these activities were rather time-consuming. We agreed with the client to eliminate the despatcher’s role and replace it with an app that would take care of the repetitive tasks, bringing down the costs and enhancing productivity. By automating this process, Ukrtelecom significantly reduced the response time: operators used to process tickets manually with a several-day delay due to large volumes, and using automation, tickets are now created on the same day. 

• In addition to the technical part of the project, our experts conducted a series of onboarding workshops for Ukrtelecom associates, helping the client establish the center of competence for them to be able to implement changes, and create and support robots on their own. Beyond that, our SMEs offered coaching sessions and knowledge transfer as well as created comprehensive documentation on system maintenance and support.  Executed by Infopulse A to Z, the project became yet another asset in our portfolio, proving the company’s commitment to excellence as a part of Tietoevry Create. 

"Partnering with Infopulse, now part of Tietoevry Create, to automate two of our routine processes was a game-changer. Their expertise and seamless implementation saved us countless efforts and reduced errors significantly. We now can focus on strategic goals instead of repetitive tasks. A competence center we built together gives us the flexibility to extensively use RPA technology to streamline more routine operations."

- Pavlo Golitsyn, Deputy CIO at Ukrtelecom  

Technical Details 

On project completion, Ukrtelecom associates only need to create the files and put them in a designated folder that is later accessed by a robot at a particular time. As a result, we reduced the human factor and simplified reporting that now operates like a clock with 24/7 automation enabled. Thanks to our partnership with Microsoft, we were able to employ a cloud ecosystem without virtual machines or any additional infrastructure required from the client’s side except for SharePoint used for the uploaded files. 

The application paired with CRM enables the processing of the structured emails received through the website. In addition, the tool works with unstructured emails too, converting them into a general type of tickets in CRM without indicating the details about the category of the issue whether it concerns TV, connectivity, etc.  

The main challenge we faced during the project was the limited functionality of the in-house CRM. Therefore, we did preliminary work and tuned the system to accommodate the RPA process, adjusting some of the UI elements.  

In addition, we developed extra functionality to ensure that customers who submit claims are registered in the system and identified either as new or existing ones. In this case, we used both virtual and cloud infrastructure: a dispatcher working with emails in a special mailbox (cloud) and a VM / server that works with CRM.